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-   -   Telephone jack not working (https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/showthread.php?t=20257)

  • Feb 9, 2006, 10:27 PM
    RudyG
    Telephone jack not working
    Hello.

    I need some help. I live in a 2 bedroom apartment and the phone jack in one of the bedrooms does not work. Meaning it has no dial tone. I did some surfing around trying to find out what is going on. My initial suspicion was that the previous tenant had a second line in that room so I was going to see if I can simply flip the red+green with yellow+black. However when I opened up the jack I discovered that there are only three wires running. The red, green and yellow. There is no black. :( I have not seen that covered in the pages I found on the internet.
    Some of the things I tried were:
    1. Open the other jacks to see how they are wired. They also only have three wires running to them and appear to be using the red+green.
    2. I purchased a new wall plate thinking that maybe the contacts that the painters paint over were bad. But no luck so far.

    Does anyone have any ideas for me? Anything to try?

    Thank you in advance for your time.
    Rudy
  • Feb 10, 2006, 06:11 AM
    labman
    Some of the wiring in my house only has the 3 wires too, but that doesn't make any difference. You are right, it is the red and green. You need to trace the wires back making sure the red and green are connected at a box that does work. The wire could also be broken somewhere.
  • Feb 10, 2006, 06:20 AM
    tkrussell
    Take a telephone and a spare jack to make up your own temporary test set. Give the jack long wires to use as test leads. Plug the phone cord into the jack and bring it to each phone jack in your house, starting at the where the main line comes into your home. With the two wires off your test jack and phone set you can test each red and green terminal at each phone jack or splce box, and listen for a dial tone.

    If you can determine the path the three wire cable takes, you may find where is works and then find a location that it does not work. Either you have a bad connection, or if a broken wire you can use the black wire in place of the broken red or green.

    One other thing to check is review your telephone bill. If there is a line item you pay a small amount of money for called "Wire Mainetenance" , then put your tools away and call the phone company, because you are paying a monthly charge that the phone company is responsible for the interior house wiring of your telephone system. Not sure if and where this is done any longer but it sure is worth looking into.
  • Feb 10, 2006, 07:39 AM
    fredg
    Hi,
    Just an added comment on the "Wire Maintenance" mentioned in the answer before mine.
    Verizon does offer "Home Maintenance", which I have for a small additional monthly cost. As suggested, check you phone bill or call your phone company, to see if you have this option. It could save you some money, as well as some time in troubleshooting. Best of luck.
  • Feb 10, 2006, 08:18 AM
    labman
    Line maintenance is a rip off. Unless, as the former tenant seems to have done, somebody has messed with the wiring, there is seldom a problem. I have about 8 jacks in my house and in the last 30 years never had a problem inside the house. That is with 4-5 phones and a modem or 2. Before I discovered the line maintenance charge and canceled it, my phone company always tried to tell me the problem was inside and threatened me with a $50 charge when their line was dead. Most people should be able to find and fix most problems. Anywhere there are screw terminals, usually they are labeled with the colors.

    If inspecting things doesn't turn up the problem, what tkrussel suggested should. If you have been paying line maintenance, let them earn a little of what they have charged you, then cancel it.
  • Feb 10, 2006, 01:34 PM
    RudyG
    Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I want to post this to let you know that I found the problem and in case someone in the future does a search and has a similar problem they will see how it was resolved. labmans post in another telephone thread tipped me off on what to look for. I began to suspect that somewhere the propagation of the line was broken. I noticed that the jacks that I opened had two sets of wires connected to them. 2 reds, 2 greens and 2 yellows (although the yellows were not always connected). I figured that one set was the input (or the feed) and the other was the output (or propogation) to the next jack. So I figured if I find a jack with only one set of wire I'll find my culprit. Sure enough the last jack that I opened, which was the kitchen jack in my apartment, only had one set of wires connected. So I pulled the wires out of the whole found the second set of wires in there, cleaned them up, connected them and voilą the jack now works. In fact I'm using it now to type this over my Verizon DSL connection. :)

    All of this made me wonder though. If every jack has two sets of wires one providing the input for the current jack and the other providing the input for the next jack in the apartment. Why does the last jack in this chain need two sets of wires? This question is of course more academic than anything. What I think I will do when I have time is open up this jack that I had just fixed and disconnect the second set of wires. Since I now know it is in fact the last jack in the chain.

    Anyway, a huge thanks to you all.
    I'm a happy camper.
    Rudy

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