Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another
room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

At the outside junction box I see two cables coming from the telephone
pole, with the wires from the cables going to a spaghetti of wires and
screws at the top of the inside of the junction box.

Just below this mess there is a left and right side with each side
having: a jack (with a telephone cable plugged in) and just below that,
four screws: Red, Green, Yellow and Black.

(Im hoping I dont have to wire the spaghetti terminals to the four
terminals below it myself)

The left side has NO wires going to ANY of the R,G,Y,B terminals. and
if I disconnect the cable that goes to the left jack, and plug in a
phone, I hear NO dial tone. Strangely enough, I have reason to
believe that the left side is my WORKING line 1. Even though the jack
doesnt work, and theres no wires, I have no problems with my dsl or my
phone inside the house. Im assuming the connection is being made
somewhere in the bundled rats nest above the terminals.

The right side, which I believe is the additional line that telephone
company installed also has NO dial tone when I connect a phone directly
into the junction box right termial side. It also has no wires going
to any of the terminals below it.

I have telephone cable that is going to the new room where line 2 will
be, since the jack at the junction box itself isnt working (need a dsl
filter?), but Im not sure where (left or right side) it should go.

I know line 2 should be on the yellow and black wires from the phone
company cable, but since theres two cables with two sides its all the
more confusing. Im told that this house used to have 2 or more phone
lines installed...

Im pretty sure I know how the R/G (line1), Y/B (line2) works once the
cable goes in the house and how to wire it to the modular jack
depending on which line you want, but its the outside of the house that
Im having trouble with.

Any suggestions what to look for?

wrote:

Any suggestions what to look for?

have you tried to mimmick their wiring?

you've got a working sample

wire up the vacant modular jack

however! i know for a fact you have no use for the second door on the
box that says
"TELEPHONE COMPANY ACCESS ONLY" or something like that

if you have a subscription, I hate to sound like an idiot but why not
call them

I know you say they say it's fine, but you know it's not!

tell them don't argue with you, you are the customer

wrote:
Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another
room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

At the outside junction box I see two cables coming from the telephone
pole, with the wires from the cables going to a spaghetti of wires and
screws at the top of the inside of the junction box.

Just below this mess there is a left and right side with each side
having: a jack (with a telephone cable plugged in) and just below that,
four screws: Red, Green, Yellow and Black.

(Im hoping I dont have to wire the spaghetti terminals to the four
terminals below it myself)

The left side has NO wires going to ANY of the R,G,Y,B terminals. and
if I disconnect the cable that goes to the left jack, and plug in a
phone, I hear NO dial tone. Strangely enough, I have reason to
believe that the left side is my WORKING line 1. Even though the jack
doesnt work, and theres no wires, I have no problems with my dsl or my
phone inside the house. Im assuming the connection is being made
somewhere in the bundled rats nest above the terminals.

The right side, which I believe is the additional line that telephone
company installed also has NO dial tone when I connect a phone directly
into the junction box right termial side. It also has no wires going
to any of the terminals below it.

I have telephone cable that is going to the new room where line 2 will
be, since the jack at the junction box itself isnt working (need a dsl
filter?), but Im not sure where (left or right side) it should go.

I know line 2 should be on the yellow and black wires from the phone
company cable, but since theres two cables with two sides its all the
more confusing. Im told that this house used to have 2 or more phone
lines installed...

Im pretty sure I know how the R/G (line1), Y/B (line2) works once the
cable goes in the house and how to wire it to the modular jack
depending on which line you want, but its the outside of the house that
Im having trouble with.

Any suggestions what to look for?

Did you try rewiring any of the existing jacks in the house to work
with the second line?

A phone works with two wires. The wire coming to the box from the street
will have several pairs of wires. Only one pair is needed to work the
phone. The rest are not used. Simply test each pair with a phone until you
find the pair that works.

wrote:
Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another
room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

At the outside junction box I see two cables coming from the telephone
pole, with the wires from the cables going to a spaghetti of wires and
screws at the top of the inside of the junction box.

Just below this mess there is a left and right side with each side
having: a jack (with a telephone cable plugged in) and just below that,
four screws: Red, Green, Yellow and Black.

