Phone line problem dialing 911?

Here's a classic mystery. Yesterday morning, I noticed I had no dial tone on my phone line. I checked all the phones, none were off hook, so I decided to just wait awhile and see if it came back on, thinking maybe the phone company was already working on it.

A couple hours later, I heard a couple of short very brief rings. I checked and the dial tone was back. So, I figured problem solved. Well, I head into the bathroom and about 5 mins later I have more cops all over my house than Tony Soprano. They're ringing the bell, banging on doors, by the time I get outside, they're rolling opent the garage door.

Turns out, there was a 911 call showing up from my line. So, I figured it might have been somehow generated while the phone line was being restored. So, I check again, dial tone OK, phones all work.

Well, I go out for a couple hours, when I come home, I get another visit from the cops. Seems they just got another 911 call, plus one more while I was out. Later that evening, I got another call back from the 911 center. At times I have a dial tone, at others just some static. When the 911 call center gets the calls, all they hear is static.

So, I have Verizon coming out today to look into this. They did some sort of line diagnostic and believe it's a problem on their lines, not inside my house. I've also now disconnected everything from the phone jacks, except one std phone.

Anyone ever hear of this happening? I have a hard time figuring out how an intermittent phone line can be managing to continue to dial 911. I guess if it generates enough random pulses somehow it could do it, but it seems hard to figure how it could do it 4 or 5 times in 8 hours. For one thing, if you just start pumping random numbers into a line, pretty quickly you get a "call cannot be completed msg" or similar, and then you'd have to start another whole dial sequence, which takes time and which would limit how many random calls an intermittent short could make. Of course, I guess someone could be doing this intentionally, but it seems most unlikely.

Reply to
trader4
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On 1/6/2005 8:56 AM US(ET), snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net took fingers to keys, and typed the following:

Not so unlikely. Even the telco can be hacked. A number of years ago, when I was a working stiff, we were getting some hacked calls at the job. The phone would ring, and we would say "Hello", only to be met with a "Huh, you called me!" response. There were two or three at a time with different people on the other end. The telco was advised and managed to track down the hacker, or to fix the hole, but we never got any more of the calls.

Reply to
willshak

You don't have a security system do you? Maybe one left over from a prior resident?

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Please promise to let us know how this is finally resolved. It's really interesting!

Reply to
Doug Kanter

When I was in high school, one of my friends had two phone lines into his house -- a private line and his father's business line.

He and I were electronical geeks, which has persisted to this day --- 3 years into retirement...

... anyway, we would lookup names in the phone book and call "Mr Bass" on one line and "Mr Trout" on the other line and then tie the lines together, listening in. It was great fun.

I suspect that the multiple party situation you mentioned above was something like that. That isn't "hacking", it's simply a hardware bridge. Anyone with multiple lines can do this, even tho , otherwise, they are as dumb as a box of rocks, as I was.... (grin)

The 911 thing has two possibilities as I see it:

1)Somebody has spliced into the line and run his own phone and is doing mischief. This can be done either at your house, or at the first junction box your house line goes to......

OR 2) The phone company has messed up.

A good experiment would be to arrange with the 911 operator to call "911" from your phone, and see what number their computer shows. It might give a clue, such as , the number of the phone whose line may have been crossed with yours... .... just an idea....good luck.

Andy

Reply to
Andy

Same thing happened to me. This was before 3 way dialing. Phone company got the guy.

Reply to
Art

(snip)

Do you have a cordless phone?

Reply to
m4rcone

remember a case when homeowner had one of the first cordless phones offered by radio shack, a pulse dialing phone (no tone)

adjoining neighbor had cb radio that bleed over onto the phone, when cradled and not in use, dialing it

cop showed up at phone owner's house due to 911 call

homeowner was baffled and later concluded cb radio bleedover must have dialed 911

also, is there a nearby junction box you can monitor for tampering?

also heard 911 has problems like this occasionally, cause unknown

Reply to
effi

This problem has occurred with cordless phones that had a dying battery.

