If you're having problems with your landline phone, you're not alone. Millions of people each year experience problems with their home phones, and often don't know where to turn for help. In this article, we'll outline some of the most common problems people experience with their home phones, and offer troubleshooting tips to help you get your phone up and running again.
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Troubleshooting Landline Phone Problems
Here we’ll explore the step-by-step solutions to the commonest landline phone problems.
1. No Dial Tone
No dial tone on landline is frustrating! If your landline phone doesn’t give a dial tone sound when placing a call, there must be an issue with your copper connection. Generally speaking, it happens due to the degradation of the copper wires connecting your telephone and the phone network.
To check if the issue is with your copper wires, ensure your telephone is securely connected to the wall jack. If you’re using a wireless telephone, make sure its battery is functional and its base unit is connected to an outlet.
Once it’s confirmed your copper wires are misbehaving, consider replacing them. But note that telecommunication companies are ceasing their copper landlines due to FCC’s permission. So, we recommend opting for a newer type of landline, like the cellular one.
2. Landline Not Working But Internet Works
If your internet and modem are working fine but the landline is dead, it indicates a problem with your modem or an internal network error. First, reboot the modem and see if it helps. If it doesn’t, make sure there’s no landline outage in your area. But if there’s no outage, consider contacting your landline provider and asking them to fix the issue.
3. Charging Issue
Your landline phone will not work if it doesn’t charge properly. In that case, try cleaning the battery contacts with a dry cloth and see if it charges now. If that doesn’t help, disconnect your AC adapter from the outlet and reconnect. Or, try another power outlet to ensure there isn’t a problem with the outlet. Lastly, replace your handset’s batteries to see if the existing batteries are dead.
4. Phone Says No Line
If your telephone doesn’t detect an active phone line, it’ll display the No Line error. The quickest fix is to ensure your phone base and phone jack are connected. If they’re not, it indicates a problematic telephone cable. In that case, replace your phone cable with a new one to fix the issue. But if that doesn’t help, check if your copper wire connection is working fine. If not, you may need to replace your copper wire cables too.
5. No Link to Base
If your handset cannot connect to the base, disconnect the base’s AC adapter from the outlet and reconnect it after a minute. But if it doesn’t work, re-register your handset on the base or try another power outlet.
6. Cannot Make Outgoing Calls
If you’re unable to make outgoing calls from your telephone, it may not be connected to the wall jack. In that case, replace your telephone line cable with a new one to eliminate the issue. But if your existing telephone line is fine, check with your telephone provider to ensure there’s no outage in your area. You can also try unplugging all your phone equipment and replugging them after a minute to overcome this problem.
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End Faulty Landline Problems With Community Phone
Problems with traditional landlines will increase in the coming days as FCC order 19-72 allows telcos to shut down copper wire landlines nationwide. Lines laid in the 80s and 90s would have deteriorated, causing no dial tone issues, patchy service, and downtime.
Maintenance and support requests from customers may fall on deaf ears as telecom companies do not want to invest in copper wire infrastructure anymore. They want customers to upgrade to an expensive bundle or VoIP-based internet phones.
Bundled landline connections are not affordable options for everyone, and VoIP-based phones are unreliable, go down with network or power outages, and are dependent on high-speed internet.
If you want to continue using your landline, switch to Community Phone, the best home phone service in the US. Read on to learn more!
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How To Reset A Landline Phone
You can fix many of your landline phone problems just by resetting your phone. Follow the steps below to do that:
Step 1: Disconnect the Main Base Unit From the Power Supply
Start by disconnecting your home phone’s base device from the power outlet. This will terminate your telephone’s connection to the telephone line until the base unit is powered back up.
Step 2: Remove the Batteries
As most phone systems carry batteries nowadays, we recommend removing them for an effective landline phone reset. Simply turn your base unit over, open its lid, and disconnect the batteries. If you’re using a handset, remove its batteries as well.
Step 3: Wait for 1 Hour
Once you’ve cut the power of your landline phone system thoroughly, let it sit for over 1 hour before doing anything. This automatically resets your landline phone.
Step 4: Re-Insert the Batteries Into the Handsets
After 1 hour, your landline phone should have been reset. Now, it’s time to reconnect batteries to your base unit and handsets.
Step 5: Power Up the Base Unit
Next, connect your base device to a power outlet for powering it up. Once your phone boots up, reconfigure it from the start and that’s it – the landline phone issues you may have been facing might be fixed.
Read More here: How to Use A Landline?
Frequently Asked Questions
How to report a faulty line?
If your telephone line is misbehaving, simply contact your landline provider’s support service to report the issue. You can find their contact number on your phone bill. Your landline service provider will register the complaint and get the line fixed.
What happens if you short-circuit a phone line?
If you accidentally short-circuit your phone line, it will not be functional anymore. Despite this, the short circuit is not dangerous since the current flowing through a phone line is relatively low, usually around 20 milliamps. You may not even sense such a low electric current.
Can an electrician fix a landline phone?
Generally speaking, electricians are qualified for fixing a landline phone. But hiring a telephone technician is generally a better solution. Either way, ensure you find a competent and experienced person for professional service.
The Bottom Line
Most of your landline phone problems can be fixed at home, by only resetting your phone or disconnecting and reconnecting all its parts. But the issue could be from your provider’s end too, like a service downtime.
If you feel your telephone line is faulty and annoys you now and then, you might want to replace it with a more professional home/ business phone service like CommunityPhone.