Our telephone land line phone wire runs from a pole to eave then under the eave for another 20' before entering the house. We don't have the landline activated. The phone wire was there since I don't know how long ago. Yesterday someone cut the phone wire, not near the house where it's low, but half way between the house and pole. So one end is now on the ground, the other end is hanging off the pole, about 15' off the ground. I am guessing whoever cut it used some sort of a long gadget like a branch pruner on a extension pole, I don't know. May be they think we have an alarm system and tried to disable it - we do have alarm system decals and signs, but we don't have the service for a few years now. I am wondering if I need to call someone from the phone company to repair this - this is their property right? Or mine? I assume the line from the pole to the box inside my garage is their's? But will they repair it if I don't have an active account? or should I just snip the loose end at the eave and be done with it and let the other end hang from the pole?

I'll try to explain this as best I can. I used to have two lines running to my business, one straight from the pole, which we will call A, and one from my house next door, which we'll call B. I had a fax machine hooked up to B with distinctive ring. I got rid of my house phone, but of course the wiring was still there. I had someone come in and separate my phone lines into A and B using an AB switch. As best I can tell, both the A and B lines run to a circuit board looking thing with jacks in it. One lines comes out as the input to that AB switch. "A" I run when my business is open. It will operate my fax machine using the same distinctive ring number. When I close I flip the switch to B and a different phone/answering machine will pick up because the call has been routed to the B set of lines. The fax will also work as I manually switch the jack it is plugged into. This has been working about 10-12 years this way. Now all of a sudden I noticed that my phone has stopped ringing when I was open. And it was not kicking in my answering machine if I could not answer the phone. I tried calling myself, using my cell, and if I let it ring long enough I will get the phone to barely ring every now and then. But this is long after the answering machine should have picked up. I verified it was not my cordless unit using a landline. I even plugged the landline phone directly in using the AB input line. I'm thinking that rules out the switch anyway. I can however still receive faxes. And I can call out normally. And if I notice the fax machine light up, indicating phone line activity, I can pick up and answer the phone. Otherwise I never know it's ringing until it rings the time it would take to ring 6-10 times and barely make the ring sound. The B switch phone and answering machine work normally, but that phone and answering machine are set up to answer right away. Fax picks up normally, too. If I unplug the B phone and plug my landline into it, it barely rings and behaves the same as if it was plugged into A. But of course I bypassed all that anyway when I plugged the switch input directly into the landline. I know that's confusing as heck. It's confusing me. It's like my phone line is not getting enough "juice" to operate a landline or newer cordless properly, but it has enough juice to operate that older machine and my fax machine. Or maybe because they are set to answer right away. Maybe the phone current is strongest right away? Verizon tested my line from their office and said it seems fine. Something has to be broken somewhere though... Any ideas?