Phone Line Problem

 I discovered this morning that I have no dial tone on any of the phone lines
in my house.  I know it was working fine on Monday but I haven't used it in
the past few days.  When I used my cell phone to call my home, I got a busy
signal, even when I disconnected every phone line from the jacks.  Strangely
enough, my DSL service was working fine.  I went to the outside phone box
and disconnected the test jack, opening up the connection between the phone
company's line and my inside lines.  When I called my home again, this time
I got a ring tone instead of the busy signal.  When I plugged a phone into
the test jack, I was able to make a phone call.  So I expect that the phone
company (SBC) will tell me that this means there is nothing wrong with the
line to my house, the problem is with the inside wiring, and that I will
have to pay them to come repair it.

I would like to see if there's anything I can do to try to troubleshoot or
fix this myself before hiring someone to do it, since the quotes I've gotten
are for $90/hour.  Can anyone give me some suggestions or point me to some
Web sites that might help?  I tried Google but I wasn't able to find
anything helpful in the first few pages of results that it returned.

Thanks!

Mary

 

It could be a shorted wire or a shorted jack in the house.

Are phone the jacks in your home all wired as "home runs", "daisy chained"
or a combination of the two?

If they are home runs disconnect them at the interface and reconnect them
one at a time till you find the shorted one.

If they are daisy chained you can disconnect the wires at the phone jacks
and narrow down you search for the culprit that way.

Here's a link I goggled up.  I didn't read any of it but it may prove useful
to you.

http://www.naturalhandyman.com/iip/inftelephone/inftel1.shtm

HTH

 Ditto, I had the same sort of thing with SBC phone service and
Earthlink DSL.  DSL would work, phone would go away.  Then vice versa.
My problem was definitely inside wiring.

SBC + Earthlink makes for a lethal combination in terms of customer
service.

 It's two days later and Mary's problem is probably fixed, but the answer
that it is probably a short, could not be true because the dsl still works.
More likely a forgotten phone was off-hook, putting load on the line.  When
Mary says she has no dialtone, does she have side-tone, i.e. can she her own
voice coming back in a phone when she picks up?  If so, most likely a phone
off-hook.

mm


Strangely

 

You're most likely correct.  As I was writing my reply I forgot about the
DSL is working part of her original post.