Having some telephone troubles at home and thought someone here could help diagnose.
Here are the symptoms:
Outgoing calls are fine from any of the 5 phones
Internet dial-up is fine
During the last week, 90% of the in-coming calls ring once then get dropped
Here is what I tried:
1) Called the phone company, they can be out in 7-10 business days but only look at the line from street to house
2) Un-plugged all phones and then reconnected 1 phone at different jacks. Same problem (tried from my cell phone).
3) Repeated above with different phone. Same problem.
4) Plugged phone into service port, problem disappeared
Could a crossed wire or bad jack cause this sort of problem? Any other ideas?
Thanks!
Edited 1/20/2006 9:54 am ET by Tharrett
Replies
Did you plug one or all phones into the service jack at the NID? Could be a bad jack, bad wire, or bad phone. I take it your phone service doesn't cover inside wiring, right? This is based on the response by your phone company not testing inside the home.
I plugged only one phone into the service jack. Correct, the phone co. only checks outside wiring.
Tonight, I will check all phones at the service jack. If OK then I will assume the phones are OK and start eliminating wires/jacks.
Thanks
It sounds like your incoming ring pulse is causing a short/ground out.
Have you changed any wiring or equipment?
It could be bad wiring or equipment but as you tried different phones I'd lean towards the wiring side.
If you have a central bus that serves all the different phone jacks I'd disconnect then all and reconnect then one at a time checking each with different phones. A faulty wire/jack should show up.
Sure sounds like an internal problem if all is well when you plug a phone into the interface box.
Good luck and happy cussing.
Pete,
I have not changed any wiring or equipment recently.
On the one phone you tested did you try a new cord? A cord can get yanked and the connection at the plastic tip will get seperated.
Any Lightning storms lately?? Shorts out diode inside of phone and cause a dead short. Also look at any jacks in damp locations for corroision that shorts out the jack.(basement sunporch etc.)
Disconnect all but one phone/modem and try again. If it still fails, try with a different single phone connected and try with the phone connected from a different outlet. If you get it to work, try with each phone individually to see if a particular phone is at fault.
From the description, it sounds like one of the phones/modems is somehow drawing extra current when the phone rings, and that makes it look like the phone is off-hook. This is made worse by having 5 total phones, which produces a fairly large static current draw on the line.
I'd suspect first phones with an answering feature, or with caller ID.
Of course, double-check to make sure no phones have an answering feature enabled. Some can be enabled to answer on the first ring, and if the message is messed up they could end up hanging up immediately. Another thing to look for is a computer with it's fax software enabled.
If you can't narrow it down to a particular phone then it could be a partial short in the wiring somewhere. Get an ohmmeter, and, with the house wiring disconnected via the service entrance plug, make sure that none of the wires are shorted to each other (should always be infinite resistance between any two wires, especially red & green) or to house ground (infinite resistance between wires and ground).
happy?
"4) Plugged phone into service port, problem disappeared"
Pretty much moves the problem inside. Connecting at the 'demarq box' generally disconnects everything downstream.
Incoming calls send a surge of power over the lines (ask anyone who has been shocked by accident when a call came in during line work) which could push a marginal condition over the edge.
I would start severing branches to the jacks until the problem goes away, then you know the culprit. If you are lucky, they are not all daisy chained, so you can isolate it faster.
One more idea that fits the symptoms.
To double check, you are getting one ring (thus, no Caller ID), then nothing, correct?
Sounds exactly like what happens when you forward calls. Try 73# or *73, should get a "duhduh pause, dial tone" in responce.
With forwarding on, outgoing calls are normal, only the incoming ones are redirected, after just one ring.
Idle fingers playing with the phone can sometimes "hit" these combinations, as my neighbors found out when the caller ID block was put on by tiny fingers randomly dialing the phone.
CapnMac,
You may have hit on something... 10 month old loves to grab the phone! Keeping in mind that the problem disappeared when I checked at the service entrance, could it still be a call forwarding issue?
Thanks to everyone. I will do some more diagnostic work tonight and post back Monday (with the final solution, hopefully).
Edited 1/20/2006 1:06 pm ET by Tharrett
I checked at the service entrance, could it still be a call forwarding issue?
When you say that, do you mean you clipped a lineman's phone in at the TOS/demark terminals? I'm not remembering where, physically, the circuit logic "divies" into the enumerated circuit. If you are "ahead" of the number, as it were, then there's no "forward." I'm well in beyond my telco knowledge threshold, too (and not that "smart" from the demark back to the wall jacks <g>).Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Call forwarding is done in the office. If you can get it to work OK with a phone plugged into the demark then it's very unlikely to be a forwarding problem.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
My service entrance is a gray box.If you open that box you see another door, and beside that door, a jack.If you open the second flap, you get to the screws to connect a line going into the house. If you want to dial out from the service entrance, just plug in right there at the jack. You then have a straight line out from the box.