(Im hoping I dont have to wire the spaghetti terminals to the four
terminals below it myself)

The left side has NO wires going to ANY of the R,G,Y,B terminals. and
if I disconnect the cable that goes to the left jack, and plug in a
phone, I hear NO dial tone. Strangely enough, I have reason to
believe that the left side is my WORKING line 1. Even though the jack
doesnt work, and theres no wires, I have no problems with my dsl or my
phone inside the house. Im assuming the connection is being made
somewhere in the bundled rats nest above the terminals.

The right side, which I believe is the additional line that telephone
company installed also has NO dial tone when I connect a phone directly
into the junction box right termial side. It also has no wires going
to any of the terminals below it.

I have telephone cable that is going to the new room where line 2 will
be, since the jack at the junction box itself isnt working (need a dsl
filter?), but Im not sure where (left or right side) it should go.

I know line 2 should be on the yellow and black wires from the phone
company cable, but since theres two cables with two sides its all the
more confusing. Im told that this house used to have 2 or more phone
lines installed...

Im pretty sure I know how the R/G (line1), Y/B (line2) works once the
cable goes in the house and how to wire it to the modular jack
depending on which line you want, but its the outside of the house that
Im having trouble with.

Any suggestions what to look for?

If you have two separate lines coming into the outside junction box
then your previous line is one and your newline is the other. Now
Connect your new phone wires ,Red and Green, to the Red and green wires
of the new incoming line. Just that simple.
If you only had one line coming in from street and had two different
phone numbers (different lines) then your new line would be YB as that
line would have at least four wires in it also, any others would be
spare gear.. But that is not your case you have to differentincoming
lines.
Jack

Pat wrote:
A phone works with two wires. The wire coming to the box from the
street will have several pairs of wires. Only one pair is needed to
work the phone. The rest are not used. Simply test each pair with a
phone until you find the pair that works.

Which, if you're lucky, will be your neighbor's live line meaning you won't
get charged for long distance.

wrote:
Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another
room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

At the outside junction box I see two cables coming from the telephone
pole, with the wires from the cables going to a spaghetti of wires and
screws at the top of the inside of the junction box.

Just below this mess there is a left and right side with each side
having: a jack (with a telephone cable plugged in) and just below that,
four screws: Red, Green, Yellow and Black.

(Im hoping I dont have to wire the spaghetti terminals to the four
terminals below it myself)

The left side has NO wires going to ANY of the R,G,Y,B terminals. and
if I disconnect the cable that goes to the left jack, and plug in a
phone, I hear NO dial tone. Strangely enough, I have reason to
believe that the left side is my WORKING line 1. Even though the jack
doesnt work, and theres no wires, I have no problems with my dsl or my
phone inside the house. Im assuming the connection is being made
somewhere in the bundled rats nest above the terminals.

The right side, which I believe is the additional line that telephone
company installed also has NO dial tone when I connect a phone directly
into the junction box right termial side. It also has no wires going
to any of the terminals below it.

I have telephone cable that is going to the new room where line 2 will
be, since the jack at the junction box itself isnt working (need a dsl
filter?), but Im not sure where (left or right side) it should go.

I know line 2 should be on the yellow and black wires from the phone
company cable, but since theres two cables with two sides its all the
more confusing. Im told that this house used to have 2 or more phone
lines installed...

Im pretty sure I know how the R/G (line1), Y/B (line2) works once the
cable goes in the house and how to wire it to the modular jack
depending on which line you want, but its the outside of the house that
Im having trouble with.

Any suggestions what to look for?

Hi,
What kind of service is that? They have to make sure line is working
before tech. takes off.

On 1 Sep 2006 11:45:43 -0700, wrote:

Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another
room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

At the outside junction box I see two cables coming from the telephone
pole, with the wires from the cables going to a spaghetti of wires and
screws at the top of the inside of the junction box.

Just below this mess there is a left and right side with each side
having: a jack (with a telephone cable plugged in) and just below that,
four screws: Red, Green, Yellow and Black.

