Phone isn't working but Internet is.

Fortescue

Our landline phone service is provided by Post Office Phones and the ISP is Talk Talk..

Yesterday there was no dialling tone and the phone displayed a 'Check Line' message.

I have found that if the phone is plugged straight into the master socket it seems to work OK although, of course, internet connection is lost.

I fitted a new ADSL filter this morning but this does not resolve the situation.

I've reported the problem to Post Office Phones by Email and the auto reply stated that they would get back to me within five working days.

I'm the carer for my very elderly father who is not in the best of health so a functioning landline is vital.

If anyone has any advice as to what could be done to attempt to resolve the problem in the meantime, I would be pleased to hear from you.

TIA

Neil_Jones

If the phone line works when you connect it to the master socket, then the line is working fine.  What using this hidden socket does is disconnect the extensions, which tells you that's where the problem is.  If you connect the filter to the hidden socket and connect the cable and phone in the normal way and everything now works, then the issue is on your side of the phone line and unless you want Openreach to charge you money for fixing what is not their responsibility, you would need to sort it.

Fortescue

Many thanks for your response, Neil, I'm very grateful to you.

Over the past twenty minutes or so I disconnected my router and once again plugged in the phone to the master socket.

I made an outbound call to my mobile and took an inbound one as well.

Then, having returned to the default set up of phone and internet connection all seems to be working OK once again.

I've done a broadband speed test and get a download speed of 12.0 Mbps which is quite adequate for my needs.

Earlier in the day with the phone not working I was getting 2.1 Mbps.

I suppose I cannot rule out Post Office Phones having coincidentally tweaked something somewhere but have not received any communication from them.

I think it is probably time to invoke the old engineering principle of 'working well, leave it alone!'

Thanks again, Neil.

Farway

Fortescue said:

Our landline phone service is provided by Post Office Phones and the ISP is Talk Talk..

Yesterday there was no dialling tone and the phone displayed a 'Check Line' message.

I have found that if the phone is plugged straight into the master socket it seems to work OK although, of course, internet connection is lost.

I fitted a new ADSL filter this morning but this does not resolve the situation.

I've reported the problem to Post Office Phones by Email and the auto reply stated that they would get back to me within five working days.

I'm the carer for my very elderly father who is not in the best of health so a functioning landline is vital.

If anyone has any advice as to what could be done to attempt to resolve the problem in the meantime, I would be pleased to hear from you.

TIA

My bold. I know it's all sorted now, but is the landline & your father registered on the PO vulnerable list?

My mother was which meant PO [open reach] came out on Christmas Day and repaired a fault in road side cabinet.

I only mention it just in case & now would seem be the time to register if not already done

Fortescue

Many thanks for that suggestion, Farway.

Dad isn't registered as vulnerable, although he would no doubt qualify.

In the past couple of weeks I've had to call NHS 111 in the middle of the night on successive nights and subsequently received calls from the out of hours GP service. On the second occasion it resulted in his being admitted to hospital by ambulance at 0330.

I do have a simple PAYG phone so Dad can get hold of me when I have to leave the house for shopping etc,. and although calls to 111 aren't chargeable, I do not feel I can rely on it for a number of reasons, so the landline is of the utmost importance.

Thanks once again,

Fortescue

steviebuk

As other have said. If the phone in the master socket works and the phone wasn't working when plugged into an extension. Then it will be the extension that is at fault, which, unfortunately you'd have to check. They are easy to look at though. You say its now working. Its possible there is a loose cable in the extension. There are plenty of guides on YouTube on getting extensions working.

Parents had lost Internet some months back, before Covid so I popped round. The router is in the spare room on an extension which has always had an old, crappy, box. So I took the router to the master socket and checked. All OK at that point so I knew it was the extension. Opened up the extension and all cables seemed fine, but I pulled them out anyway (noting which points they are plugging into, that info is on the net, I can't remember the numbers now. Its actually only 2 points you need connecting, the bell wire is no longer needed). Pulled out the cables and recrimped them into the slots. I forgot my puncher so just pushed them in with a flat blade screw driver. Tested and again and all working.

So could be same issue to yours.

Neil_Jones

steviebuk said:

Opened up the extension and all cables seemed fine, but I pulled them out anyway (noting which points they are plugging into, that info is on the net, I can't remember the numbers now. Its actually only 2 points you need connecting, the bell wire is no longer needed).

Numbers 2 and 5 are the only ones needed.  Number 3 is the bell wire and you'll often find number 4 connected as well, though it doesn't actually do anything in a normal home setup, but seems to be used for PABX systems in business systems, though a lot of that functionality is now done over digital systems/internet/VOIP so its largely redundant.

clive0510

if it happens again get a new phone. amazon or argos.

Fortescue

Thank you, Farway, steviebuk, Neil_Jones and clive0510, I am grateful to you all.

I think that the cabling between the master socket and extension phone/router may indeed be the problem as suggested.

It was installed some years ago to less than professional standards, ie mine.

Working OK at the moment so I'll adopt the 'watch and pray' principle pro tem.

Any rewiring would cause more than a little domestic upheaval and I've already got my hands full in that direction.

Speaking of which, I'd better get Sunday lunch under way.

Thanks again, everyone.