POTS Problem Follow-On

Did it rain just before your phones stop working? I went through the scenarios that you describe for years with AT&T before the tech. told me the buried line had water in it and that they won't replace it. Had to go to an internet phone service.

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About 8 years ago I had a phone line that had a lot of noise on it. They had to put in around 200 feet of burried line to get to my house. They did that at no cost to me.

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No but it was awfully humid out. It still seems strange that the called party (the problem phone line) would indicate the line in use (busy signal) to the calling party when all phones on the problem line were on-hook. As I previously stated, taking any one of the 3 phone extensions off-hook results in a definite "click" like you get right before the dial tone comes on. Of course in this case you never got a dial tone. All DTMF pads appeared to operate as expected. Sincerely,

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J. B. Wood	            e-mail: arl_123234@hotmail.com

Perhaps, next time it happens, disconnect the phones one by one. You might have an intermittent phone causing the problem.

Try measuring the voltage on the phone line. I don't recall what it is,but it will be a high DC voltage (still less than 100 volts DC) and drop to a lower voltage (maybe around 8 to 10 volts) when you pick up the phone and get a dial tone. When the phone rings there is about 100 volts on the line during the ring tones.

Then compare those voltages to another phone line in another house.

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Hello, and not a bad idea. IIRC the Western Electric/Bell standard uses

48 VDC (central office battery) and a ringing voltage of 85 VAC. So on-hook we should see nominally 48 VDC and off-hook would be variable depending on central office-to-subscriber set loop losses when DC line current is drawn. So there might be a situation where there's enough line current to operate the DTMF pad and produce noise in the receiver but not enough current is being drawn to signal a normal off-hook condition with the resulting dial tone. Just speculation. Sincerely,

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J. B. Wood	            e-mail: arl_123234@hotmail.com

Already tried that when I had the problem last weekend. Pretty sure it's not in any of the 4 phones (if I include the answering machine). Sincerely,

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J. B. Wood	            e-mail: arl_123234@hotmail.com

That's unfortunate... and might well be an illegal action on their part. If they're deliberately refusing to repair a tariff-regulated landline service, in order to push customers onto a non-tariff- regulated "information" service, it might be a violation of your state's telecom regulations.

In cases like that, it sometimes helps to write a letter of complaint to the state Public Utility Commission ombudsman (or woman). Complain that AT&T has failed (and is now refusing) to perform required maintenance on their regulated wiring, and that as a result they have failed to provide you with acceptable voice-grade service for which you have been paying.

CC: it to your AT&T Customer Service contact, and perhaps to your Congresscritter and/or Senator.

Regulated utilities *hate* to have complaints about their service sent to the public bodies that regulate 'em.

I agree with another posted in this thread - it's important to make sure that your own phones are not part of the problem. More than that, it's important to be certain that none of your "inside wiring" is at fault, since this wiring typically is not any part of the telco's responsibility.

What I always do, in cases like this, is completely disconnect the inside wiring at the "demarc" block, and then plug a known-good phone into the demarc. If the problem still exists (better: if you can confirm it with two different phones and two different line cords) then it puts the responsibility for the fault right back on the telco's shoulders.

Tell the telco this, when you call: "I have confirmed that the problem remains when all customer-premises wiring and equipment is disconnected at the demarc."

Unfortunately, I live in OK.. Consumer protection here is nonexistant. This state is controlled by corporate interests. A fossil fuel billionare says it is commies that are against fracking when peoples houses are being shaken apart by earthquakes.

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Look for corrosion at the entry demarcation and clean.

is there any chance you have DSL?

More than 3 filters? Installed wrong?

Check for phone line sounds when you have the DSL modem on and off. If you hear sort of a static on the phone that goes away when the modem is turned off think of a DSL filter/splitter issue.

If you have more than one device in an area, us only one filter there.

You really need to plug a known good phone and cord into the NID outside th e house. If you don't have one, ask for one to be installed.

The protector should essentially be open on both sides to ground.

The "protector" which is on the telco side can also cause issues. You migh t also have one inside if the wiring is old. It was the black thing where the phone terminated inside the house. It has solid carbon under the screw s.

The real important test that's hard to do is effectively the resistance loo king into your house with the NID disconnected. generally, it's easy to do some of the disconnections with the NID itself, but a blank cord will do w hat you have to do.

If you have a few phones, try to measure the resistance looking only into t he house with the phones disconnected. That measurement should essentially be an open circuit. This is where you need to start looking for cob webs in the sockets. You can do this test with the phone connected but off hook . I forget the magic mumbers your looking for. I think it's a few megohms max.

If overhead lines, then spiders in the box there too.

Hello, and no DSL. The rest of your points make technical sense. My ca. early 1940s apartment building has a large grey wall-mounted W-E/Ma Bell box in the laundry room with a punch-down terminal strip. The house wiring from these terminals to units isn't the traditional sheathed red-green-yellow-black but simply twisted pair (IOW just tip and ring) like that used to connect to the outside plant. The connections from the wall-mounted terminals in my unit and the corresponding incoming phone line wires appear to be firmly punched-down in the W-E terminal strip.

So, except for access to the laundry room terminal block and the terminals in my unit there's really nothing else I can check either on the outside of the building or elsewhere (which should be Verizon's responsibility). Sincerely,

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J. B. Wood	            e-mail: arl_123234@hotmail.com

"Laundry room" rings a bell with me.

In a house we rented some decades ago, we had problems with line noise on the phone, ring failures (the caller would hear a ring tone and then an immediate disconnect) and other problems.

The problem turned out to be laundry-related, in a way. The line came into the house in the kitchen, and was wired to one of the square four-terminal line blocks before running up the wall to the phone. This was located right next to the clothes washer.

It turned out that over the years, dirt and spiderwebs (and maybe some soap dust) had gotten into the connection block, and build up on the surfaces. When humidity was high (e.g. when we were doing laundry with hot water) and the surfaces were cold (e.g. winter) moist air would cause condensation inside the connection block, dampening the surface contamination and creating a current leakage path.

It was bad enough that when the phone would try to ring for an incoming call, enough current would flow to momentarily trigger the central office's "off hook" detector, and the call would be "answered"... and then drop out immediately.

The cure was straightforward: pop off the connection-block cover, dust it out, scrub everything with a soft brush and some denatured alcohol to remove the contaminants, dry thoroughly, close back up. Problem gone.

I once had a similar problem, in which house moisture condensing inside a Macintosh keyboard in a cold room would bridge the ADB "power button" signal lines enough to cause the Mac to power itself on. Cleaning and drying the PC board in that area, and then dabbing on a thin layer of fingernail polish as a "conformal coating" fixed the problem.

So, it might be worth checking your inside wiring and phones for any places where cross-wire current leakage might occur. Clean, dry, and if possible insulate against further contamination and moisture.

I totally agree with Dave's assessment. You really have no way of isolating your phones. Assume that the phones have a single demark point home-run point in your apartment, maybe you do.

Look at all of the jacks and clean them up. Look for signs of moisture.

if it happens again, check the laundry room. See how bad the "dew point" is.

Here

is a Dew point chart. You have temperature, relative humidity and surface temperature.

Once you calculate the dewpoint, the surface temperature should be higher than this. The surface being the punch down block surface.

While your in that box, arrange your wires so they have "drip loops" on them. You don't want water(moisture) traveling along wires and getting the terminal area wet. Cleaning the area between your terminals should be sufficient for a while anyway if that's the problem.