Phone line nightmare

[MMKING]

Help! We recently moved into a house where half the phone jacks work, and half don't. I am guessing that there were two lines at one point coming into the house. The attic and the area over the dropped ceiling are riddled with phone lines branching this way and that (previous owner was a do it yourselfer par non-excellance).

Easiest fix at the box? If it is truly set up for dual lines, I can just connect both "circuits" to the incoming line, right?

Any thoughts? We have 10 jacks in our house....3 work.

THanks in advance for your help!

[dkerr]

both lines most likely are ending up at the same location, (entrance of phone line into the house).And putting both lines onto the same incoming line. whether it is done at a terminal inside or outside the house depends on how your entrance is set up, sometimes on the outside there is a terminal with a cover over, remove the cover, and just move one pair over to the other. Sometimes one wire from each line is conencted to a single conection screw, in that case, the other wire gets moved, (the wire from each line on a common screw gets left alone), of the remaining 2 screws move one wire to connect to the other.

If you have a jack for each line inside near the line entrance, than you could use a phone line cord jumper between the two to connect both together.

If it is a single house, you may have a terminal block on the outside wall of your house, and you may be able to move the wire there. just one wire moved (remember where it came from in case you moved the wrong one)

If you still further instruction please repost. Because sometimes a different colored pair is used for the second line from the same cable run.