Trouble with adding additional line to telephone

[benn686]

Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

At the outside junction box I see two cables coming from the telephone pole, with the wires from the cables going to a spaghetti of wires and screws at the top of the inside of the junction box.

Just below this mess there is a left and right side with each side having: a jack (with a telephone cable plugged in) and just below that, four screws: Red, Green, Yellow and Black.

(Im hoping I dont have to wire the spaghetti terminals to the four terminals below it myself)

The left side has NO wires going to ANY of the R,G,Y,B terminals. and if I disconnect the cable that goes to the left jack, and plug in a phone, I hear NO dial tone. Strangely enough, I have reason to believe that the left side is my WORKING line 1. Even though the jack doesnt work, and theres no wires, I have no problems with my dsl or my phone inside the house. Im assuming the connection is being made somewhere in the bundled rats nest above the terminals.

The right side, which I believe is the additional line that telephone company installed also has NO dial tone when I connect a phone directly into the junction box right termial side. It also has no wires going to any of the terminals below it.

I have telephone cable that is going to the new room where line 2 will be, since the jack at the junction box itself isnt working (need a dsl filter?), but Im not sure where (left or right side) it should go.

I know line 2 should be on the yellow and black wires from the phone company cable, but since theres two cables with two sides its all the more confusing. Im told that this house used to have 2 or more phone lines installed...

Im pretty sure I know how the R/G (line1), Y/B (line2) works once the cable goes in the house and how to wire it to the modular jack depending on which line you want, but its the outside of the house that Im having trouble with.

Any suggestions what to look for?

[sosessyithurts]

have you tried to mimmick their wiring?

you've got a working sample

wire up the vacant modular jack

however! i know for a fact you have no use for the second door on the box that says "TELEPHONE COMPANY ACCESS ONLY" or something like that

if you have a subscription, I hate to sound like an idiot but why not call them

I know you say they say it's fine, but you know it's not!

tell them don't argue with you, you are the customer

[Brian Attwood]

Did you try rewiring any of the existing jacks in the house to work with the second line?

[Pat]

A phone works with two wires. The wire coming to the box from the street will have several pairs of wires. Only one pair is needed to work the phone. The rest are not used. Simply test each pair with a phone until you find the pair that works.

[Jack]

If you have two separate lines coming into the outside junction box then your previous line is one and your newline is the other. Now Connect your new phone wires ,Red and Green, to the Red and green wires of the new incoming line. Just that simple. If you only had one line coming in from street and had two different phone numbers (different lines) then your new line would be YB as that line would have at least four wires in it also, any others would be spare gear.. But that is not your case you have to differentincoming lines. Jack

[HeyBub]

Which, if you're lucky, will be your neighbor's live line meaning you won't get charged for long distance.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, What kind of service is that? They have to make sure line is working before tech. takes off.

[mm]

What is your reason?

Are you sure the phone you are testing it with is a good phone. That was my problem a couple months ago -- I thought I would remember which spare phone was bad, but I forgot!

Then I doubt it is the one.

Do you have a line-splitting Y-connector? Or some name like that. It looks like a Y-module-phone connector, but it has a 1 on one jack and a 2 on the other. It takes the black and yellow, the outside wires, and puts them in positisons 2 and 3 of the number 2 jack. You can use it as a testing device, outside and inside the house. Start inside. Plug it in to a good jack and then plug a phone into jack 1, then jack

1. Do they both work.

Then why are you messing around outside?

[Nick Danger]

For any phone line that the phone company provides you, there should be an interface box that has their wiring coming into one end of it and an RJ-11 jack at the other end. Everything leading up to that jack is their responsibility. If you don't get a dial tone and all the phone services you're paying for at that jack, you can call them and demand that they come out and fix it. It's best to have a basic wired phone (two is better) for testing purposes. You can use the phone that you keep around for power outages. Just to make sure your phone works, you can take it to a neighbor's house and try it out before calling the phone company. If you've signed up for two phone lines, then they have to give you two interface boxes, each of which you can plug a phone into and get phone service. Your first task is to find where those boxes are, and if they don't give you a dial tone, let the phone company fix it.

