Phone has no dial tone DSL WORKS OK?

[ray b]

phone has no dial tone DSL WORKS OK??

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]

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?

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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

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]

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]

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 that's how it works...

 

[Danger]

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

 

[Evo]

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 that's how it works...

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]

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

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!"

 

[Danger]

 

[Anttech]

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.

I use that trick every day when configuring a PBX especially Vectors in a call center.. :-) give them a couple of rings, then an annoucment then a couple more rings then hold music then annoucment then into the loop of hell for 30 mins until the "next available rep is available" muuhaaaa... pure torture..

 

[Moonbear]

I use that trick every day when configuring a PBX especially Vectors in a call center.. :-) give them a couple of rings, then an annoucment then a couple more rings then hold music then annoucment then into the loop of hell for 30 mins until the "next available rep is available" muuhaaaa... pure torture..

You're one of THOSE people? If I knew that before, I'd have never voted for you as guru. I get those stupid 30 minutes of menus, and I've always been sure it's just to give me something to do while I'm sitting on hold for someone who can actually answer my question (I'd prefer just getting hold music for 30 min so I can just turn on the speaker phone and do something else instead of pushing menu buttons while waiting).

That's funny that you get a recording of the rings. I don't think my company does that...I just get silence for a bit until a connection is made. It never bothered me. Though, I'm not sure what goes on once a connection is made. When I've called myself to check if a phone is working, etc., I know the rings are not synchronized very well. I think my mom's phone company must give her recorded rings though. She complains my voice mail takes forever to pick up...5 or 6 rings. I have it set to pick up on 4 rings, and I know if I'm sitting here watching the caller ID saying it's Mom, it only rings 4 times before it transfers to voice mail (how did I ever live so long without caller ID? I even gave Mom her own ring so I know not to hurry over to the phone. ).

As for Ray's problem, if disconnecting everything doesn't work, then it's in the lines (I've made the mistake before, after a power failure, when reconnecting my modem in the dark, of plugging the phone line into the ethernet port on the computer...the phones don't work when you do that...and of course I then assumed it was that the phones were out due to the storm that had knocked the power out . Fortunately I realized it before the phone company came out and I had to pay them for a service call.) That's why I suggested unplugging everything, because silly things like that can make it seem like the phone line isn't working, when it's just some goofy thing with the equipment on the phone line.

 

[Anttech]

You're one of THOSE people?

muuhhaaaa :-) Be nice to me or ill put lots of menus up there lol

 

[ray b]

FIXED
bad wire in the local area box a block away
DSL only needs one wire
phone needs two wires

 

[Evo]

FIXED
bad wire in the local area box a block away
DSL only needs one wire
phone needs two wires

Thanks Ray, I've not run across that one.

 

[Averagesupernova]

FIXED
DSL only needs one wire
phone needs two wires

That's what they told you?

 

[Evo]

I think what he means is that both wires need to be working for both the DSL and voice to work.

 

[Anttech]

DSL and phones in simplex mode are 2 wire, you can have VoIP setup with 4 wire

 

[turbo]

FIXED
bad wire in the local area box a block away
DSL only needs one wire
phone needs two wires

Nope. If both wires in that twisted pair were not good, your DSL would not work. What is likely is that the connecttion that supplies ring voltage to one of those wires was broken, so your phone never rang. If you called your house line using your cell phone and heard some ring tones on the cell, you would have been able to pick up the wired phone in your house and made the connection.

 

[ray b]

Nope. If both wires in that twisted pair were not good, your DSL would not work. What is likely is that the connecttion that supplies ring voltage to one of those wires was broken, so your phone never rang. If you called your house line using your cell phone and heard some ring tones on the cell, you would have been able to pick up the wired phone in your house and made the connection.

NO TRYED THAT , called fron the cell phone while in the room with the nonworking phone
no ring no connection and the cell phone keep ringing after answering the
phone
lineman said DSL will work on a single line/wire but the phone needs two
but claimed the DSL would be slower on one line
before this mess I thought if the phone went out the DSL would die to that's why I started this thread

 

[Averagesupernova]

The OP says he didn't have dial tone. It's not likely he would have picked up the phone and heard himself on his cell. I think they just gave him an answer to satisfy him. Where I live they run fiber optics to a box that is several miles away from the main switch in order for DSL to work for those that are more than several miles away from the main switch. The fiber is for the DSL. I suspect the POTS line (Plain Old Telephone Service) is still the old twisted pair coming from the main switch. Might be wrong, but it could explain the OP's failure.

