Rewiring Telephone wires inside house
Hello everyone, Not new to the posts, but this will be my first time asking a question. All my phones lines in my house are dead. We plugged a phone into the gray box on the outside of the house. Line 1, no dialtone. Line 2, good dialtone. From what I understand that means the trouble is on our end. I have a computer hooked up to my local phone company DSL, works fine, no problem. My question is can anyone point me in the right direction for instructions on re-wiring my phone lines inside the house? I have no clue, but I always love a good challenge. We have had several storms lately and maybe lighting got it, don't know for sure. The phone company will do the work for $100 an hour. HELP!!! I love all the info I get off this group. Thanks in advance, Debbie, from the Land of Tumbleweeds and Tornados!
Hi Dale, Thanks for replying. Let me clear this up. When we open the gray box on the outside of the house and looking into it. We see two places to plug a phone in. One says Line 1 the other Line 2. Line 1 has no dialtone. Line 2 does have a dialtone. We first unplugged Line 1 and plugged in a brand new phone. Tried 2 other phones also. No dialtone on Line 1. Then we unplugged Line 2 and plugged in a new phone and had dialtone. I was able to dial into my voice mail and get my messages. I came back in the house and plugged the same new phone into 3 different jacks in the house, no dialtone. We had a problem a month ago after a bad storm. All the phones dead, but the compter DSL works. The phone company had me uplug all phones and devices that had electricity and phone connections. Everytime I plugged the Satallite Receiver back into the phone line my phones would go out again. WE unplugged the Receiver and left it unplugged. Phones have worked fine until this past weekend after another storm. Now no dialtone on any jacks. My husband and I are willing to re-wire our house, just need some directions on where to start. I browsed the internet and found some sketchy instructions. But, I probably need A,B,C simple stuff. The outside phone wire comes into the house where the Receiver was orginally plugged in and that line went out first. Hope that makes sense. any information is truly appreciated. thanks, Debbie
In a message dated 7/2/2003 9:08:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, djdeen@... writes: Debbie, If you plugged in your phones on the outside box and had no dial tone it is the phone companys problem.Wiring from the box to your house is bad! This should be no charge on your part. Lisa
This probleom sounds like the same thing that was happening to us a few months ago. We have two lines coming in to our house, one for the business and one for home use. The home line would just go off and die although the DSL would still work. I already rewired the whole place when we gutted it so I knew it was not on my side. I called the phone company and it took 3 days to fix it. Turns out the DSL card at the CO went nuts and was causing all the problems. Then a month later the business line failed, you could call out and in but it would not ring. I even plugged a diag device from work in at the NID and there was not a trace of a ringer signal. The phone company fixed that one in a day. One thing you should remember is that even if the phone company box says line one and two your phone service can be on either one. The sloppy lineman that connected our box put the primary on the "line two" and the secondary on the "line one" If we did not have the business line trhe line one connector would not work. It may be simply that your service is on the secondary "line two." Try unplugging everything including your DSL connection and see if it comes back to life. You could have a bad DSL modem. you can also trace the phone wire that comes into your house from the NID and disconnect it at the first jack and if it still works then re connect it and disconnect the second jack and so on.
I just went through this problem myself this week. First let me get this off of my chest: "Verizon Landline Customer service blows flaming monkey chunks". There now I feel better. If you don't have a dail tone at the line then that's the phone company's problem. If they give you a buch of grief place a work order so ambiguous that they have to come out to figure out what the problem is. Be patient. It took us a week to get our phones back in service, and they worked the day we moved in! Good luck!
Thank all of you for all the wonderful help on my telephone question. FYI and to clarify the grey box on the outside of my house I was plugging my phone into was a test jack. There are 2 lines in case you want 2 lines coming into the house. That is why #1 is dead and #2 is working. I only have 1 phone line coming into my house. After talking with the phone company it was determined that the problem is in the house. A very nice person at the phone company suggested that I sign up with a package deal, lots of phone goodies I will probably never use but includes line maintenance, and it was cheaper than what I pay now. So, now the phone company can come and fix my phone without charging me that enormous price. It has been kind of nice not having that phone ring. I still have computer to keep up with the world and my voice mail through the phone company. Thanks so much, Debbie