You know what I'd do? As you can get the phone to ring by shorting the tip to ring at the block, I'd have the phone company run an MLT. If they don't know what that is, patiently hold them by the hand and explain that it's short for "Mechanical Loop Test". If they still don't know what that is, have them refer the ticket to the CO (Central Office - the building where all the frames, blocks, etc. are located). If you're in the USA, you *may* be under Qwest. If this is the case, I know for a fact that you can call up repair and have them do this for you.

Now ... depending on what you mean by "disconnected", it may well be possible to make your phone ring ... for instance, someone could go to the SNI (phone box outside your house/apartment), and put power across the tip and ring wires - and then your phone would ring the once ... and possibly fry your modem in the process. And if the disconnect has just occured by removing the jumper tie, then the above could happen - e.g. a phone tech could patch into your line and ring it.

Oh, yeah - when you tell them to do an MLT, *disconnect your modem* from the line (that'll add about 5 miles to the loop length that they'll see). What *I* would do is, when they get the distance number (in feet) back from the MLT, I'd have them check Loop Qual Logs and see the total loop distance (in feet) from the CO to you. *IF* these two differ by any more than 1K', I'd ask them to investigate for bridge taps - again, refer them to the Loop Logs if they're stupid. If no BT's are found, then I'd start checking your internal wiring - disconnect your inside line from the SNI (if it's yours - e.g. if you are in a house), call them up from a buddy's house, and have them run the MLT again - if the discrepency in distance between the MLT and Loop Logs goes away with that setup, then your indoor wiring is hosed.

Hopefully this'll help - while I can't vouch for terminology being the same througout all carriers, I *can* tell you that this is Qwest terminology ... and phone companies can't really have all that different terminology for these things... Let me know how it goes!

~N~