Can I do something about this phone problem, or do I have to call the phone company?

Factual Questions
1

The only phone jack in our den does not work and has not since I moved into the house (tested with a known working phone). It hasn’t been a problem before, but now we are about to move the computers into the den, it’s a problem.

When I got phone service in the house, they asked if I wanted to keep the second line. I chose to get only one line, and now I suspect that particular jack is connected to the second line (especially because the alarm system control center is just a couple of feet away).

Is this something I can fix, and if so, what do I need to do?

For reference, I took a photo of the box where the phone system connects to the house; you can see it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zyada/4293668117/

2

Not knowing your location nor your phone company, this merely a WAG.

My phone states their responsibility ends at the junction box. Any point beyond that into my home (including the junction box itself), including all wiring, jacks, phones, etc., are my responsibility.

It seems the choice is yours. If you call the phone company they will come out and test the line up to the junction box. There should be no charge for this. If you ask them to test beyond that, it’s on your dime. FWIW, unless you have the knowledge and are 100 percent sure of addressing the problem, bite the bullet and let the phone company do it all. Once all is working, you are good to go. You might then consider their nominal monthly charge (a dollar a month?) to assume responsibility for everything between the junction box to all house wiring and jacks. Your responsibility then starts with the phone(s) you plug into the jack(s).

3

Z, I’m pretty sure there’s a tech gizmo that allows you to use your home’s power lines to add a phone jack anywhere there’s an electrical outlet – you plug one unit in near a functioning phone jack, and the matching unit where you need a jack. I don’t know if it would provide enough bandwidth for a high-speed Net connection, but it’s worth checking out.

Another solution would be to get a wireless hub and plug it in where your phone jack is, then use a USB wi-fi adapter on your computer (assuming it doesn’t already have wi-fi capability).

4
5

If the other jacks in your house work, the chances are that this one is wired incorrectly, or as you suspect, wired for line 2.

If you’re handy with a screwdriver, you can take the jack apart and check the wires yourself. Inside the jack there should be 4 terminal posts labeled G(green), R(red), B(black) and Y(yellow). Check that all of the colored wires from both the incoming line and the phone plug on the jack are connected to the correct posts. The green and red wires are for line 1 and the black and yellow wires are for line 2.

If it is wired for line 2, you will probably see that the Green and Black are switched with each other and the Red and Yellow are switched with each other.

It’s possible that your house is wired with CAT3 or CAT5 wires, instead of the older Green/Red/Black/Yellow color code. In that case, use the following color code translations.

Green = White w/Blue stripe
Red = Blue w/White stripe
Black = White w/Orange stripe
Yellow = Orange w/White stripe

Good luck.

6

If the problem is only, as you guess, that the non-working jack is on line 2, then it is easy enough to rewire if you’re comfortable with electronics. Note that (working) phone lines do have voltages (around 50VDC on-hook, around 100VAC ring), so if you’re not careful you can get shocked.

Standard phone cables have four wires but only use two (conventionally colored red and green); these correspond to the left two screw terminals, for line 2, and the corresponding two for line 1. (They are helpfully labeled “GRN” and “RED”; the ones for line 2 are also colored.) Sometimes the second pair of wires is used for a second line; other times houses have multiple four-wire bundles used to wire different floors or areas within the house. Your house appears to have the second situation, since the picture shows two four-wire terminals.

The incoming cable bundle has three colored pairs: one red/white, one green/white, and one blue/white (allowing up to three lines). I can’t quite make it out for certain in your picture, but it looks like the two blue/white wires are connected to line 1’s GRN and RED terminals, and the red/white wires are connected to line 2’s GRN and RED. This probably indicates that the two RED/GRN pairs are connected to various jacks inside the house. At some point in the past, the red/white and blue/white pairs were probably both active lines, but now only one of them is.

You just need to do two things: Disconnect the wire pair for the disconnected line; then jumper the two GRN terminals together, and likewise the two RED, so that both internal lines are connected to the same, working phone line. First you have to figure out which pair (red/white or blue/white) is active. If you have a voltmeter you can just measure voltage from RED to GRN for line 1 and then for line 2; the live line should have a voltage, the disconnected one probably won’t. Alternately, disconnect one of the two red/white wires (loosen the screw and unwrap the wire, making sure it doesn’t touch the other terminal and that you don’t touch both terminals) and see if your phone still works. If it still does, then the blue/white pair is the active line; so disconnect the other red/white wire and tape over the end of each. Otherwise, red/white is active; so reconnect this wire and disconnect and tape over the blue/white ones instead.

