POTs line anomoly??????

[crooter]

Here is the scenario
At a residence, the customer has a POTs line coming into his home from Cox Communications. Because there was no cable run to his sons room, he had Cox run a cat3 and a Coaxial (for TV) through the garage and into the room----at the demarc, the POTs comes off the box binding posts and the cable added to the sons room is spliced making the connection.
The customer asked me to extend the phone line and the coaxial to the adjacent room.....no problem, however when I cut the cat3 cable coming into the room to use a surface mount box to join the new cable, I could not get any dial tone from the surface mount box. I then removed the leads and put my test set on and got dial tone. I then re-assembled and reversed the leads on the box. No Dial tone, I once again removed the leads. I used my test set alligator clips once more on the leads and got dial tone--I called out and talked to the customer on his other phone and had him call me back on my test set---all worked fine. I once more connected the leads to the box and had nothing.
I then placed an RJ-11 connector on the leads and plugged it directly into the phone--I had dial tone, I could make in and out calls---but once more I connected the surface mount box and once more it did not work. Because the cable into the room enters inside the closet, this is where I made the cut for the surface mount box--so I can not just plug the phone there.

HELP? I dont know what is happening?

 

[SYQUEST]

Who made the surface mount box and does it include a modular jack?

Could it be defective?

You did not mention if you are getting DT at the new jack.

....JIM....

 

[kwing112000]

Sounds like the Surface box has a short or open in it.

 

[crooter]

I tried also using a standard coupler plugged the phone in and got nothing---then removed the coupler and plugged the phone directly to the rj11 on the cable and got dialtone...then I tried the coupler to the cable going into the room (in essence just a line cord) and got no dialtone. I have a RJ11 on my test set as well--and tried several times with the coupler getting no dial tone--then back to the alligator clips and I got dial tone. I then cut off the rj11 and punched down an Cat3 rj11 insert and got no dialtone--removed it and put the test set alligator clips back on and had dialtone.
I searched through this site and came up with this----

"Just had an interesting issue, thought I'd pass on what we learned.

After converting from Verizon to Cox, the IPO had trouble with the analog lines.

I could watch line appearances, and see the IPO going through the lines, probably testing, and the IPO thought the lines were out of service.

Calls would still come in, and go out, but the lines would show as "off hook" in between, and caller ID and other status indicators were a mess.

Turns out the problem was low current from the cable companies box. They changed some settings and bumped it to 40 mA (from 20ish I think) and the lines were then OK.

So if you ever see analog lines bouncing in and out of service, check to see that the voltage and current supply are good enough."

Any thoughts?

 

[kwing112000]

That was my customer and COX was the issue. If your cable is long with alot of other phones on it then this could be the cause. I had a home that had like 20 phones on 1 line and if we put another phone on it would kill the ringer and the line would not ring. If we put a phone with an external power supply on it then it was fine.

 

[Dexman]

In the situation that kwing mentioned, the total combined REN was probably way too high and that caused the phones to not ring on incoming calls.

The phone with an external power supply probably had a very low REN of 0.1 or 0.0 which would have dropped the total below the critical threshold.

 

[donb01]

I would first assume the surface mount box is bad and try another.

Then I would assume the surface mount box is wired wrong. I don't know your level of experience and do not wish to be insulting, but if you are using standard residential phone cable (RGYBk) and are matching up letters on the jack, make sure the corresponding leads from the jack or jack cover are matched up to the wire colors. If you are using commercial wire the white with blue stripe is usually the green and the blue with white stripe is generally the red.

Then I would reverse the polarity of the two wires to see if the device you are hooking up is polarity sensitive, although it shouldn't matter anymore.

Make sure the previous contractor/installer did not use some hokey wire color combination when they wired the existing jack - like one blue and one orange, or green and yellow or something like that, etc. I have miswired things on occasion where I would get one of the two wires right and then accidentally connect the second one one slot higher or lower - it will ring out with a tone generator, and you may even get dialtone at the interface with a test set, but the actual device won't work. I see you are working right from the binding posts so you should be OK there.

so there are a few ideas, but my first move would be to toss the jack and try another.