| Message-ID: <20230213230655.GA1520881@telecomdigest.us>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2023 18:06:55 -0500
From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: I'm ditching the cable company - someday
On Sat, Feb 11, 2023 at 06:46:19PM -0500, Bill Horne wrote:
>
>
> Richard called me on Wednesday morning, and said he'd be right over:
> he was at the Central Office, a couple of miles away from my house.
>
[snip]
>
> I called the new POTS number from my cellphone - Callcentric is a
> non-portable provider, according to Frontier - and it rang once and
> tripped and all I heard was crackling. If I picked up the phone
> quickly, I could talk on it, with a lot of static, so I realized that
> the "protector" on my side of the demarc had probably punched through
> years ago, and was now causing ring-trip-idle faults.
>
> [snip]
>
This morning, at 8:05 AM, Paul called me about the problem with the
phone line. I said “Now is fine” when he asked if he could come over
right away.
I went through the things I had looked for, and told Paul that the
wiring on my side of the demarc showed a 7,000 ohm cross if I measured
it with the red lead on the red wire, but a 12,500 ohm cross when I
reversed the leads.
Paul went downstairs, and after about ten minutes he came back and
told me “I found it!” He invited me to see the source of the problem,
and took me outside and down to the lower level, and showed me a
“mystery” wire that vanished into the overhead from a junctoin box on
the outside wall.
We traded jokes about Black Helicopters and Chinese balloons, but I
had to agree that it was probably there from the days when customers
paid for each extension phone, and he left the wires laid back so that
the phone line would work with the trimline-style phone I have plugged
in to it inside the house.
It has voice mail. There was no way to avoid it. I couldn't get a line
with a regular busy signal instead, and I asked several times. I
didn't want call waiting, and I didn't have to have it, and I could do
without conference-calling, so that’s not on their either.
But, I’ll stop kvetching: it works, and my wife can get calls while
sitting at her computer, or dial 911, and that’s the important part.
Bill Horne
--
(Please remove QRM for direct replies)
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