phone has no dial tone DSL WORKS OK??

ray b

my home phone has no dial tone but the DSL works fine
no incomeing calls eathor
I went out to the outside box and checked the connections
no dial tone there eathor, but as you can see by this post
I am on line!!
called [on the cell] the local bell system office and played message tag intill
I got a live person BUT they said two weeks before they will send out a line man
I think "IT'' must be a screwup on their end

IDEAS??
any else ever have this kind of problem?

Evo

Have you tried at least two different telephone sets and two different phone cords? If you take a dead phone and plug it in outside, the outside line is going to appear "dead". I would guess it's the phone or phone cord.

Anttech

Good point evo,

The Dial tone you hear is given to you by the teleco switch.. where-ever that may be... So if you can rule out a handset problem, it sounds like a config problem there end.

ray b

have three 3 phones in the house
they all went dead at the same time
took phone to the outside box and tryed direct test plug
there by bypassing all inside wires, spliters, ect
also tried to plug into dsl line plug
still no dial tone
but DSL working fine
no bad weather/lighting ect

Evo

Hmmmm, what happens when you dial your phone number from another phone (like your cell), do you get a busy signal or do you hear a ring? I'm guessing you'll get a busy.

If the central office is receiving a signal that your phone is in use, you would hear no dial tone and your DSL would still work. It could be a short in the wiring, either inside your home or outside, or a signal is hung in the central office. This would also happen if someone called you and never hung up. The central office will eventually tear down the connection. If they would just have a tech get on top of your line, they could tell.

Unplug all of your phones, then one at a time plug one in and test for a dial tone. A faulty phone set plugged in could be the culprit also.

ray b

cell phone call rings in the cell phone
not the home phone and trying to answer results in no connection or change in the cell phone [cell keeps ringing]

Evo

Well, I'm stumped then. I worked many years at the local phone company before moving on and I'll have to do some more thinking.

Do you have call waiting?

ray b

Do you have call waiting?

no call waiting

Moonbear

I'd suggest unplugging EVERYTHING, including the computer connected on DSL, and then just plugging in one phone to see if you get dial tone. This will tell you if it's your equipment causing a problem or if it's really a line problem (if it's an equipment problem, it'll save you the cost of a service call if you can plug things back in one at a time and identify the culprit yourself).

ray b

by pulling the test jack connection everything in the house is out of the curcut, at that point only the wire from the pole and the outside box are connected every thing else is out

Evo

True, you are testing the line from the junction box, but there is a chance (albeit small) that the phone you used to test with is defective. That is why I suggested testing with more than one phone/cord outside or unplugging everything inside and testing them one at a time. You said all three phones went out, it could be one phone causing it and if you used that one phone to test outside, you'd get no dial tone. But usually only I would run into that scenario.

Anttech

Let me get this straight: You can dial your cell phone from your home phone, and hear it ringing in the handset of cell phone? Or you can dial your home phone from cell phone and hear it ringing on handset of home phone, but are unable to answer?
If this is so it means you have signalling working, but no voice paths. which can only mean you have a misconfig somewhere

ray b

when calling from the cell phone I get a ring in the cell not a busy signial or out of service message
but no ring on the home phone end

Anttech

hmmm... I think that is normal, if you have an analogue line (in europe at least) and u unplug a fax or a phone from it you will still hear a ring on the handset you are dialing the number with...

I'll test this tomorrow, but afai rememeber thats how it works...

Danger

Relax, Ray; it's just the CIA tapping your line. As usual, they screwed it up somehow.

Evo

Yes, you hear the ring regardless of if anything is actually plugged in.

What a lot of people don't know is that with many cell phone companies, the first few rings you hear are not actually the phone ringing that you are calling, it is a recording of a phone ringing. It sometimes takes a second or two to make a connection. When there is just silence, people think the phone is not working, so they hang up and redial. To prevent this, the cell phone company starts a recording of a phone ringing so you have something to listen to while the actual connection is being made.

turbo

That's it. When they tapped my line last week, somehow I could hear the agents on the other end talk to one another. Something about taking Cheney to Romania and "waterboarding" him to find out who outed Valerie Plame. They kept giggling and saying "Hey! it's not torture!"