sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers Question for the experts

So my buddy tells me last night that his 86 year old mother's phone is in trouble. You can call out OK but on incoming calls, you get 2 half rings and then it goes to Reorder Tone. If you get to the phone immediately you're OK. After that you're out of luck. Mama's terrified of being billed if it's "her" fault.

I went over today and found that the drop wire at the outside junction box was corroded to hell. It was a pretty green color in the box with the insulation cracked and split.

And one side broken completely.

I pulled enough in to restore service and told my friend to have Verizon replace the wiring. (In my dreams, but you have to ask.)

My question is: SINGLE WIRE SEMI-SERVICE?!?!?

I've used a butt set on a line, ring side to ground and called out, but the hum was awful. This sounded pretty clear and worked fine for outgoing and almost worked for incoming. I've never seen anything like that before.

Anybody got any ideas? Are CO's that robust these days?

Baffled in Brooklyn.

Sam

Well, with the proliferation of RTs and other forms of pair gain equipment out there, her service may be coming from one of these devices that is fairly close by. I should say really close by. I've seen sites in major urban areas where clean-enough dial tone can be pulled from ring to ground, but it is never as perfect as a true balanced pair.

Ed -

I forgot to mention - The CO is around the corner. Could the call be coming in that "hot"?

Sam

Hello Baffled in Brooklyn,
As is often times the case “communication” is key to any healthy relationship... whoa ... whoops Wrong forum!!!

Sam,
At this point I don’t have anything but a couple more questions for ya…

“Two half rings,” as heard from the callING or the callED party? Or both?


How did you pull dial-tone? Did you short tip-to-ring? Or did simply going off-hook while connected ring-to-ground pull the dial-tone?

Bryan -

"Two half rings..." I'm not sure what the calling party heard. I think it was "two half rings and then reorder. Certainly the called party heard "half ring....pause, pause...half ring.....click.

I pulled dial tone today from their (Uniden cordless) phone and from a 2500 set. When I said I pulled DT from a butt set going ring to ground - that was years ago with a line that was half open. I only mentioned it as it was my only other experience with a "one-side-open circuit". Then I put the butt set on ring and ground, pulled DT and dialed out (tone only - rotary wouldn't work).

Sam

I don't think you had single wire service. I think you probably had a high resistance short. You could pull DT because of the high resistance, but if the phone rang there was enough voltage to complete the short and trip the ring. Calling party got reorder because CO thought he was off hook since call never completed. Same thing can happen with ring trip to ground, the line sounds clean when calling out, but you can't receive calls or get a partial ring than trip on incoming calls.

You may be hard pressed to know this since it's your buddy's mother... but does granny only use here phone once a month or so to call in her scripts in to the pharmacy or something?

Here’s what I’m thinking…

POTS lines depend on the DC signaling component to occasionally “seal” any splices along the cable route. Splices can get so corroded from inactivity they start acting like “opens” to the DC signaling current… Now, send along some 78 vAC ringing current and those “corroded splices” now start looking like capacitors too, to the AC. That would ‘splain the odd ringing cadence.

Still puzzled on the talking over JUST the ring-side… Something else had to be going on there. :shrug:

"does Granny only use her phone..." Maybe. She's a little old Italian lady who's here in the country 60+ years and still speaks heavily broken English. Of course she could be talking Italian on the phone...... Does that use less voltage?

"Still puzzled......"

Me too. I opened the box and only one side was connected. The other was swinging in the breeze.

Unless......

It was hanging on by a thread - or broken and just barely touching and when I opened the box it broke loose? That might cause all kinds of weirdness.

Not important. Just another trip to the Telecom Twilight Zone. Some questions never get answered.

But it's always fun trying to figure them out.


Sam

I think your last scenario is probably what happened.

"Italian uses less voltage"... Classic.. I will have to remember to use that next time I have a trouble call..

Without sounding ethnically challenged, I guess it would have to be

"speaking Mexican on the phone uses less voltage" would be the case here in Houston.