Recently our landline stopped delivering a dialtone. I went outside to the telco's box and plugged a phone into the "consumer" side, and got a dialtone there.

Inside the house I unplugged all the phones then plugged them back in one by one, but still the problem persists.

We have two lines at the house. When I pick up line (###) ###-6223, it makes a sound like a phone somewhere is off hook (even though that's not the case). The other line, 6227, does have a dial tone.

The act of unplugging and re-plugging the jack at the telco box seemed to "reset" things, and for a while the 6223 line gave a "phone off hook" beep.

When I call (###) ###-6223 from the other line, it rings, and when I pick up I can talk to the person using 6227.

Any thoughts as to what is happening, and a fix?

Thanks!

 

something is shorted somewhere


Are you using two line phones ? they can short internally unplug everything , plug the phones in one at a time and give it a few minutes before checking .

when you unplug everything is it fine when you plug the first one back in or does the problem show up right away ?

look at all the jacks , could be shorted pin in one of them

 

Sorry for the delayed response.

The problem starts immediately, when I plug the first phone back in. Does that mean something specific?

Thanks

 

Have you tried a different phone? we had a cordless phone w/answering machine and it would kill our line.

 

have you tried a known good phone there ?

 

Yes- I plugged a completely different phone into the phone company box outside the house, and got a dialtone and successfully made a call from there.

I unplugged all the phones (2 on one line and 1 on the second line) and left them unplugged. Then I went back to each phone jack and plugged the working phone into each jack, and got no dialtone- there was a faint hissing sound, as though a phone somewhere was off-hook and had been off-hook for a while.

I bought some new phone jacks, thinking that one of them had shorted somewhere, but haven't had the time to install them (between football practice, cub scouts, sick kids, and general exhaustion).

Is it possible to test a jack with a voltmeter? I'd rather test a jack than install a new one and hope for the best.

 

if the jack is bad you ought to be able to see it , look in the hole you plug the phone into there will be either 4,6 or 8 gold pins . the center two are what connects the phone to the line cord and provides dialtone .

could be when you plug in the pins are shorting out . take the jack off the wall and plug the cord in and watch what happens .

 

Why, what happens? Sparks? Electrocution? :-)

Thanks

 

This evening I inspected each of the jacks, looking for mangled pins and found none. When I plugged a phone into a particular jack, I got a dial tone, then the "phone off hook" beep, then the silence after that beep times out. Screwed around with it for 2+ hours, got a dial tone two more times- but I don't know why, and couldn't reproduce it. Even the act of attaching the jack to the wall seemed to change the behavior of the phone.

The third time I got the dial tone I carefully attached the jack to the wall, and we still have dial tone now. So the problem is solved, I guess, and if it fails again I know where to look.

Thanks, Mango Man and Mattison for your help!

Dave O