I picked up the phone one day and noticed that it wouldn't dial. Older push button phone. They are polarity sensitive. I knew all I had to do was reverse the wires in my network interface but I wanted to tell off the phone company anyway. So I put the notice in and told them to have the line tech call me at work. When I got the call I told him about it and he said he was surprised that there were any phones out there like that yet. He acknowledged messing with my pair and switched it back. My point here is that the phone company is certainly not above making mistakes. And THAT could be a reason why they fed him a line. I truly don't believe that DSL needs only one wire to work. You can't even run a cheap phone cord for more than a few feet and have decent DSL service. It needs to stay a true twisted pair. Having one wire disconnected even with an alternate return path would be a seriously unbalanced transmission line and the loss would attenuate the signal severely by the time the signal actually got to your modem.

 

[turbo]

NO TRYED THAT , called fron the cell phone while in the room with the nonworking phone
no ring no connection and the cell phone keep ringing after answering the
phone
lineman said DSL will work on a single line/wire but the phone needs two
but claimed the DSL would be slower on one line
before this mess I thought if the phone went out the DSL would die to that's why I started this thread

Your DSL connection would not have worked if you did not have continuity and a good clean path on BOTH halves of the twisted copper pair. Also, the DSL connection might not have worked at all, had your tel-co have introduced a bridge tap that effectively introduced more distance between your home and the switch. They lied to you.

 

[Evo]

You guys are aware that you can have two pots lines and two adsl connections over a single pair now?

I'm not sure what the phone tech was trying to explain, I'm still trying to figure it out, I'd never heard that.

 

[Anttech]

You guys are aware that you can have two pots lines and two adsl connections over a single pair now?

Really? in half duplex? I thought you needed RX and TX for full duplex...

 

[Evo]

Really? in half duplex? I thought you needed RX and TX for full duplex...

Tonight I will attach the paper on it, it's on my home computer.

 

[Anttech]

sounds interesting, please do...

 

[Evo]

Here you go.

"The Catena CNX-5 Broadband DSL system is a card-for-card upgrade solution for Lucent SLC-5 DLCs that enables service providers to deliver two lines of Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) and two lines of ADSL services on any copper pair, without reducing the number of available POTS lines."

http://www.ciena.com/news/catena/06.03.02-CCCommunicationsSelectsCatenaNetworksCNX-5BroadbandDSLSystem.pdf

 

[lollonais]

I have a problem similar to this. I have DSL and have checked the line outside at the box and it does work. I have no line inside the house. I have unplugged everything except the phone. I actually bought a new phone just in case, also to check the box outside. I have checked the jack and made sure that green was with the blue and red was with the other blue. Like I said the DSL works. The only thing I did see was a mess of cables at the outside box. I also saw a cat5 plug unplugged.

 

[lollonais]

I solved the problem. It was the telephone wire plug going into the telco jack. It looked bad, so I unscrewed the wires and touched the new telephone plug with them and got no dial tone. I decided to cut a new telephone wire with a plug attached to it. I plugged it in and touched the green and red wires to the new telephone plug and got a dial tone. So it was wire plug that was defective. I installed the new plug and attached it to the wires going into the house. It must have been lightning or a surge because the plug was pretty beat up. It works fine now and save a lot of money on car insurance. Oh wrong commercial. . Just happy that saved $95 dollars.

 

[badabing]

much thanks!

my DSL is working but i got no dial tone, the test jack ouside of the house is working so the network is fine, but inside there is no dial tone so supposed the wiring is bad, but since the dsl is working, i assumed the house wiring should be fine.

I tried to get some asnwers from SBC 24x7 repair line, after being on hold for 20 minutes, it turned out the "repair department" person on the other side of the phone can't tell a phone jack from jack, she's obviously paid just minimum wage there to take repair appointments

so I googled my problem here, and guess what? thanks to you guys, I fixed the problem myself!

I realized from you guys that DSL is more tolerate and even if it's working, the house wiring still maybe the problem. I crosse-switched the outside box to use a different but no empty phone line wiring in my house, and it worked!

so now i knew it's wiring for the original line is back. With that i back traced to problem to the phone jack itself inside the house. Last night there were power outage, lightning and hailstorm, but the phone jack interface is clearly messed up, but rusty blues between the teeth.

I simply replaced it and everything fixed.

so i canceled the repair appointment and saved 95 bucks too!

thank you guys!

 

[plecostomus]

Same Experience As Original Poster

I recently had the same thing happen, and got the same answer from the phone company technician.

A couple of weeks after having DSL installed by a technician, my voice service went out (no dial tone). The DSL installation technician had installed a box next to the main box in my garage, and enabled DSL at one of my existing jacks. That is, a dedicated DSL line inside the house, without filters on the non-DSL devices.

