Home Phone Line Wiring Problems

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The home phone line (part of Verizon FIOS triple play) was dead for last few days. I did not even know that :-( As you can guess, the phone is used very rarely. No dial tone but I hear my own echo back; really weird! I go through the usual online reset etc but still nothing doing. Finally called the CSR and she does few reboots and eventually tells me that they don't see anything wrong from their end. She can send technician but will charge me if found problem in the house wiring. So finally, I get off my butt and hook up a phone to the the ONT (aka their box in the basement) and to my surprise I have the dial tone. I left the wireless base station connected to the ONT and now all phones in the house are working. That base station used to be connected in computer room phone jack before. So that was the only physical jack that was in use. Obviously, when the house was new, all the rooms jack were working and had active phones.

I want to know how to fix the wiring. Nothing was done to the wiring in years but something has gone wrong with the home wiring. It is a 2000 era house and is wired as single loop through out the house. The first drop is in the dining room behind the china cabinet and that can NOT be moved. Rest of the drops I would be able to get to. I am also little worried if a critter in the wall caused this problem. That is my biggest worry. If the corrosion etc caused this, I don't really care as I don't see this wiring would be used by us or subsequent owners.

Comments?
 
Originally Posted By: Vikas
Comments?


Disconnect from the phone company TNI, disconnect any and all devices on your phone lines, and if it still doesn't work get your multi meter out and start testing continuity.
 
So to clarify, you have dial-tone only at the ONT only? Or have you no tried hooking it back up to the house wiring to see if you have tone elsewhere again yet?
 
Dial tone on the ONT only; I checked couple of drops (but not all) and did not have the dial tone. But as I said strong echo. I can check all except one drop (behind china cabinet) and I suspect that is the 1st drop in the loop.

Aarg; I just realized without wire, my all-in-one fax machine will not be able to send fax anymore :-( Looks like I have to figure out the problem.
 
It sounds like something has shorted or gone "off hook". I would do as Pop suggested and pull out the multimeter and start checking.
 
You most likely have an open in our home wiring. Plug your ONT back in and remove the other devices on your house loop one at a time until you find the culprit.
 
I still use the 'copper' lines in my house because I still have a Rotary Phone.

Just last Week my kitchen phone stopped working (no dial tone).

My 2 cents: The phone Plug and Outlet have gold colored Contact Wires that are spring loaded.
1.) Look at the Contact Wires and confirm there all at the same height.
... Sometimes one will stick down.

2.) Move the plug in & out in the outlet and listen for a Dial Tone.
... This was my problem.
 
I used to be a phone tech working on copper in homes.

First thing to do, is to plug a good phone (one you know is working properly) into the suspected jack; if it works you know the phone is bad.

Next, go to the box outside (NID, Network Interface Device or whatever they're calling it these days) and see what color wires you have exiting the box to your house. If you have one phone line/number, they should be Red and Green. 2nd line is Yellow/Black. Beyond that I forget the colors.

Then pop inside to a phone that's working and check the color wiring that's hooked up to the jack. (You can also test continuity of the wiring)

Now if you go to the outlet that's not working right, the wires may be hooked up in a different pattern or order than the other jacks you've looked at. Again test continuity.

You can also buy a beeper (Radio Shack maybe?) that will put a tone on the line so you can make sure it's reaching a jack, and which pair of wires it is going to.

If it's a big mess that was hacked into before you moved there, then there might be no easy way to fix. But my first bet, since you say there's been no work done, is it's the phone itself.
 
How to fix? It's a process of elimination.

The 1982-era two-pair my house was wired with eventually shorted due to the insulation breaking down. I eventually rewired the whole house with CAT5, homerun to a 66 punch block and separated VOICE & DATA (ADSL) at the demarc box. Yes, wire is still useful, fast, secure and quiet.

A "fox and hound" (toner) will allow you to follow the wire behind walls. Old wire though can have multiple shorts. A TDR can also locate shorts, but most don't own those.
 
A 9V battery at the service terminal (phone company service disconnected and isolated) can work wonders in checking this stuff. All you then need is a multimeter.
 
This sounds like you have a defective device not a wiring problem. If something does not "hang up" and fully disengage from the line, it will stay "busy" and you won't be able to make or receive calls.

Unplug all your phones, fax machines, etc. and try to bring the house wiring back up with only the one phone you know works plugged in. If that works then start plugging the other things in to see which one is bad.
 
Year or two ago I lost phone at my house; people would call and apparently the line was busy. Didn't know, we don't make many calls. Internet/DSL was fine.

