Telephone hookup to house?

Ok, this is not directly related to computers but I was wondering if someone had any experience in wiring telephone boxes in houses.

I am renting a house right now and am trying to get DSL into the house. However, even though the phone company says the line is good to my house, (and everything is turned on on their end) I have no dial tone. My DSL appointment is tommorrow and I need dialtone to at least one phone jack in the house for the guy to set it up.

Attached is a picture of the phone lines coming into the house. Everything looks good to me. (I have marked the incoming lines)

Anyway, I am at the point that I am thinking I may have to bribe the SBC guy.

Edit: SBC cannot get anyone out before the DSL installation to check the lines.

What a mess....must be an older house, with ancient wiring.

My suggestion would be to get an old phone cord and put some alligator clips on the wires on one end and an old analog phone to plug it in to. (note you could just use bare wires, but easier with the alligator clips) Then clip the cord directly to the incomming phone line and confirm that you actually have phone service coming in.

Once you have confirmed phone service, then try hooking up different pairs of wires and checking them by opening a phone plug in inside the house and finding a pair that work.

Or you could run a new cord inside the wall to carry the service to an existing plug and rewiring it into it.

Good luck.

Hi,

Been a long time since I wired telephones, and that was not in the USA :)

Look down the bottom of your picture...................two wires, one white, one blue?...........they are not connected to anything..............I wonder what they are for/where they are supposed to go?

There are three nuts at the bottom I guess that the centre one with the lime green wire going into it is "ground" (earth) but the one on the right certainly looks like it had more than the single wire that is connected right now................I am going by the number of loose ends stiching out from under the nut?

Do you know anyone locally whose setup you could take a quick look at.

Also, inside the phone jacks in the house, what colours are the wires? Is there a white one and a blue one?


Just a few thoughts

EDIT: On second look, that "white" wire could be white with a blue stripe..............which would match one the two (out of focus) ones on the left of the picture that I guess go into your house? (the other blurred one seems to be plain blue)

On the inside of the house the jacks have 2 pair of wires coming into them. Dont remember the color. The mass of wires on the left dont do much but make a tangled mess. One is connected to a security system for the house. (The white and blue and blue one - Although we dont have the service at the moment)

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Do you know anyone locally whose setup you could take a quick look at.

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I have looked at several and they dont look anything like my setup. (Must be because its old)

I would check the colours of the wires in the jacks, and trace them (by colour) to that junction box.

I would also carefully unscrew the nuts, one at a time, and clean the wires and connection (emery cloth, sandpaper, nailfile, alcohol) They look pretty oxidised, so it could be just a bad connection?

Cheers

You only need one pair of wires for connectivity. If the one pair is not working, try the other pair. Or connect both pair, but be sure to keep the pairs straight and don't confuse them on the other end.

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Originally posted here by moxnix
You only need one pair of wires for connectivity. If the one pair is not working, try the other pair. Or connect both pair, but be sure to keep the pairs straight and don't confuse them on the other end.

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The orange and white ones go to the house. (I used a tone generator that I have at work to check) I am thinking of seeing if Home Depot has any equipment to rent. If not, I will hit up radio shack and see if I can get some alligator clips to test and see if we have any dialtone.

Thanks guys!

Hmmm,

It looks as if someone disconnected the security system by ripping it out.............that is probably what killed the phone link.

First step would be to clean the connections and tighten them up again...........clear out those stray bits of wire :D

Orange and white sound the same as here, but if I go look I will disconnect myself.............

Hay from what you have said. You have a guy coming to fix you up. Leave it to him, if he cant fix it thats his problem, not yours. Over here in the UK we all tend to do are own installs, as those techy gits cost a fortune, so let him earn your money

as I said over at the clan forums, down here in my part of the woods the main phone lines are red and green, and black and yellow for secondary.

My advice woudl be to try hooking a phone up directy to the outside terminal (try the red and green wires on the top) and see if you have dial tone. Also check your inside jacks and make sure the wires are connected on them. If you do get a dial tone then you'll have to swap your wires around.

my 2 cents ;)

Looks like all our cabling was Fuxor3d! The SBC guy was cool enough, (since we had no dialtone) to work on it a bit and take it over from COX phone service to SBC. It also had some cables which he switched over from another box in our wall. He turned out to be pretty cool.

Thanks everyone!