See

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Charlie

Reply to
Charlie Bress

OK, here's the conclusion, or at least I hope so. Verizon spent a couple hours tracing it down. According to the tech, the circuit had come ungrounded between the street box and the central office. He said when that happens, the line can pick up stray noise from other pairs, or other stray electrical signals. And for some reason, those signals can be interpreted by the switch to be the dialing sequence for

911. The tech wasn't clear if they get decoded via touch tone or the old pulse mode. But apparently that's how it happens.

So far, phones work and no more 911 calls. If I hadn't had this happen to me, I would have found it hard to believe it could happen, at least not to the extent of 4 calls in about 8 hours or so.

Reply to
trader4

I had a problem, somewhat similar, but not dialing 911. Two lines in house. Two phones and one computer on the problem line. Early in the problem, my computer starts dropping internet connection. Later, I pick up the phone and hear the ringing tone, then get a wierd recording. Can't recall what it was. The problem was low battery on the cordless phone. Verizon knew right away from the problem description what it was. Advised us to disconnect the cordless, get new battery, charge it

24 hours before connecting it back to the phone line. Low battery causes the cordless to "take over the line" - a concept I don't begin to understand. Hubby charged the battery but wouldn't buy a new one, but so far, so good.
Reply to
Norminn

interesting article, will pass it on to nearby 911 service, they had no idea...

Reply to
effi

OK, here's the conclusion, or at least I hope so. Verizon spent a couple hours tracing it down. According to the tech, the circuit had come ungrounded between the street box and the central office. He said when that happens, the line can pick up stray noise from other pairs, or other stray electrical signals. And for some reason, those signals can be interpreted by the switch to be the dialing sequence for

911. The tech wasn't clear if they get decoded via touch tone or the old pulse mode. But apparently that's how it happens.

So far, phones work and no more 911 calls. If I hadn't had this happen to me, I would have found it hard to believe it could happen, at least not to the extent of 4 calls in about 8 hours or so.

Reply to
trader4

OK, here's the conclusion, or at least I hope so. Verizon spent a couple hours tracing it down. According to the tech, the circuit had come ungrounded between the street box and the central office. He said when that happens, the line can pick up stray noise from other pairs, or other stray electrical signals. And for some reason, those signals can be interpreted by the switch to be the dialing sequence for

911. The tech wasn't clear if they get decoded via touch tone or the old pulse mode. But apparently that's how it happens.

So far, phones work and no more 911 calls. If I hadn't had this happen to me, I would have found it hard to believe it could happen, at least not to the extent of 4 calls in about 8 hours or so.

Reply to
trader4

Subject: Re: Phone line problem dialing 911? Newsgroup: alt.home.repair => Joseph Meehan You don't have a security system do you? Maybe one left over from a

It's against the law for a security system dialer to be programmed to call 911. But you may be on to something... If line seizure is wired correctly, that would explain the line being "dead" at times.

Reply to
G. Morgan

While working at a pervious job, I routinely had to use my laptop to dial out of the office into remote locations. I had to dial 9 to get an outside line, then 1 for long distance, I had the 9 and 1 programmed in so all I had to do was enter the main number

While I was away at a friends I had to dial up the remote location, I wastrying to dial with no luck.

The cops show up minutes later about getting 911 calls. I quickly figured out that it was my laptop, I was entering the number with the 1 prefix for long distance and forgetting I had the 9 and 1 digits programmed into my laptop and was adding them to the beginning of the number I was entering.

Reply to
MC

posted for all of us....

I'm in the local fire co and occasionally hear the PD dispatched and the reason given was phone line problems, so it does happen and yes it's Verizon.

Reply to
Tekkie

(quoting a story about phone line problems and mysterious 911 calls supposedly from a house where there was phone line trouble)

I would also check if a previous owner of the house left in a 911 dialer for a burglar alarm and now it's acting up.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

Reply to
Don Klipstein

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