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. ~~ Eric Hoffer
If that solves the problem, you might want to check into where your calls have been redirected to...
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. ~~ Eric Hoffer
you might want to check into where your calls have been redirected to...
Having created (by both accident and design) a forwarding "limbo," I'm not sure there's a way to find out where forwarded calls are sent (by the customer--we'll assume that one of the PFK at the telco could look it up on the computer after being pried away from gaming or porn).
All the forwarding "needs" to go through, is for the other number to "pick up." I've forwarded to TAM without too much difficulty (and is also nice as you can leave a message that you are forwarding your calls to the number you expect to be near by).Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
When unpluging ALL of the phones make sure that you do.
Not just the "phones", but things like alarm systems with autodailers, extension bells, satellite or TIVO receivers with 'phone home', cordless phone base stations, fax machines, modems(they can be set to auto answer on first ring), wireless phone externders, etc.
I was having problems with my telephones a couple years ago. It turned out the dialer inside my security system panel was on the fritz and had seized the line, so I couldn't call in or out. A new circuit board and I was back in business.
Also, some places have telephone connections for remote reading of gas and electric utility meters, so don't forget them when you're troubleshooting.
Another reason for using an ohmmeter on the line -- you'll find any forgotten devices.(About 15 years back there was a situation where 911 calls kept originating from someone's house. Turned out to be a long-forgotten oil tank monitor that was misdialing.)
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
The one I remember reading about wasn't 911, it was an 800 number that had been re-assigned to a business. She kept getting a phone call at a certain time every month (or week or something).Don't know why an auto-dialer would call 911. Of course it could happen.And of course, it doesn't really matter either.
There was a spate of autodialers calling 911 back maybe 15 years ago. The dialer would be set to dial 9 for an outside line, then 1 for long distance, then another 1 for reasons I forget (something to do with private LD networks, I think). Happened a lot with computers that were first used in a business and then moved home.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
Ahhh! I have that probelm dialing N.C. 9 to get an outside line, 1 for long distance, and the Area code is 919. I'm amazed at how many times I screw up and dial 911 instead of 91919. Of course, the 911 digits instantly connect.
sounds like a bad jack or wire . one of them is going short when it rings. if it's possible disconnect one wire(leave the rest connected)and try calling in. if the phone rings more than a couple times, that wire and jack are fine move on to the next one. one question, are the phone wires exposed on the outside of the house? Might need to check if the insulation is broken allowing water to seep inside shorting the conductors.
Unhook your dial up modem, it could be answering and hanging up.
get a polarity tester from radio shack (couple of bucks) if polarity is wrong reverse red and green wires
some installs have a block inside the house where the phone lines hook up to, this block has two bolt headed parts on it , these aare actually fuses if you look inside
Surge arresters, actually. But this assembly would be on the telco side of the demark. (If not it should be removed.)
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
Yesterday, electrician who wired our project couldn't answer our questions about why two rooms don't have a working phone outlet. What? He fessed up that he didn't have any tools to trace down our problems and that we should call another electrician for that. Would have been nice to know a few weeks ago before the clients moved in!
Edit:
Update. Phone guy came by and quickly surveyed the box outside, making sure there was a good signal coming into the box.
To find the bad connection he simply unplugged all phones in the house and energized one wire, checking all outlets with a low voltage non-contact voltage detector, then repeated for the other wire in this simple one line setup. He found one wire making complete contact and one wasn't, so it's probably a bad splice somewhere. Once he knew which outlets weren't working, he jumped in the crawl space and quickly located the splice that didn't have good contact using the same $25 voltage detector.
Pretty slick.
Edited 1/21/2006 8:21 pm ET by IdahoDon
Saturday, I unplugged all of the phones and disconnected the three phone line cables at the service box. Incoming voltage was 50V. From the service box, I checked all 3 cables (ohm meter). To my surprise, they all read open. I then reconnected the cables 1 at a time. Two of the cables resulted in no problems, one cable caused the 1 ring issue.
So I left the "bad" cable disconnected.
Saturday afternoon, the telephone tech. was up on the pole for about an hour. Later that day, I had a message from the phone co. that indicated the lineman found a short?
Incoming voltage still 50V. Reconnected that 3rd cable and all is fine in phone land.
Still not sure how a short on the pole could cause one cable and the one ring issue???
There was likely a device of some sort on the third cable that was affecting things.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
DanH,
All of the original devices are back. It appears whatever the lineman did solved the problem...