Then use some short pieces of wire to connect RED and RED, and likewise GRN and GRN. Now hopefully all the lines in the house are working. … If not, either the line is disconnected/broken elsewhere, or the other line is connected to a different pair of wires.

7

I think some of these other answers are overly complicated. Open up a working phone jack and note how the wires are attached to the terminals. Re-wire the non-working phone jack to match and you should be in business. I had a similar situation in an apartment I was renting and it took five minutes and saved like $80 over having the phone company come out to do it.

8

You people are not looking at the picture. There are two service lines coming into the place, not the typical one that can supply two phone services with the four wire set up. The solution does not pertain to the room jack.

There looks to be no reason you can’t just switch your house wiring for that room over too the working service. Disconnect the line 2 side wires and connect them to the line 1 side terminals after pulling the test jack above them. After your done wiring reconnect the test jack.

9

If you don’t feel comfortable (or can’t) fix it yourself, look into line-backer from your phone company. At least that is what it used to be called. It’s a monthly fee (I’ve always seen it as $5/month) that covers the phone company doing work inside the house. Ask to have it added for one month, get the repair crew to come out and fix the jack, ask to have the linebacker removed the next month. Total cost - $5.

Before anyone gets upset, I had this suggested to me by my cable/phone/internet provider when I was having trouble. They know it’s possible to do this. I think they are banking on people forgetting to turn the service off.

10

Omphaloskeptic’s answer is the way to go - I did this myself in my own house, where there was a junction box inside, in the basement.

However, there might be easier ways of doing this. If the issue is DSL, why not attach DSL modem to a working line, and use a wireless router to get service in the other room. If it is just phone service, I have a two handset cordless phone. The main one goes in the kitchen, and the extension goes in my office, where it just needs a power outlet to charge. I actually have a working jack there, but this works better. (And was cheaper.)

11

Maybe it’s me but I only see one service line in, and one line out.

From the picture,it looks as if R/W and O/W are both connected to Line 1.
So it seems your inside wiring has already all been switched over to Line 1, therefore the problem lies in the jack or one of the previous ones. You’ll have to trace the circuits through each jack and verify they are all connected.

12

My apologies, I think I was looking at the lines backward last night. Of the three cables coming out of the bottom of the box–fat one in the middle, thin one in the middle, thin one on the right–which ones run into the house and which come from the phone company? Last night I was interpreting the cable on the right as the company wires, but now I think those are the house wires… at least, that makes more sense to me in the cold light of day.

If that’s the case, you should be able to move both the red/white and blue/white pairs to the working line. You should be able to plug a phone in at the line-test jacks to find out which line is active.

Alternately, you should be able to rewire this at the jack inside the house (which is I think what Sparky812 is saying). If you have a single multi-pair cable running to every jack in the house, then you just connect each jack to whichever line you choose. Open one of the working jacks inside your house to find out which pair is the active line, then open the non-working jack and connect it to the same pair. Make sure to get the polarity right (refer to the working jack), and if you’re connecting in the middle of the cable make sure not to break the wires (you may have to strip insulation from the middle of a wire, which you can do with a sharp knife).

13

**Don’t mess with the wiring at the box!!! **If you have jacks working inside your house, that is not where the problem lies, and you run a pretty big risk of screwing up your phone service altogether.

Concentrate on the one jack that isn’t working and make sure you have it wired correctly.

14

It’s alive!

Thanks to all, especially FatBaldGuy for the color code translations.

Would you believe the idiots that put in this jack didn’t even bother stripping the second pair of wires? They just stripped the line 2 wires and attached them to the line one screws.

Of course, maybe they were using one of these books.

Cheffie, I’ll probably still find your gadget for an actual phone by the desks.

15

Glad to help. :slight_smile:

16

That’s exactly what they should have done! There is no point in having unused bare wires hanging around in a junction box, and there IS a risk that the bare wires would touch another wire or screw terminal and short out. Do it is good practice to leave the unused pair alone.

17

If you’re wiring the jack for a non-standard application, such as using the second line on the line 1 connectors, you may be right. Standard practice for “normal” phone jacks, however, is to wire up both pairs, so that if in the future you decide to add a second line you don’t have to rewire the whole house to do it.

18

Well, when I went to look at wiring diagrams (and from the answers here), the standard seems to be to attach all 4 wires, just reversing them for a line two phone.

I just hate stripping insulation off of wires! especially when I am sitting on a foot stool. ouch