Once you know where your interface boxes are and you know that they are working, then all you need to know is that the signal is carried by the red and green wires. You can take a cable that has an RJ-11 plug at one end, and whatever is convenient at the other end, and plug it into one of the interface boxes, and make the necessary connections to get from the red and green wires to the final destination. If you plug in a plain old touch-tone phone and it gets a dial tone, but you don't get any tones when you press the keys, then the wires (red and green) are reversed. You can either switch them yourself or call the phone company and have them switch the wires at their end. Newer more sophisticated phones work with reversed wires, so that's not an issue there.

[Jim Redelfs]

It is entirely possible that the second line was activated WITHOUT a technician visit, particularly if the home has had two lines previously.

From your description, there is a SNID (Standard Network Interface Device) on the outside of your home. There should be a jack-and-plug "bridge" for EACH LINE in the SAME box.

If there ARE two jacks, each with a terminal strip with RGYB screws, but one has NO wire attached, I would assume THAT is the new line.

The first generation of SNIs provided a four-conductor plug-n-jack feeding the wire RGYB terminal strip. This was a poor design in that it allowed lazy technicians to add a second line to that SINGLE bridge. The problem there is that, without a two-line telephone or "splitter" for testing, one couldn't access dialtone on that SINGLE jack for the SECOND line.

If there are TWO jacks inside the SNI, the first/original line was originally activated on the RIGHT side. That may have been reversed over the years if there have previously been two lines at that premise.

If there is only ONE jack inside the SNI, you may find the new line on the Yellow/Black binding posts if present.

Regardless, if you are unable to access EACH LINE on its own jack inside the SNI, you should call TPC (the phone company) and have them do a proper installation. They should NOT charge for such a "repair" call. Good luck!

[benn686]

Thanks.. before calling the phone company I called a friend to give it a look just as a sanity check. What we discovered was that there are TWO cables coming from the telephone pole to TWO separate junction boxes. The 2 junction boxes are connected together by a ground wire.

The first cable is going to an old looking junction box. There is only

1 pair of wires coming out of this cable and they are indeed my phone line #1. In theory, there should be 2 pairs (for 2 lines), however since the the home was built in 1955 we suspect that it was intentially designed with only one line in mind. We were thinking of splicing the insulating shielding back a bit to see if perhaps the other pair of wires are present, but we decided against it.

Cable number two is going to the newer looking junction box. From within this box, neither jack produces a dial tone, and no R/G or Y/B connection to a phone yields a dial tone.

The telephone company is pretty adamant that the phone line is up and working correctly, and if they send a technician they will charge $155 to tell me the problem is inside the house. I figure I should do it, and just have them prove to me that they can get a dial tone on the second line from outside of the house.

Jim Redelfs wrote:

[Jim Redelfs]

If you have plugged a WORKING telephone into ALL available jacks in the SNI(s), and do NOT get two, different dialtones, the trouble is THEIRS.

Call 'em. Accept the POSSIBLE charges and have them come out when you are HOME. If you (and your consultant/friend) are complete idiots and failed to find a working phone and properly plug it into an otherwise good, working outlet INSIDE the SNI, the $155 is a small price to pay to have your appalling condition (stupidity) revealed and proven.

Since I suspect you are NOT stupid, it's an easy bet. If they STILL charge you, complain to your state's public service commission. Many, if not most, states DO NOT allow the billing of a Trouble Isolation Charge, even if the service is working OK AT THE SNI, unless you invite the technician inside for further repairs.

Gawd, I can't STAND these arrogant and obstinate telcos that give my industry a bad name. One would think that would have changed when they broke up the Bell System monopoly in 1984. In MANY cases, it improved customer service but I am continually amazed at the old "Bell System think" that persists to this day. (Lily Tomlin's Ernestine The Operator: We don't need you, we're the PHONE COMPANY!!)

We *DO* need you. Now more than ever. Make 'em EARN their money. Call 'em out if there isn't dialtone on any SNI jacks.

(Lazy bastards: When they added the second line for the very first time, the existing service should have been upgraded to the new SNI. I hate that that is too often NOT done.) Good luck!