(Im hoping I dont have to wire the spaghetti terminals to the four
terminals below it myself)

The left side has NO wires going to ANY of the R,G,Y,B terminals. and
if I disconnect the cable that goes to the left jack, and plug in a
phone, I hear NO dial tone. Strangely enough, I have reason to

What is your reason?

believe that the left side is my WORKING line 1. Even though the jack
doesnt work,

Are you sure the phone you are testing it with is a good phone. That
was my problem a couple months ago -- I thought I would remember which
spare phone was bad, but I forgot!

and theres no wires,

Then I doubt it is the one.

Do you have a line-splitting Y-connector? Or some name like that. It
looks like a Y-module-phone connector, but it has a 1 on one jack and
a 2 on the other. It takes the black and yellow, the outside wires,
and puts them in positisons 2 and 3 of the number 2 jack. You can use
it as a testing device, outside and inside the house. Start inside.
Plug it in to a good jack and then plug a phone into jack 1, then jack
2. Do they both work.

I have no problems with my dsl or my
phone inside the house. Im assuming the connection is being made
somewhere in the bundled rats nest above the terminals.

The right side, which I believe is the additional line that telephone
company installed also has NO dial tone when I connect a phone directly
into the junction box right termial side. It also has no wires going
to any of the terminals below it.

I have telephone cable that is going to the new room where line 2 will
be, since the jack at the junction box itself isnt working (need a dsl
filter?), but Im not sure where (left or right side) it should go.

I know line 2 should be on the yellow and black wires from the phone
company cable, but since theres two cables with two sides its all the
more confusing. Im told that this house used to have 2 or more phone
lines installed...

Im pretty sure I know how the R/G (line1), Y/B (line2) works once the
cable goes in the house

Then why are you messing around outside?

and how to wire it to the modular jack
depending on which line you want, but its the outside of the house that
Im having trouble with.

Any suggestions what to look for?

For any phone line that the phone company provides you, there should be an
interface box that has their wiring coming into one end of it and an RJ-11
jack at the other end. Everything leading up to that jack is their
responsibility. If you don't get a dial tone and all the phone services
you're paying for at that jack, you can call them and demand that they come
out and fix it. It's best to have a basic wired phone (two is better) for
testing purposes. You can use the phone that you keep around for power
outages. Just to make sure your phone works, you can take it to a neighbor's
house and try it out before calling the phone company. If you've signed up
for two phone lines, then they have to give you two interface boxes, each of
which you can plug a phone into and get phone service. Your first task is to
find where those boxes are, and if they don't give you a dial tone, let the
phone company fix it.

Once you know where your interface boxes are and you know that they are
working, then all you need to know is that the signal is carried by the red
and green wires. You can take a cable that has an RJ-11 plug at one end, and
whatever is convenient at the other end, and plug it into one of the
interface boxes, and make the necessary connections to get from the red and
green wires to the final destination. If you plug in a plain old touch-tone
phone and it gets a dial tone, but you don't get any tones when you press
the keys, then the wires (red and green) are reversed. You can either switch
them yourself or call the phone company and have them switch the wires at
their end. Newer more sophisticated phones work with reversed wires, so
that's not an issue there.

In article . com,
wrote:

Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another
room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

It is entirely possible that the second line was activated WITHOUT a
technician visit, particularly if the home has had two lines previously.

From your description, there is a SNID (Standard Network Interface Device) on
the outside of your home. There should be a jack-and-plug "bridge" for EACH
LINE in the SAME box.

If there ARE two jacks, each with a terminal strip with RGYB screws, but one
has NO wire attached, I would assume THAT is the new line.

The first generation of SNIs provided a four-conductor plug-n-jack feeding the
wire RGYB terminal strip. This was a poor design in that it allowed lazy
technicians to add a second line to that SINGLE bridge. The problem there is
that, without a two-line telephone or "splitter" for testing, one couldn't
access dialtone on that SINGLE jack for the SECOND line.

If there are TWO jacks inside the SNI, the first/original line was originally
activated on the RIGHT side. That may have been reversed over the years if
there have previously been two lines at that premise.

If there is only ONE jack inside the SNI, you may find the new line on the
Yellow/Black binding posts if present.

