Not too sure if this should go here ? ( Mod's please move if necessary )

I have a TOT land line that been working ok, and its gone Dead ( no sounds at all )

The TOT cable comes from the over head main Telephone cables and goes to a connection box on the

concrete pole out side the house , then from the connection box it goes underground in a PVC pipe along with

the 240 Volt Mains voltage armored cable into the house I have been to the small connection box

on the concrete pole to visually check the connections and they appear dry and connected ok

I then checked the telephone line voltage at one of the house telephone wall outlets

using a Digital DC volt meter - its as follows..

Red cable and the wall socket Earth ground connection = 53.6 VDC

Green cable and the wall socket Earth ground connection = 66.2 VDC

Between the Red and Green telephone cables = 10.3 VDC

can any one please tell me if the above looks right ?

One funny Thing that did happen , the phone was all ready dead and there was a power cut to the house just for a few seconds and the telephone rang once in its normal ring tone , when I checked the phone was still dead

Thanks

Houston we have a problem. Communication and power should never never never be mixed. You need to get somebody to fix this.

Phone line should be 50 VDC, ring is 90 VAC so be careful you might get a kick out of it..

Have you considered asking TOT to fix it?

Call 1177+your number (1177 02 123 45 67 for example - include the 02!) and they will come and get it solved even on weekends.

opalhort

Houston we have a problem. Communication and power should never never never be mixed. You need to get somebody to fix this.

Hi, The Telephone cable run's in side a large waterproof underground PVC pipe and lay's next to the house mains voltage armored

cable , could this be causing a problem ?

Thanks

Call 1177+your number (1177 02 123 45 67 for example - include the 02!) and they will come and get it solved even on weekends.

opalhort

Hi, Thanks for the number, I contacted the local TOT office 5 weeks ago when this problem first occurred , and have been contacting the same local

office every week since then, all I get is I am on the waiting list and there's a lot of repairs in my area. so I will now try the number you supplied

I was just hoping the problem could be some thing simple I could fix my self

The TOT cable comes from the over head main Telephone cables and goes to a connection box on the concrete pole out side the house , then from the connection box it goes underground in a PVC pipe along with the 240 Volt Mains voltage armored cable into the house

I can't help but wonder what effect this might have on your ADSL signal -- that is, if the same line was used to connect to the internet... You should definitely fix it.

Assuming you got all your phones disconnected when doing the voltage check to prevent any backfeed of voltage due to a faulty phone, you should have approx 50 VDC between the two wires feeding your phone(s), probably your red and green wires. Since you have 66.2 VDC on your green wire which should be around zero, that would indicate there is circuit issue outside of your home, probably at one of the phone companies junction boxes. I'm assuming your also measured for AC line voltage on the phone line...any AC voltage would indicate some AC voltage (probably line voltage) getting on the DC powered lines. Since running the phone line and power lines in separate conduits under ground to the house is pretty common (just like the hundreds of houses in my moobaan), I doubt that is causing your problem. Sounds like a circuit short/open/etc in one of the phone companies junction boxes or even all the way back to their central office/station for your areas. If the phone line entering the conduit before it goes underground is easily accessible and easily disconnected, you could do some voltage checks there to possibly eliminate the problem being with your house wiring. Cheers.

The brief power cut and phone ringing could be a lightning strike somewhere on the line. Was there a storm in them thar hills at the time?

Assuming you got all your phones disconnected when doing the voltage check to prevent any backfeed of voltage due to a faulty phone, you should have approx 50 VDC between the two wires feeding your phone(s), probably your red and green wires. Since you have 66.2 VDC on your green wire which should be around zero, that would indicate there is circuit issue outside of your home, probably at one of the phone companies junction boxes. I'm assuming your also measured for AC line voltage on the phone line...any AC voltage would indicate some AC voltage (probably line voltage) getting on the DC powered lines. Since running the phone line and power lines in separate conduits under ground to the house is pretty common (just like the hundreds of houses in my moobaan), I doubt that is causing your problem. Sounds like a circuit short/open/etc in one of the phone companies junction boxes or even all the way back to their central office/station for your areas. If the phone line entering the conduit before it goes underground is easily accessible and easily disconnected, you could do some voltage checks there to possibly eliminate the problem being with your house wiring. Cheers.

Hi and thanks for the comments , I have now checked the voltages at the small connection box on the concrete pole out side the house ( before the cable goes underground into the house ) and the voltages are the same as when read in side the house .

The brief power cut and phone ringing could be a lightning strike somewhere on the line. Was there a storm in them thar hills at the time?

Spot on yes there was a storm raging at the time

The TOT cable comes from the over head main Telephone cables and goes to a connection box on the concrete pole out side the house , then from the connection box it goes underground in a PVC pipe along with the 240 Volt Mains voltage armored cable into the house

I can't help but wonder what effect this might have on your ADSL signal -- that is, if the same line was used to connect to the internet... You should definitely fix it.

Hi, the TOT land line is only used for the phone , but waiting 5 weeks so far for some one to even come and have a look is

Yup ^^^

Disconnect everything at the incoming wall box.

You should have about 50V on the incoming line, anything else hints at a fried protection device upstream somewhere. One line is ground (or there abouts) the other should be -50V WRT ground.

If you get 50V try hooking one (known good) phone on and see if things work. If not call the phone company again. If it works, time to investigate your house wiring.

Look for dead surge protectors.

If you are having difficulty getting an official service visit and depending on where you live if you spot a TOT truck in the local area maybe it would be worth a try to have you're wife or GF talk to the guy, explain the situation and offer him some noodle money if he would take some time and look at you're problem.

