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3.0 TROUBLE SHOOTING TELEPHONE LINES - DO-IT-YOURSELF - DIY TIPS

I recently discovered a loud buzzing sound on our phone line. Since customers are allowed to do their own work on the lines inside the house, I opened the outside service box (customer access section) and did the following trouble shooting.

First I needed to determine if the buzz was from my line inside the house or the line owned by the phone company, outside the house. The box contains a standard plug that connects to the phone company's line. Simply plug a regular phone into this connection and listen for a buzz or clear dial tone as the case may be. In my case, I heard a clear connection, so the problem was with my line inside the house, not with the phone company's. Do this check first, as calling the phone company can be expensive if the fault is yours and you do not have "line guard insurance" (but see "Doing the Math" for actual costs).

The connections are quite simple; most do-it-yourselfers can do their own basic trouble shooting. Tip: if any phone on the line has a problem, then all phones on that line will be affected.

You can narrow down the problem by removing phone lines (in wired pairs) one by one until the buzzing stops. The line you removed last is causing the problem.

In my case there was an old line that was not being used and was grounding. Simply removing this old wiring solved the problem.

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