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Hi everyone,
I have a phone jack in my apartment that isn't working -- it's a problem with the wiring under the house. I had fixed it myself at some point, but it seems to have come undone again... it's in a location under the house that's nearly impossible to get at. So... is there any other way (wireless?) to make the jack active?
If it matters, one consideration is that the DSL on the jack works, but voice does not. There are only two jacks in the whole apartment, and the other one is inconveniently far away, but works fine for voice.
TiA
P.S. ... oh, and also -- the landlord is of NO help. I've complained about this for months, but he hasn't done anything about it. I can't complain too much, because I'm definitely paying below market value rent.
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it's kind of strange that the DSL works but voice does not. for DSL you need a very good connection (you cannot be far away from the telephone company switching center), but voice works on almost any crappy connection (sure, the sound quality may be poor).
anyway, can't you put a cordless phone at the inconvenient, far away jack? maybe one of those dual-handsets DECT phones, keep the second handset in a charging station near you while the main phone (and the first handset) could be in the inconvenient location.
BTW: those panasonic DECT phones with AAA cells are great, mine last almost 2 weeks on a charge, so I usually keep both around and only put one in the charger when low, I never charge in the main base station which is behind the TV and not so easy to reach.
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DSL working and Voice dead is very strange.
Maybe give some more details. How is your DSL wired? Is it with the filters on each jack which is most typical today, or a filter/splitter near the demarcation box with voice going to one pair of wires and DSL going to a second pair?
How new/ancient is the phone wiring? Which decade do you think it's from? Is it the 4 thick Red/Green/Yellow/Black wiring or the thinner cat-3/cat-5 type wire with striped colors?
What was the cause last time (did a rodent chew on the wires?)
Do you know where then other end of the wire from that jack goes to, is it to another wall jack, or direct to the demarcation box?
Wire generally doesn't fail unless something damages it. So the connections seem more likely.
If DSL and voice are using the same pair of wires, then it is really strange that you can't get a dial-tone from that line with a phone, but can with the other jack.
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1) Yeah, it is weird that the DSL works but voice does not -- basically get no dial tone on the dead jack, but DSL does work... it may not be getting best possible speeds though. I could do what space-time is suggesting with a cordless, but I'd also like to have an answering machine hooked up to the line (I don't care for my phone company's voicemail option).
2) Yes, it is the typical modern DSL, with filters on each jack, etc. The wiring-- no idea how old it is, but I did find it weird that someone had sliced the wire that went to the dead jack. (That's what I reconnected in order to get it at least partially working again-- for awhile, the voice AND DSL had been working on the dead jack, but now it's only the DSL that works.) The physical wires seem VERY brittle. It's a thick four/six-component wire, red/green/yellow/black/white/blue, of which the RGYK are getting used.
Not sure if that all makes sense now... hopefully it does.
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I'd bet it's that splice again.
Is the voice/DSL on the red/green pair (Line 1), and the Yellow/Black (Line 2) unused? If you know where the other ends are you could try swapping those two pairs at both ends rather than crawling under the house as a first trouble shooting attempt, but if we never hear from you again, then we'll know that you lost voice AND DSL doing that.
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It sounds like maybe the DSL is working on an independent pair of wires. You say you have RGYK all connected to the jack, so two could be just DSL, and 2 just voice.
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GGD, that's what I've done-- splice the wires. The problem is that there are two splices to be made, with the second splice being in a location under the house that's nearly impossible to get to. I've spliced red to red, green to green, black to black, yellow to yellow. I would assume that the splice which is causing problems, maybe one of the splices has broken.
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One more thing to try first... You'll have to temporarily lose DSL for this.
Unplug the phone cord from the DSL modem and plug that same phone cord into a phone. We know that the line is good enough for DSL going to the end of that phone cord, so if that works in a phone then your problem is a connection problem in that wall jack or splitter or phone cord, and not under the house.
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Do you have a voltmeter / multimeter ?
If you can, measure the voltage across the pairs of wires. The voice pair should have a few volts DC if they are working. The voltage will spike when there is an incoming call, but it won't kill you. Something between 5-40VDC I think. If there is no power then there is no phone signal (dial tone).
Are you sure the DSL is running on the same pair?
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