Weird phone ring problem?

[DannyB20]

Hello, This just started today. When an incomming call comes in the phone only rings about 1/2 of the normal ring one time and stops. If I answere right away I can talk to the person calling. If I wait a couple of seconds I just get the dial tone. The incomming caller states about the same thing on their end. They hear a 1/2 ring then a click. Line goes dead. I tried disconnecting all of the phones 1 by 1, plus the DSL router and the answering machine to see if there was a bad phone, DSL router, or answereing machine. Still the same problem. I can call out fine and my DSL works with the puter. Have never encountered this problem or even heard of someone else having it.

Any thought or ideas will be appreciated before I call the phone company. Also is there a way to test the phone lines my self. I do have a fluke multimeter.

Maybe only a coincidence but when I got home tonight there were AT&T truck in front of my house, don't know what they were doing thouugh. I have AT&T phone and broadband service.

Thanks, Dan.

[Meat Plow]

Cha Ching!

[Frank Cusack]

[Terry]

The first step is to unplug every phone in the house. Take a phone out to the service box. Plug it in there and try.

[Noozer]

Got a house alarm?

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Typical sign of poor connection on the wire some where.

[Jim Redelfs]

This is a CLASSIC example of a moderate "wet" short across the pair. It is usually caused by a faulty piece of equipment but can caused by a corroded jack or modular plug.

Disconnect, from the outlet on the wall, *EVERYTHING* on the line. Examine each plug and jack to ensure the connectors are shiny brass - not dull and dirty.

With everything disconnected, place a call to your number/line. If the trouble is gone (line rings normally), you have disconnected the cause. Reconnect one phone/thing-at-a-time and call your line after each reconnection. This should reveal the offending device.

If the symptom persists, the cause is elsewhere.

If you have a Standard Telephone Network Interface Device (SNID) on your house, plug in a telephone - that you have TESTED and know to be in good, working order - and try the above call-in procedure.

If the trouble is gone, the trouble is in your wiring/jacks. If the trouble persists, the cause is in the telco facilities. Call 'em. Good luck!

[Paully]

actually if you unplug the network interface it will unhook everything in the house and save u from having to go around and unplug everything in the house. plug a working phone into the network interface and call in. if the problem persists then it is a phone co problem. if not then try unhooking everything in the house and plugging back in 1 at a time to find the problem unit.

[Charlie Bress]

This is exactly the problem I had last year. The phone guy came out and identified the circuit that was causing the problem and disconnected it at the NID. The easiest fix was to use a cordless phone set with a handset in the room that was affected. I didn't want to move furniture around to access the outlets

Charlie

[Cheri]

dead.

router,

Hi, I had the same problem a couple of months ago. It turned out to be a phone company problem. The AT&T truck was across the street then too, and I'm not big on coincidence, so I walked over and asked them if it was them causing the problem, of course they didn't know, saying they don't actually work for AT&T, just doing some line work for AT&T. You should be able to call (in CA 611) and the phone company can run a test to tell you if it's in your wiring, or the problem is with them. They did come the following day and fix it, so no long wait or anything. Good luck.

Cheri

[terry]

Exactly. Sound like leakage across the phone line, when ringing comes in it momentarily trips due to the leakage and the phone equipment thinks someone has answered quickly; hence the partial ring! In this day and age of competition for your phone service it is probably important for you to findout out if the fault is inside you house (faulty phone, damp wiring, corrosion, other equipment such as an alarm system etc.). If 'outside' it phone co. If inside it may cost t you to have phone co find and fix it for you. A not uncommon problem in some areas, depending on climate, temperature etc. is corrosion of those little four or six wire jacks, especially if they are mounted in outside walls where moisture can condense onto them. They are very hard to clean; the phone line is usually on the two liitle gold coloured wire pins of the jack closest together in the centre about 1 millimetre apart. Best fix is to identify the faulty jack and either cut it or replace it.

