sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring 911 Dialing On Its Own

Not sure this is the correct place for this so mods, if there is a more appropriate place please move it.

Got a call from a GC doing work at a residential that is having problems with 911 being dialed spontaneously from one of the lines. I'm being told the problem pre-dates his arrival on the scene. Periodically 911 is being dialed, with the associated appearance of the police, at seemingly random intervals, could be a couple days or a couple weeks between calls. So far it hasn't happened at 3am yet, each event has been during daylight hours. Go to troubleshoot expecting to find some long-forgotten piece of equipment or something.

Old house, built in 1929, renovated a hundred times, two lines coming in from the pole. The wiring makes it's way under the house where it's been spliced to death to distribute it through the house. One line is a DSL/phone line that goes to two walls with three devices attached: a DSL modem, a corded phone, filtered, on the splitter with the modem, and a Direct TV box filtered in another room. The corded phone is very basic, just a phone with no speed dial memory. No cordless phones, no alarm system. The second line runs up into a wall and vanishes, I suspect it's been sealed in a wall in a previous renovation and forgotten, I was unable to find the interior termination. Spent a little over two hours chasing the cabling under, and through, the house.

Neither the police nor the carrier can tell me which line is originating the 911 calls. That would be nice to know, but apparently I don't need to know :-/

I don't suspect the DSL modem since they don't dial and the corded phone is too dumb to dial without pressing the keypad buttons. So I'm left with the Direct TV box. I unplugged it from the wall and said "let's see if it happens again." But it could be a while to know if that was the solution, in the meantime the homeowner would need to plug it back into the wall to order movies - and then have to remember to unplug it. Not an ideal solution.

I've called Direct TV to see if there are known issues with any of their equipment, no reply yet.

I love a challenge, but this one's got me stumped. You guys are smarter than I, any ideas? Sunspots/solar flares? Nuclear weapons testing in China? House is haunted? Voodoo? I'm at a loss.

Thanks!

Catfish

Happens all the time, even to me. I had a line out of service at my house that not once but three times called 911 which resulted in the police banging on the front door at 3AM. It was a Verizon copper POTS line that had an intermittent short. I was able to find out from them which line the call came from. Long story short, apparently a line doesn't have to pulse 911, after a certain number of tries with random digits it will go to 911 by default.

-Hal

What Hal said, I've seen it several times. Repeated mutilated digits will go to 911. I've seen it with wires hanging in the wind, or in places where vibration causes intermittent shorts.

"...apparently a line doesn't have to pulse 911, after a certain number of tries with random digits it will go to 911 by default."

I would love to see the CD for that CO feature. I call BS, by the way, in the nicest possible way, of course, Hal.

I remember when mutilated digits went to the operator. I guess since there are no more operators 911 was the second choice?

What is sending digits?

A swinging short. Disconnect the I/W at the protector, use a ohm meter with a high resistance scale to check between tip and ring and ground. Or use your Sidekick on the highest scale. The short could also be in the telco plant, only if you can remove battery can you check the drop and aerial cable. There is a test code that will remove battery for a couple of minutes at a time, but of course that would be regional.

I've seen this happen with intermittent shorts causing simulated rotary dial pulses. You'd think that if there was an intermittent short that the customer would complain of noise on the line. That leads me to think that this has something to do with that second drop. Why not just cut it before it enters the house and insulate the cut end so that there's no chance of weather causing this again?

Around here, I've often seen abandoned drops in buildings that are still live due to the fact that they are fed from terminals that offer multiple counts. The drop may have dial tone on it, but that number belongs to another subscriber down the street. Those are a nightmare in the GTE areas around here since they didn't do very good record keeping with ready-access terminals. That still doesn't give much of a rational answer, since you'd think in such instances, the cops would show up at the address where that line is supposed to be, not at some random multiple location.

Plus the 911 center should be able to tell you what number called, that part makes no sense to me.

Bill, not unless their 911 is "Enhanced 911".