When your land line telephone service goes wonky on you -- no dial tone, noise, whatever -- you want to be certain that it's the telephone company's fault before you call them for service. The best, quickest way to make sure is to disconnect the phone company's wire pair from your dwelling, and connect a known-good telephone set directly to the company's phone line. If the problem persists with that arrangement, you know that it's the phone company's problem, and you can call them for service without fear of being dinged for a hefty service charge.
You'll need to get at the telephone line connection box on the outside of your house. Here's a view of mine; it's at the side of the house under the carport.
That's an ancient Northern Telecom rig. To open it, you force the cover's sides outward slightly at the bottom, then slide the cover off upward. And here's a view of the box's innards.
The phone line connections will be obvious. A 3/8" nutdriver is needed for the terminals shown in the above photo. Undo the connections to free the phone company's two wires from the house. Then all you need is a rig like this.
Just a regular phone jack box with the cover removed, and two alligator clip leads. Connect the free ends of the test leads to the phone company's wires, plug in your phone set and see what you get. If you get a normal dial tone instead of whatever symptom you were experiencing, then you know that the trouble is in your house's phone wiring, or in a piece of equipment that you have connected inside. If you get the same symptom that you had before, you know that the trouble is with the phone company, and you can confidently call them and tell them so.
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