So suddenly one day I picked up a phone and got no dial tone. But DSL worked fine. Tried disconnecting all devices, including DSL, and reconnecting one-by-one. No joy. I scheduled a service appointment and girded for an argument if they wanted to charge for internal wiring problem, since it seemed too coincidental that a failure would happen so soon after changing my wiring.

The next thing that happened was that during the service appointment window I got a call from the service technician that he had repaired a "broken wire" at the local box a few blocks away. That fixed the problem.

Having been convinced that working DSL meant that the problem had to be inside the house, I asked how that could be. He answered that getting a dial tone takes two wires, but DSL needs only one.

I'm sure the answer is meant to avoid a ten-minute tutorial on how the phone system works, but I wish I knew more details.

 

[drkilmer]

I recently had a sililar problem. DSL was working, and I verified I had service to my home, but my phone would get no dial tone. Unplugging the phone at the jack where the DSL was connected would temporarily fix the problem, but after a short while the phone would have no dial tone again. Turns out it was a faulty DSL adapter ... this adapter was a splitter and had a DSL jack and a PHONE jack on it. We did not have a phone connected to the filter, but apparently the filter was opening a telephone connection through te adapter and essentially leaving our phone off the hook. Removal of the filter fixed the problem, since the line in that room is dedicated to the DSL anyway. WooHoo! Just wanted to throw this in, in case it may help someone else.

 

[gregch]

Hello Ray

I take it you have resolved this problem well and truly by now the last email being 12-16-2005
Could you please advise what the resolution was?
I have exactly the same problem but the telco here in Australia says it's not possible. I suspect the local exchange has 'hung' as when they test from the telcos office the line rings, there appears to be no open leg or short and when I do put a short on the line, they cannot see it!
Else a leg is broken (as we experienced a noisy line before the line died completely) and we are receiving DSL somehow by receiving the Earth leg via the mains of the PC - or something!
N.B I have tested two different analogue POTS phones on all three outlets two different cordless and used an IBM tester also which indicates no line voltage or reverse polarity
The Telco still says I have a faulty phone?
Regards Greg

 

[fenglpku]

I had similar problem but still no solution yet. I wonder if anyone in this forum can help me.

Telephone had no dial tone and check all phones + standard wired phone. DSL works ok. Went outside and opened the box and plug in standard phone and had a dial tone.I guess that means the telephone signal from outside is okay.

Tried re-wiring the blue and green wire and got the signal for a few hours then lost dial tone again. Repeat it twice and now the dial tone is totally lost.

It seems that the adaptor in the box works okay and I tested it with a standard phone connecting to red and green plug.

In the meantime, I realized that my DSL went red (restart) a few times
and not sure why. I am really interested in knowing how DSL and phone line physically work.

If I can figure it out with your help , that will be wonderful. Don't want to spend $100 + on the repair since I assume my house is okay and it is a fairly new home.

 

[ray b]

Hello Ray

I take it you have resolved this problem well and truly by now the last email being 12-16-2005
Could you please advise what the resolution was?
I have exactly the same problem but the telco here in Australia says it's not possible. I suspect the local exchange has 'hung' as when they test from the telcos office the line rings, there appears to be no open leg or short and when I do put a short on the line, they cannot see it!
Else a leg is broken (as we experienced a noisy line before the line died completely) and we are receiving DSL somehow by receiving the Earth leg viathe mains of the PC - or something!
N.B I have tested two different analogue POTS phones on all three outlets two different cordless and used an IBM tester also which indicates no line voltage or reverse polarity
The Telco still says I have a faulty phone?
Regards Greg

sorry I don't check this older thread to often
FIX was a broken wire in the juction box 2 blocks away from my house
test should be done at the OUTSIDE BOX at you house
my set up had a standerd phone plug inside the box,
where the pole line comes to the house
if you have no dialtone there it is the phone Co fault
and repair is free to you [under usa rules]
if that box give a dial tone then the fault is in your wireing and you pay for the fix or rewire it yourself

funny that today, I recreated the 1 wire DSL hook up by axident
I have had DSL problems for sometime [drops]
and was rewireing my inside connections to be sure the problem with DSL droping randomly was not my wires and or spliters
and wrongly corrected the wires giving a working DSL and no phone or dial tone on the first test
confermed that by disconnecting the wrong wire [black sb green ]
and sure enuff the DSL stayed working with just red wire only connected

anyway 3rd house call by bellsouth now ATT [merger] resulted in a compitant teck this time
who went outside and wiggled the house to pole wire and saw it was the cause of the DSL disco's on his meter
so in addition to my new inside wires [that were unneeded]
I now have a new pole to house line and steady DSL service as a result

 

[ray b]

I had similar problem but still no solution yet. I wonder if anyone in this forum can help me.