Another thought that I did not see? Is this phone line also the ADSL line? If so , when you called 1100 to report the problem did you say the ADSL is not working? I think they give a higher priority to ADSL lines.

And one more thought? Stop by the local TOT office and talk to the service manager there and be nice and explain the issues.

I can only comment on TOT service here in Ban Chang. Whenever I call for service to 1100 I almost always get a good English speaker and they give me the usual sympathetic ear and the say they will report the problem to the local service. Except in a worst case my problems have always been repaired in 24 hours or less. In about 75% of the times I get a callback after the repair to verify the repair

Assuming you got all your phones disconnected when doing the voltage check to prevent any backfeed of voltage due to a faulty phone, you should have approx 50 VDC between the two wires feeding your phone(s), probably your red and green wires. Since you have 66.2 VDC on your green wire which should be around zero, that would indicate there is circuit issue outside of your home, probably at one of the phone companies junction boxes. I'm assuming your also measured for AC line voltage on the phone line...any AC voltage would indicate some AC voltage (probably line voltage) getting on the DC powered lines. Since running the phone line and power lines in separate conduits under ground to the house is pretty common (just like the hundreds of houses in my moobaan), I doubt that is causing your problem. Sounds like a circuit short/open/etc in one of the phone companies junction boxes or even all the way back to their central office/station for your areas. If the phone line entering the conduit before it goes underground is easily accessible and easily disconnected, you could do some voltage checks there to possibly eliminate the problem being with your house wiring. Cheers.

Hi and thanks for the comments , I have now checked the voltages at the small connection box on the concrete pole out side the house ( before the cable goes underground into the house ) and the voltages are the same as when read in side the house .

You probably did this, but be sure the wires going to the house are "disconnected" at the connection box to ensure your house wiring is taken out of the circuit for the voltage test. Otherwise, you basically just did the same voltage test you initially did and are just measuring the same voltage but at a point X meters from your house. I expect the voltage will be about the same when the wires are disconnected because it just sounds like a phone company junction box/central station problem. Cheers.

I strongly advise against doing anything (including touching) your telephone cables. Why? They don't belong to you & if you damage them (& the equipment connected to them), you will be billed accordingly.

Even measuring voltages on these cables can cause damage if you do not have the approprite measuring equipment.

As others have said, forget about mucking around with these cables...contact the relevant telephone company. And yes, you will have to wait if you wish to avoid any unnecessary 'damage' bills.

The house side of of lightning proctor (if they even installed one) or connection box indeed do belong to you and you are responsible for them. If they were installed by phone company it was at a charge and they will normally only test up to the box. But they normally have a friend who will do for a fee.

I strongly advise against doing anything (including touching) your telephone cables. Why? They don't belong to you & if you damage them (& the equipment connected to them), you will be billed accordingly.

Even measuring voltages on these cables can cause damage if you do not have the approprite measuring equipment.

As others have said, forget about mucking around with these cables...contact the relevant telephone company. And yes, you will have to wait if you wish to avoid any unnecessary 'damage' bills.

The man has a multimeter and appears to know how to use it; highly unlikely he's going to damage anything unless he pokes himself in the eye with the multimeter probe tip. A multimeter is a high impedance device and places an extremely low load on the line. Even if he would stick the phone line into the wet, muddy ground all it would do is maybe blow a small fuse in the junction box/central station which happens frequently. Phone lines do carry approx 50 VDC but it has a very low current maximum due to the design of the circuity. When the last time you heard of someone getting electrocuted by plugging/unplugging their phone line?

Thanks to every one for your comments and advice, its appreciated , just an up date . Ive now doubled check every thing I can think of and ideas that have been posted here , The problem I am sure is not any thing to do with the underground telephone wiring or the internal house telephone wiring , I called the TOT number kindly supplied by opalhort and they were surprised at me having to wait 5 weeks , they then checked on their computer and found my original service request

made 5 weeks ago , and it had been tagged as being resolved and the customer's phone line was now working, I then pointed out that no engineer had called at my house, and no one from TOT had called me to comment or ask if I was at home Etc. So the current situation is the service operator who told me that my phone was tagged as now working is going to call my local TOT office and check out the situation .

not too sure what will happen next

The mother-in-law lives pretty out in the jungle and periodically (several times a year) has problems with her land phone line..bad connection somewhere outside the house. Normally, after she makes the service call (from her cell phone), TOT fixes the problem within 3 calendar days...normally 1 to 2 days. Your experience may vary...and obviously it has. I've heard numerous times from people of a service call being coded as resolved in the company's data system but it hasn't been fixed...maybe a technician doing long distance troubleshooting thought he fixed the problem but didn't follow-thru with the customer to confirm it was fixed. Good luck on getting the line fixed; my guess you'll be up and running in a day or two.

The mother-in-law lives pretty out in the jungle and periodically (several times a year) has problems with her land phone line..bad connection somewhere outside the house. Normally, after she makes the service call (from her cell phone), TOT fixes the problem within 3 calendar days...normally 1 to 2 days. Your experience may vary...and obviously it has. I've heard numerous times from people of a service call being coded as resolved in the company's data system but it hasn't been fixed...maybe a technician doing long distance troubleshooting thought he fixed the problem but didn't follow-thru with the customer to confirm it was fixed. Good luck on getting the line fixed; my guess you'll be up and running in a day or two.

hi, in the past when there's been a TOT land line problem, I just called the local TOT office and normally the TOT engineer who has been assigned the job would first ring me to see if any one was at home, then come to the house to check the problem, nearly all ways from what I can remember 'the problems have all been in some sort of main junction box , in the village I live in the telephone wires run along the Soi's and seem just to hang down un supported all over the place, then go into what I can only describe as a '' Bird's Nest '' junction box