I live in a Mobile Estate Home. When it was installed, I ran CAT3 wire from all the wall jacks to a NID box at the rear. At that time the telephone company came out and connected the NID box with the underground cable consequently giving me a dial tone and service. That of course was years ago. Nevertheless, I always had a dial tone at the NID box with whatever Telephone Server I chose.Fast forward. I have Cox Internet Service which also is my Telephone Service. They installed a Modem with RG54 cable and then connected a telephone wire to my wall jack. Everything was fine until I tried to save a few bucks (being on fixed income) and switch my internet to DSL from CenturyLink. They went to the NID box and pulled everything out replacing the connection log with a new one.and reconnecting my CAT3 wire. My phone system consisted of a VTech base station and multiple access receivers. When they installed their modem next to my computer, they rewired my wall jack connecting their modem. I had to now move my base station into the same room as the modem for my phones to work. After the installation, their DSL did not provide me with the MBPS that I required and I cancelled the service. When the service was disconnected, I went to return my base station to its original position. What I discovered was that the wall jack had no dial tone nor did any of my wall jacks. They were getting a dial tone for their modem via my Cox cable modem's telephone jack. I had Centurylink return to check why this had happened and they did some reconnecting of wires and in a sense just disconnected my CAT3 wires (2 set of RGYB) from the NID block and twisted them together so that all my jacks now had a dial tone. That dial tone is actually coming from my Cable modem. In a sense, I no longer have a dial tone from the street to the NID box. In fact, I could remove that box completely now. Is this all normal?
Your DSL signal from CenturyLink is for internet only. Did you request phone service on the same line? Note that this can be done with the proper filter for your base unit, which they usually provide when you order phone service along with DSL. If you only ordered DSL, then you'll either need to have them add voice service to your line or you'll need to purchase some form of VoIP device. Examples of such are Magic Jack or Ooma, that will give you a "phone line" from the device itself. Keep in mind that you might not get satisfactory performance from an IP device over DSL because the bandwidth isn't very high or consistent.
Magic Jack works pretty well and only costs about $45.00 per year for the device which includes unlimited local and long distance calling.
The Cox modem that you had was doing the same thing. In addition to being an internet modem, it had a built in telephony adapter that provided you with dial tone. Now that it is gone, there's nothing there to do this.
CenturyLink was to replace my Cox Internet and not my phone. I was going to go with a VoIP. CenturyLink used my CAT3 original wiring at first then they tried a CAT5 wire, which I installed. Neither gave me the internet speed I wanted. I never stopped my Cox Internet or Phone service during this installation. My present concern is that the NID box is virtually doing nothing any longer whereas before CenturyLink my CAT3 lines were connected to the connection block by the RED and GREEN wires. I just feel CenturyLink mickey moused the entire system. Since everything is working, I will count myself lucky at this point. If I ever drop Cox, I am sure the new provider will have to make it right.
If everything works correctly , then it is wired correctly.
Whats not easy to understand is why you change providers so much.
The connections that allow all of your jacks to work inside your residence are made in the NID box. If you get rid of the NID then the only place that you can put your base station for your phones is next to the cable modem.
Cox is backfeeding dialtone from their cable modem into a nearby jack. The wiring from this jack goes back to the existing NID where all of the other station wires are terminated. I'm sure they disconnected the original copper service drop inside the NID (or simply removed the test plug) and left the station wires bridged together. This is how dial tone is probably working on all of your jacks.
When you installed the DSL service, the technician would have to reconnect the copper service drop and connect that to one of the station wires that goes to where the modem is located. I'm sure this un-did the bridge that Cox had in place. But that is why you probably didn't have dial tone on that jack when DSL was installed.
It would have been easy enough to leave all of the R-G pairs of the station wires "briged" in the NID for dial tone, and then use the B-Y of the station wire for DSL from the copper drop. You simply change out the jack for a dual service jack.