[jerryl]

I had this problem when I moved into this new house. I would get the half ring but it usually was in the middle of the night scaring the hell out of us. We reported it to the phone company and they checked everything at my house, the outside wiring, etc., and couldn't find anything. After complaining and complaining they assigned another tech to the problem. After several weeks he determined what it was. Bellsouth (now ATT) used to do a computer check of their phone lines during slow times at night. Seems their software was hanging up on my phone and calling it every night. They removed my phone number from the sampling and it never happened again.

[Oren]

Buggy software! Ain't it great.

-- Oren

"The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!"

[Chief Scratchum]

"jerryl" wrote in news:P941i.3567$ [e-mail]:

Actually, what that test amounts to is that it disconnects your line momentarily, then runs resistance and capacitance checks on the line. Also a tip to ground and ring to ground check. Then it reconnects. Typical tip-ring voltage in an on hook situation is -48 VDC. When this voltage recharges the capacitors in ringers it can cause the ringer to "ding". If the test find something flaky it will print it out so us guys (yes, I'm one of them) can read it when we come to work and give it attention if necessary.

While I'm here (the transformer troll got me started), one of the most common summertime trouble tickets are from people whose modems (dialup OR DSL) quit working... most often after lightning. Sometimes there's a hum on the line, sometimes not. Replacing the modem doesn't help. Unplugging phones doesn't help, etc. But people don't think to unplug the phone line from their surge protectors. Surge protectors are sacrificial and they either go open or short to ground. Ususally the AC part of them is no affected so no one even thinks about it being the problem. So when you're troubleshooting, if you're using a surge protector, bypass it early on to see if that's it before you run all over the house unplugging stuff.

And now, back to my regularly scheduled newsgroups... :-)

[DannyB20]

Don't have an alarm system. No Standard Telephone Network Interface Device (SNID), I know I should have had one of these installed but don't.

Tonight I disconnected everything plugged into a wall phone jack. Cut a telephone cord so I could connect via alligator clips right to where the phone line enters the house. Hooked up a "known" working phone to it. Got a dial tone and called a friend. He called back and nada. Still the 1/2 ring.

Called AT&T and explained the suituation and they are sending someone out on Monday to check it out. Am sure they will also instsall the nid, snid thing also.

Thanks everyone. Dan.

[Jim Redelfs]

The telco determines if/when one is installed. In our area, if a customer specifically requests that one be installed, a charge is levied.

(Retrofit on OUR schedule = "free". Your schedule/request = $$)

Unless you disconnected all the station wire from the protector, you didn't eliminate all of the POTENTIAL trouble in the home. Still, I'm impressed with the alligator clip test cord.

Please post again with what they found and did.

Don't be TOO sure. We're supposed to retrofit EVERY site we visit (that doesn't have one) with a SNID. That's the OFFICIAL line. The reality is that the company is pushing productivity so hard that SNID retrofits are a hit-or-miss proposition. Good luck!

[Mike Ruskai]

On or about 10 May 2007 21:21:06 -0700 did DannyB20 dribble thusly:

Around here (NJ), the phone company installs a grey box on the outside of the house, and takes responsibility for all issues up to that box.

Any wiring issues between that box and your phone they'll fix, but only for a price.

If it's that way by you, then what you should do is go out to that box with a phone, disconnect all interior wires from it (note the colors, in case they're not the standard red/green, so you can reconnect them properly), then plug that phone in. If it doesn't have a RJ11 jack, you'd have to get a jack and wire that to the box to do this test.

Then have a friend call and see if the problem still occurs. If it does, then it's not the wiring in your house, and you can safely demand that the phone company fix their problem.

[JKevorkian]

That happened earlier in the week with our Verizon account. I was sorta confused because our DSL service still functioned, since I was able to look up Verizon's service number on the web. Calling Verizon and explaining the trouble, the girl at Verizon ran a system check and found that the trouble was on their end. It seems a switch was inadvertently turned off at their central office in town.

[DannyB20]

The tech from AT&T came to the house today. Seems the wire from the house to the pole had a short in it. He ran a new line and installed the NID box. He also came inside and cleaned up our spaghetti like wiring nest (previous owner). No charge. Everything is working OK now. Dan.

[ililg2003]

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