Dialling Tone but cannot make or receive calls,why?

pippy100

Sorry if i have posted this in the wrong section, but hope someone can help.
My parents have recently moved home and the house has a series of phone line sockets.
There is a phone and socket in the hall, working.
2 sockets in the living room, 1 doesn't work( doesn't have a dialling tone) and 1 has a dialling tone but cannot ring out or ring when has an incoming call.
2 sockets in the bedroom 1 doesn't work and the other works.

They have been set up on plusnet for home phone and broadband(not sure if this is relevant).
How or why do they have a dialling tone on 1 socket but cannot use the phone?

Any help appreciated? Thanks

spike7451

It could be a disconnected second line.Some providors leave the line active with a dialing tone but the call facility is disconnected.

pippy100

spike7451 wrote: »

It could be a disconnected second line.Some providors leave the line active with a dialing tone but the call facility is disconnected.

That's what i was wondering, does anyone know how i go about finding out if it is a second line?
Ideally they would need to use this socket for the phone as my mum is disabled and has to get up to answer the phone and the socket and phone in the hall doesn't have/need electric and it is not cordless. They also have an answer machine which needs to plug in and at the moment it is in the bedroom which is not ideal.
Any suggestions?

Heinz

17070 normally works if there's a dial tone - so you can at least check that those are all the same line.

Then, a DECT cordless base station with built-in answering machine can be sited wherever has power and phone sockets and extra handsets/charger pods can go anywhere there's a power socket.

pippy100

Heinz wrote: »

17070 normally works if there's a dial tone - so you can at least check that those are all the same line.

Then, a DECT cordless base station with built-in answering machine can be sited wherever has power and phone sockets and extra handsets/charger pods can go anywhere there's a power socket.

They have tried the 17070 and it just gave them a tone(something along the lines of an incorrect number tone?)
So no joy there, the problem we have Heinz is no working phone socket in living room, working phone socket in hall but no electric. Working phone socket and electric in bedroom but they do not want the answer machine and phone in the bedroom and they do not have any extra handsets. So short of buying an extra handset which would be annoying as in total the house has what looks like 6 phone sockets but only 2 work fully. x

spike7451

Problem is you can't check which wire goes where without a cable tracer.Valuable bit of kit for any telco engineer.Your best bet would be to see if the's any handyman/spark in the yellow pages to come & have a look at it for you.Or if they are planning on getting Sky tv installed,the installer can run a phoneline from the hall to the Sky box in the living room (It's part of his job anyway) that they can use for the phone.

pippy100

Thanks Spike,
If they are wanting the phone sorted that's the only thing i can think of is getting someone in to have a look.

As for sky, they have come and installed it and extended the phoneline from the socket that has the dialling tone but doesn't work(Doh!!) this was done a day after they had moved in and at the time we did not realise it was not fully working.

If we were to ring BT do you think they would be able to give any advice to how many phone lines the house had?

Buzby

I would say it was unliukely BT would be able to give any reliable answer. From what you've said, you haven't actually established there are two lines, only that there is dial tone you cannot break from some sockets.

In your situation, dial a free number from one of the working phones 0800 500 005 is usually a laugh. Leave this playing and go to the other sockets, is there still dial tone, or do you hear the recorded information? If the former - you have 2 lines, if the latter you've only 1 and something is faulty.

Once you know this, you can investigate further by looking for the Master Sockets (you should have one for each line), and use a working phone from the test point for the 17070 check.

spike7451

BT wouldn't keep any records as to what extensions are in the house as they're not their responsibility.I'd ring Sky & blag on that the installer fitted the phone extension to a non-working phoneline/socket & wing it.They may try & charge you £65 but haggle it down,it'd possibly be cheaper than getting someone like a spark to have a look.