Regardless, if you are unable to access EACH LINE on its own jack inside the
SNI, you should call TPC (the phone company) and have them do a proper
installation. They should NOT charge for such a "repair" call. Good luck!
--

JR

Thanks.. before calling the phone company I called a friend to give it
a look just as a sanity check. What we discovered was that there are
TWO cables coming from the telephone pole to TWO separate junction
boxes. The 2 junction boxes are connected together by a ground wire.

The first cable is going to an old looking junction box. There is only
1 pair of wires coming out of this cable and they are indeed my phone
line #1. In theory, there should be 2 pairs (for 2 lines), however
since the the home was built in 1955 we suspect that it was intentially
designed with only one line in mind. We were thinking of splicing the
insulating shielding back a bit to see if perhaps the other pair of
wires are present, but we decided against it.

Cable number two is going to the newer looking junction box. From
within this box, neither jack produces a dial tone, and no R/G or Y/B
connection to a phone yields a dial tone.

The telephone company is pretty adamant that the phone line is up and
working correctly, and if they send a technician they will charge $155
to tell me the problem is inside the house. I figure I should do it,
and just have them prove to me that they can get a dial tone on the
second line from outside of the house.






Jim Redelfs wrote:
In article . com,
wrote:

Im having a bit of trouble adding a new phone line (number) to another
room. According to the telephone company, the second line is up.

It is entirely possible that the second line was activated WITHOUT a
technician visit, particularly if the home has had two lines previously.

From your description, there is a SNID (Standard Network Interface Device) on
the outside of your home. There should be a jack-and-plug "bridge" for EACH
LINE in the SAME box.

If there ARE two jacks, each with a terminal strip with RGYB screws, but one
has NO wire attached, I would assume THAT is the new line.

The first generation of SNIs provided a four-conductor plug-n-jack feeding the
wire RGYB terminal strip. This was a poor design in that it allowed lazy
technicians to add a second line to that SINGLE bridge. The problem there is
that, without a two-line telephone or "splitter" for testing, one couldn't
access dialtone on that SINGLE jack for the SECOND line.

If there are TWO jacks inside the SNI, the first/original line was originally
activated on the RIGHT side. That may have been reversed over the years if
there have previously been two lines at that premise.

If there is only ONE jack inside the SNI, you may find the new line on the
Yellow/Black binding posts if present.

Regardless, if you are unable to access EACH LINE on its own jack inside the
SNI, you should call TPC (the phone company) and have them do a proper
installation. They should NOT charge for such a "repair" call. Good luck!
--

JR

In article . com,
wrote:

The telephone company is pretty adamant that the phone line is up and
working correctly, and if they send a technician they will charge $155
to tell me the problem is inside the house. I figure I should do it,
and just have them prove to me that they can get a dial tone on the
second line from outside of the house.

If you have plugged a WORKING telephone into ALL available jacks in the
SNI(s), and do NOT get two, different dialtones, the trouble is THEIRS.

Call 'em. Accept the POSSIBLE charges and have them come out when you are
HOME. If you (and your consultant/friend) are complete idiots and failed to
find a working phone and properly plug it into an otherwise good, working
outlet INSIDE the SNI, the $155 is a small price to pay to have your appalling
condition (stupidity) revealed and proven.

Since I suspect you are NOT stupid, it's an easy bet. If they STILL charge
you, complain to your state's public service commission. Many, if not most,
states DO NOT allow the billing of a Trouble Isolation Charge, even if the
service is working OK AT THE SNI, unless you invite the technician inside for
further repairs.

Gawd, I can't STAND these arrogant and obstinate telcos that give my industry
a bad name. One would think that would have changed when they broke up the
Bell System monopoly in 1984. In MANY cases, it improved customer service but
I am continually amazed at the old "Bell System think" that persists to this
day. (Lily Tomlin's Ernestine The Operator: We don't need you, we're the
PHONE COMPANY!!)

We *DO* need you. Now more than ever. Make 'em EARN their money. Call 'em
out if there isn't dialtone on any SNI jacks.

(Lazy *******s: When they added the second line for the very first time, the
existing service should have been upgraded to the new SNI. I hate that that
is too often NOT done.) Good luck!
--

JR