Okay. So now the phone doesn't work.

Disclaimer: I only have experience with electrical wiring, not phone wiring, so my opinion has limited value.

It sounds like some water came in contact with the line and shorted it out. The wire was probably already damaged (you said you've had problems before) and the short finally finished off the remaining working parts of the line.

Or you could be lucky and there is only a temporary short between the phone line and another metal object caused by leaking water. If that's the case, the problem might fix itself as soon as things dry out around here.

(Look at the bright side; at least you got your furnace working in time for this latest cold snap.)

 

What happens if you call from your cell phone the home number?
- busy signal or ringing signal?

a busy signal might indicate a "faulty" line (shorted, grounded etc)
a ringing signal most probably indicates an open (disconnected) line.

Have you tried the ATT 800 750 2355 or 877 722 3755 numbers - most of the time they can run line diagnostics and auto dispatch a tech.

Edit:
The Network Interface Box is what the picture shows.
You could test the line if you have a spare phone extension wire ( one with small plastic connectors at both ends)
Plug one end to a phone and, after cutting off the connector at the other end, strip the red and green wires about 2 inches.
Wrap the wires to the two posts at the box (top side where the same color wires go)
If the line is working and there is no short in the house wiring you should her a dial tone.

 

OK - time for a deep breath (has a calming effect)

The box is on the outside of the house and I assume that is accessible from the street (no locked gates or such). In this case the phone tech will find it, check the line and if its not an in-house short will fix it and leave some note on your door. You don't have to be at home.

 

ROFLMAO Thats the best post ever!! Yeah dammit cancel the hard-line phone service and just use a cell phone. So many are doing that these days. As the services offered are better than what the hard-line companies are offering...

 

The first thing to try is to connect a working phone to the red and green wires on that interface box. Most any drug store has a phone jack that plugs into a phone, and inside that jack are red and green wires than can be connected.

There's not much that you can do to the wiring to damage anything, but you do need to be aware that there is about 100 volts on the wires when the phone rings. I've fiddled with the phone wiring bare handed, but it would really be safer to use gloves. The old rotary dial phones actually short the two connections together, so that's entirely safe as far as the equipment is concerned.

If a technician comes out, try to get a modern interface box installed. That way you'll be able to plug in any phone with a modular plug into the interface box. If the phone works at the interface box, then the line is working ok. If it doesn't, then either the phone or the line is bad.

Out of about a half dozen times that I've had a phone outage, the problem has been the phone line every time. Usually a problem at the connection box at the end of the street, but once it was squirrel damage up on the pole.

 

Godiva,

Based on my *limited* knowledge of the phone system (I'm an EE not a phone tech), here is my 2c.
Depending on how old your house is, you may have carbon element surge suppressors installed on the incoming lines to your house. These are designed to absorb transient voltages on the phone line and divert them to ground. The problem is over time they become resistive causing static in the line and eventually fail causing the line to go dead after they short out. They look like a .22 shell with a 5/16" hex cap on the end. They just turn into a metal holder inside the box. They would be located at the telco service entrance to your house, inside the box where the lines branch from the service entrance to your house. I attached the best picture I could find, sorry about the quality. They are to the left of the orange tool shown in the photo. If you can find them, unscrew them with a 6 point hex socket and check your line. If they are the problem you will get your dial tone back after you remove them. It should be ok to leave them uninstalled until the phone guy gets there (assuming you don't have any lightning storms nearby).

 

Using Cell Phone as home phone

For what it's worth, my uncle was asking me about using his cell phone as his home phone as HyCamGuy mentioned (ie. switching his home phone number to his cell, then being able to use the regular home phones to dial out from the cellphone and having the home phones ring on an incoming call). There is a docking station that will do this, called the Dock-N-Talk from PhoneLabs. You ditch your landline service, buy one of these gadgets, plug one end into a phone jack in your house and the other end into your cellphone and voila - your cellphone now controls your home phone! The problem is it is not compatible with fax machines or computer modems (due to cell network signalling), so if you are using a dial-up internet connection it wouldn't work for you.

Here's the manufacturer's website:
http://www.phonelabs.com/
They are about $115 at this vendor:
http://www.shoppingtelecom.com/shopcontroller/ShopRequestAdaptor.php?REQUEST01=4
000&REQUEST02=4003&catid=&afid=3&itemid=3465

 

Don't know if Godiva's problem has resolved itself, but... If you have DSL service and it is raining, somewhere along the way to the Central Office, your line could be completely waterlogged. The symptoms that were described have happened to my DSL connection from time-to-time and each time, it was a water-logged circuit. I even watched the repairman one time. They pulled a cable concentrator out of an underground connection point and it was full of water. The repair involved removing the connectors to my line, replacing the connectors with some new connector that has silicone gel in it (to seal out the water) and then dropping the whole thing (cable concentrator) back into the water-filled connection point. This routine happens about every 4-6 years. The good news is that the repair is on the phone company's dime, since the failure happens before the line terminates at the house. The bad news is that the phone company doesn't want to acknowledge that they have a problem. But if your line is completely down, they can't blame internal wiring. (Especially if you tell them you have disconnected everything from the line....)

Switching to cellular-only for voice is certainly an option if you have a real strong cellular signal. However, for data, the speed of the connection is still a bit on the slow side (500 - 600 kbps down/100 - 120 kbps up vs. 4 - 5 mbps down/700 kbps up).

 

cell phones are great. we haven't had a land line in nearly 4 years. we got so fed up with the phone company that we never looked back.

 

Cable modem and DSL are two different types of broadband internet services.

DSL vs Cable - Which Internet Service Is Better?

 

This is what happened to my inlaws this week, with the power outages. They have their phone through their cable/internet company, and they had no phone for 4 days, which was very tough for older people with limited mobility!
We have always kept one phone that doesn't require electricity to work, and it has been very handy this week! The cellphone worked okay, but several of the cell towers came down in the storm, and the cell battery doesn't last long, and with no electricity to recharge, that's an issue, too.
[That was just my 2 cents]

 

Godiva,
Have you thought about going with VoIP service? Vonage is one of the more popular, your phone service goes through your broadband connection, service seems quite good.

 

Isn't there a problem with 911 calls not working as well in some areas...? That used to be an issue, anyway, but maybe no longer.

Besides, I guess I'm old fashioned; there's something about a land line that says "home" to me.

 

A cell phone will *never* have the voice quality, warmth, and
immediacy of a landline. The "digital garblies" and high noise
cutoff floor and the goddam *DELAY* of cellphones is still almost
intolerable to me. Unfortunately people in the early days of
cellphones didn't vote with their wallets and say "we won't accept
this crap you call audio" and force them all to put some honest
work into it. You can do a lot in an 8Khz channel, but for
some reason the cell providers totally dropped the ball.
.
_H*