Fitting 2 phones on 1 line.

August 8, 2009 9:19 AM

My (land line) phone splitter stopped working and I don't know why.

I was out of town for a few days and when I returned, there was no dial tone on the line. I removed the splitter so that I could report it broken without any intermediate devices being blamed for the problem. They (Verizon) fixed it at their end but now it only works without the splitter, or with only 1 line plugged into the splitter. Is it possible that they reduced the signal strength so it can no longer support an extension? If that is the case, do there exist signal amplifiers that will solve the problem?

posted by Obscure Reference to technology (5 comments total)

Buy a new splitter. Too cheap not to try that first. Most of them are pretty shoddy quality, and it doesn't take much (a stiff tug or bump) to render them useless.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 9:28 AM on August 8

I second the new splitter... chrisfromtheic nailed it... is it always the same side of the splitter that doesn't work?
posted by HuronBob at 9:38 AM on August 8

I had an (unopened) spare and just tried it. It behaves the same way.
posted by Obscure Reference at 9:41 AM on August 8

There is a maximum number of devices that a telephone line can support. See Ringer Equivalence Number. But it should be more than two unless they've set something wrong on their end or you have some oddball device(s).

Are the two devices hooked up to the splitter the only ones on your line? Do you have other phone jacks in your place? If so, try hooking up the devices to the other jacks, singly, on separate jacks, and on a splitter on a different jack. If don't live in a single family dwelling is it possible one of your neighbors had work done in their unit that could have interfered with your line? Can you talk to Verizon again and ask what possibly could have changed on their end when you were gone?
posted by 6550 at 10:38 AM on August 8

6550 asks some good questions. Try those suggestions and reply back.

Is it possible that your phone/device is bad? Do you have DSL? If so, are you running through the DSL splitter FIRST?

The trick we often used at the ISP I worked at was to tell $telco that your fax machine stopped working. They'll often lower the voltage to clean up noise problems, which wreck havoc with modem/DSL connections versus actually FIXING the faulty wiring/crossconnects/etc. It's possible that they may have done this, and a cheap phone could cause the line to hang "open".
posted by chrisfromthelc at 12:37 PM on August 8