Anyhow, IIRC I did as above, tested by disconnecting the house and plugging in a phone, so as to verify dial tone in. That was fine. Ultimately, examination of the wiring from the box to the house was bad: the outer jacket had given up the ghost, and the insulation on the wires had apparently broken down. Pinch of tape and all has been well since.

[I'd replace the cable, but I'm hoping they'll just switch us over to fiber.]
 
All of the phone jacks in the house are empty. I hooked up multi-meter to all of them and they are all showing about 25 ohm. That is NOT GOOD. There is not much variation in the reading between different phone jacks. the light on the ONT indicates that there is a device which is off hook (aka there is short in the line somewhere. I do know that single cat5 goes through the entire house but I do not know the order for sure. The blue and orange pair is used in each jack.

I need female RJ11 jack with the pin out or RJ11 coupler so I can measure the resistance at the start of the wiring without disconnecting anything from the ONT.

Seems like here is my opportunity to order more tools :) Seriously, without fox & hound type of tool, this is going to be shot in the dark approach.
 
Unplug from the ONT as well of course when taking resistance measurements. Resistance measurements are only valid on wiring that is completely de-energized. With nothing at all connected to any of the jacks, and the source end not connected to the ONT, you should have infinite resistance between the two wires in the pair.

Phone jacks are wired in parallel to the pair of wires in the cat5. Either a bus (daisy chain) or a star connection, or a combination can be used. This is just like AC outlets where the black and white wires go to each outlet, and at some point the pair is connected to the breaker box to energize the whole circuit.

"Home run" wiring, a single star connection with the big junction in a utility closet or other reachable place, is the easiest to maintain but seldom installed.

Usually blue + blue/white is line 1 (center two pins in a 4 pin RJ14) and something else is line 2 (outer two pins). The standards are either green or orange. If line 2 has been wired throughout the house and that pair in the cables is still good, you can just swap lines at the ONT and on the jacks that you want to use, effectively abandoning the blue pair and using the orange one instead.
 
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Everything below (and in the previous reply) is being done without hooking up the ONT RJ11 quick jack.

I just checked all but two jacks in the house. The ones I could not have a furniture in front and were never ever used. Visual inspection shows no shorts. They all show around 20 ohm. They should show infinity.

Here is something else which is completely baffling. Builder only connected the blue pair to the red/green primary. I later hooked up the orange pair to the secondary for my data line on some of the jacks.

Today both blue and orange are showing same ohm. Both the pairs exhibiting the identical faults and all of a sudden? 20 ohms is NOT a dead short either. Those two pairs from home wires are terminated in the ONT as hard wires in to a quick connect RJ11 jack. Is that ONT block developed a fault? Interestingly, when I checked the other two pairs at various jacks, they don't show the 20 ohm.

So far I have been reluctant to take the hard wires off the ONT. I have disconnected the quick connect RJ11 jack. Is removing the hard lines from ONT as easy as looks? Pop off each wire terminal and remove each one??
 
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Eureka! Looks like ONT block has developed internal short. This is going to be fun convincing the Verizon FIOS technician.

I hooked up unused pair green in to the ONT block. Now the green pair shows the 20 ohm on the jack. Take out the green pair from ONT, I see no connectivity on green pair.

ONT does have two 8 terminal block and I could try to see if the other block is shorted or not but this is really Verizon problem and they should replace the ONT. The battery is dead too but they claim it is my respnsibility even though it is their ONT.

Can you give the few key phrases to tell the technical support to make this service call go smoothly?
 
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Assuming my hypothesis is correct, I could either put a RJ11 connector on my house wires (very very ghetto) or move them to Line 2 punch block and swap the ONT connector (just slightly ghetto) and thus avoiding even having to talk to Verizon.

But if I can get new ONT from Verizon, at least I would get new battery (I think?)
 
I would just switch to another pair in the ONT block like you said. It sort of looks like the ONT can be serviced in pieces -- an electronics unit and the weatherproof shell where the phone wiring block is, and likely the block itself comes out as a FRU also.

Crimping a RJ plug directly onto your cat5 and plugging it into the ONT electronics unit is legit. They might try to say that everything beyond the electronics unit is your house wiring, which is bogus since they supplied the block.

Isn't the battery in a separate box indoors? That's a whole another ball of wax.
 
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My ONT is inside my basement. This is NOT weatherproof unit. It is strictly for indoor use. The battery is inside the ONT.

Baffling thing is that punch box has to be fully passive and just a pass through to the RJ11 jack. It is just a fancy way of putting RJ11 jack on the home wires. Every combination wires shows conductivity on that punch box i.e. say tip of red/green to ring of yellow/black etc or red to yellow.
 
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