Telephone had no dial tone and check all phones + standard wired phone. DSL works ok. Went outside and opened the box and plug in standard phone and had a dial tone.I guess that means the telephone signal from outside is okay.

Tried re-wiring the blue and green wire and got the signal for a few hours then lost dial tone again. Repeat it twice and now the dial tone is totally lost.

It seems that the adaptor in the box works okay and I tested it with a standard phone connecting to red and green plug.

In the meantime, I realized that my DSL went red (restart) a few times
and not sure why. I am really interested in knowing how DSL and phone line physically work.

If I can figure it out with your help , that will be wonderful. Don't want to spend $100 + on the repair since I assume my house is okay and it is a fairly new home.

likely tooo late also sorry
your on the right track with the out side check
and your inside wires are bad
I supect a mouse or chafe if it goes down after a few hours like that
I would rewire as a cheap fix
other test is what my teck did today
wiggle the house to pole line and listen for stadic
good luck

 

[3trQN]

Does unfiltered DSL sync interfere with the voice line?

If its a dodgy filter and your DSL is synced, try disconnecting DSL and test for dial tone then.

You guys are aware that you can have two pots lines and two adsl connections over a single pair now?

I dint know this :) id like 2 DSL lines so I am not competing with my brother for bandwidth, but i suspect the contention wouldn't change if i had 2 on the same pair anyway.

 

[ray b]

Does unfiltered DSL sync interfere with the voice line?

If its a dodgy filter and your DSL is synced, try disconnecting DSL and test for dial tone then.
I dint know this :) id like 2 DSL lines so I am not competing with my brother for bandwidth, but i suspect the contention wouldn't change if i had 2 on the same pair anyway.

afaIk the voice unfiltered can disco the DSL
and DSL unfiltered give a little stadic on the voice side
but should not kill a dial tone
but a bad filter can kill dial tone and or voice or DSL too

 

[andtokyo]

This thread was helpful in tracking down my issue so I wanted to contribute to help others.

FACTS: DSL was good but no inside dial tone at the same jack. The NID outside dial tone was good, I could dial out and in using my phone number at the NID. However once inside I was unable to get a dial tone on any of 3 phone jacks.

The issue was that one of the 3 lines on my side of the NID was shorted out. I disconnected each line one at a time at the NID and checked for a dial tone inside to isolate the problem line and reran the problem line.

 

[Diogenesis]

I have this problem, DSL working fine but no dial tone, except that when anyone tries to call my telephone they get a busy signal. I live in an apartment building in NYC so finding the "box" outside isn't an option - everything's underground. Verizon insists the problem is with my wiring in the apartment.
I have disconnected everything, and tried to different telephones, even tried two different filters, but all I get is static at best.
Before I rewire the entire apartment (ok, the telephone wiring is at least 50 years old - literally) and discover the problem still exists, I was hoping there may be an easier solution. Reading through this thread has left me rather more perplexed than when I started.

 

[andtokyo]

I have this problem, DSL working fine but no dial tone, except that when anyone tries to call my telephone they get a busy signal. I live in an apartment building in NYC so finding the "box" outside isn't an option - everything's underground. Verizon insists the problem is with my wiring in the apartment.
I have disconnected everything, and tried to different telephones, even tried two different filters, but all I get is static at best.
Before I rewire the entire apartment (ok, the telephone wiring is at least 50 years old - literally) and discover the problem still exists, I was hoping there may be an easier solution. Reading through this thread has left me rather more perplexed than when I started.

If your phone company has an "inside wiring plan" sign up for one month. Let them fix it and discontinue the plan when the issue is corrected.

 

[ray b]

I have this problem, DSL working fine but no dial tone, except that when anyone tries to call my telephone they get a busy signal. I live in an apartment building in NYC so finding the "box" outside isn't an option - everything's underground. Verizon insists the problem is with my wiring in the apartment.
I have disconnected everything, and tried to different telephones, even tried two different filters, but all I get is static at best.
Before I rewire the entire apartment (ok, the telephone wiring is at least 50 years old - literally) and discover the problem still exists, I was hoping there may be an easier solution. Reading through this thread has left me rather more perplexed than when I started.

you should have a junction box somewhere in your building
where the under ground wires enter the building
maybe in the eltric meter room or basement
your building super should know where it is
or ask your tel corp to check their area junction box
as I have had that fix my problem before