Hi, this is my first post.
Our phone system seems to be convinced that a phone is off the hook in our house. We have unplugged all phones from the jacks, and left them unplugged for sufficient time(overnight), but still no dial tone when re-connected. If you call our home number, you get a busy signal. Strange, since all jacks in the house have nothing in them. Same results at the test jack outside. The line is not dead, just acting as if there is a phone off the hook. Computers are cable, not connected to the phone lines. We had our line go out completely last week; the tech said there was a short in the cable down the street, and switched the line to one that reached the main station farther away, and it worked fine for a few days. Then this.
Any ideas?

 

If you have plugged into the jack at the network interface (the box usually on the outside of the house) you are now on the end of the cable the phone company hands to you. Call your phone company and tell them to fix your problem.

 

Did you pay your bill? J/K

Yeah, phoneman is right, if you've tested at the NID and gotten no tone, there's nothing left for you to do, it's up the phone company now. They are responsible for getting dial-tone to that box, anything past that is not their responsibility.

Good luck!

 

It's a miracle!

I went to to work at 6:30 last night(Sunday), tried to call and got the busy signal. Apparently, sometime within the next 45 minutes or so, the tone came back. I saw a bunch of caller ID messages the next morning. My wife said it just came back on out of the blue.
I will still call the phone company to have them check the lines. We have had a lot of rain this last week, and I wonder if that is a contributing factor. Seeing as how we live in Florida, I would expect more rain, and don't want this to happen each time it's wet.
Phoneman, SafeWatch, thanx for the replies. I know this was a newbie-type question.

 

Sounds like the pair of wires for that line is either touching each other or one of them is grounding out. The best thing to do is to disconnect the pair of wires from the phone comapny interface, and call the number, if it still rings busy, call 611 repair and order a test to be run on that line, then order a service call and reconnect the wires as the short is on their side.

If the phone rings ok, then the problem within your home (or office) and you need to call your interconnect (phone system vendor) to repair.

Good Luck
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San Diego, CA