Any ideas? I won't have my phone service restored until Aug. 20 due to the strike. Have checked box connections and checked the ground. All I hear on my phones is a slight hiss. Verizon says the line is OK. Have tried phones directly from the box and also no dial tone. If you have no clue, is there a forum that is particularly good at this type of issue? Thank you! Frank
Bad SLIC at the CO or RT, or improper config on the switch.
You probably have a phone in your house that is off-hook, or it has suffered an internal failure and is off-hook.
A phone that has suffered an internal failure and goes off-hook is not that uncommon. It happened to my parents just a few months ago.
They e-mailed me and said they're phone wasn't working. I told them to disconnect all the phones in the house.
Sure enough, one particular phone had failed and went off-hook.
I don't know what Verizon is like, but when a telco problem is traced to customer-owned equipment or wiring, the customer gets a bill for the service call.
Check your phones by physically disconnecting all of them, then plug in the simplest, most non-electronic phone you have into a service jack and see what you get.
If you can't get a dial tone at the DMARC (the box outside that connects the 'phone company's lines to your house wiring), it's definitely a TELCO problem.
As to what caused it, it could be anything from moisture in a terminal box to union sabotage.
With Vonage - and others - you can get a box that plugs into your network router. The other side of the box is a telephone jack. That jack acts EXACTLY like a TELCO trunk line (except it's cheaper, you get all the add-on stuff for free, and all the long distance you can eat).
Beat feet down to Best Buy, Walmart, and other places and pick up the Vonage starter kit (about $20). Plug it in and you're good to go.
If you currently have call forwarding from your Telco, contact them and they can forward all your calls to your new Vonage number.
He already tried that, by checking from the demarc box.
The phones could be on fire but he verified nothing internal is an issue by checking at the demarc: "Have tried phones directly from the box"
Only works worth a damn if you have a real good internet connection. VOIP and data do not play nice together.
Might be worth trying, to see if it is 'good enough' for your needs, but it isn't a real phone line. I use VOIP via a dial-around for overseas calls, and at work, we have multiple VOIP connections to sandbox. Quality of call often sucks.
Just sayin'
Only works worth a damn if you have a real good internet connection. VOIP and data do not play nice together.
Might be worth trying, to see if it is 'good enough' for your needs, but it isn't a real phone line.
Just sayin'
-- aem sends...
George quoted improperly:
aemeijers unnecessarily full-quoted:
Plugging a phone into the demark box doesn't mean he disconnected the rest of his home's phone wiring from the box.
If he didn't disconnect his home's internal phone wiring from the demark box, then a faulty phone somewhere in the house will still cause an off-hook condition, and a working phone plugged into the demark jack will still not work.
'demarc box', unless you are using the term to include ancient post-style connection boxes, involves a modular jack inside the customer-accessible side of the box. If you plug in a phone at the demarc, you have to unplug the house side from the modular jack, which completely disconnects the house wiring. Unless OP has his own lineman phone, aka 'butt set', or had the parts laying around to connect another jack to an old-style connector box, yes, he did disconnect the house wiring. Situations like this are what modern demarc boxes were invented for. MOST local telcos, when they install DSL or do other service changes, automatically change the outside box to a connector-style demarc, if the house is old and has an old-style box. The old boxes are getting extremely rare.
Agreed, sort of. IF you do have a good internet connection, voice and data DO play well together. We've had both our VoIP lines in use while one of the computers on the network was engaged in a massive download with no degradation of voice quality. 'Course we have a really peppy internet connection.
Correct. VoIP is NOT a "real" 'phone line. In many respects it's better.
First, is the price: $19.95 (or thereabouts) per month. Period. No sales tax, Al Gore tax, Spanish-American War tax, excise tax, Universal Access Fee, blah-blah-blah.
Second - and this is tied to the first - no charge for the add-on features: call waiting, caller-id, call-forwarding, three-way calling, touch-tone capability, princess-phone rental, etc.
Third, you get all the long-distance you want. At three cents/minute our small business ran up about $200/month in LD charges. All that went away with our VoIP connection.
Fourth, you get to pick the area code you want. If you live in Floating Stick, Oklahoma and all your relatives live on Cape Code, you can get a 508 area code so when they call you, to them it is a local call.
There are some downsides. (Let me think...)
Ah, yes. If you lose power or your network connection, you are deaf and dumb. Power and internet interruptions are more common than land-line failure. In this event, we fall back on a cell-phone.
You're right. The quality of a call might be sub-par (we've never had that happen). YMMV.
I've seen house wiring run into the modular jack (for connection reliability reasons).
He might also have a DSL filter somewhere in this mix, which might be the cause of the problem.
He must be a clever guy then and rigged up some Y cables or something similar to cross connect the telco and premise sides to defeat the purpose of the demarc.
And there is no particular goodness about vonage other than you can find it at the big box mart. One can easily install VoIP for less.
(a simple concept that some people around here want to keep fighting over)
The demark is the physical point at which the telco is responsible for providing service or a connection point to the customer.
There is no standard specification as to how the customer's internal premisis wiring is connected to the demarcation (in terms of detachable plug vs hard-wired).
(rest of my post that George quoted for no reason deleted because I know how to edit my usenet posts correctly)
Thank you all for your comments. It is clear that the interface box doesn't require disconnect of the phones to tell if it's a TELCO issue but I did disconnect the phones and the DSL modem and there is nothing. I also checked the ground and wiggled a few wires. As for the Vonage idea, fortunately I do have Skype and will have to live with imperfect calls until the 20th I am afraid. My cell phone minutes are pretty much used up. Heaven help anyone that wants to get their phone outages even reported during this strike. For me, there was no answer at
1-800-verizon about half the time and even the automated system did not function properly. I was essentially told my lack of a dial tone was because I hadn't paid my bill so was directed to the billing department!!
frank1492 top-poasted:
That tells us exactly nothing about how your premesis wiring is connected to the demark jack.
You don't post here that often, but I hope you do come back and tell us what the problem was.
You didn't say whether you checked for voltage on the negative side??? BUT
If you've disconnected the house and a known-good phone is hooked to the company line and it doesn't work, What are you gonna do to fix it?
All solution sets lead to the phone company.
I wouldn't discount sabotage by the strikers. What better way to end a get Verizon to yield than to have angry customers without service.
An answer to your problem (or at least a way to get your problem fixed) will be found on the website DSLReports.com.
All manner of teleco and ISP related issues are discussed on that board, with forums devoted to every major telco, cable and satellite provider, and all manner of services (internet, phone, cable tv, IPTV, etc).
Each of the major players has a "direct support" forum, where you can post your problem and only a bona-fide company rep get to read and act on them, and will communicate with you as the problem is worked on.
In your case, you want to go here:
I can tell you that it's legit. You can see by the subject lines the various issues that people are dealing with at the moment.
The tech that deals with your issue will be able to test the line-card in the CO (central switching office) that your house is wired to. He'll be able to run a remote diagnostic on the line card and it will tell him where the problem is.
Take a look back. There is my original post with all the details. In sum, no dial tone, DSL running normally. With all inside phones and modem disconnected, no dial tone at the box. What more would you like? I already have had a dozen or so ideas.
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