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Why does nobody talk about the old phone line trick failing on modern panels?
I had a job last week in a 1980s house where the customer insisted on keeping their old monitored system. The panel needed a new communicator, so I wired it up to their existing copper phone line like I've done a hundred times. Tested it, got a dial tone, everything seemed fine. Two days later, they call me furious because the central station never got a test signal. I went back, and the line was dead silent. Turns out the local phone company had quietly switched that neighborhood to fiber-to-the-node, and the old copper pair in the house wasn't actually connected to anything functional anymore. The dial tone I heard was probably some leftover battery voltage on abandoned wiring. It cost me half a day and a service call fee to eat because I looked like a fool. Has anyone else run into this phantom phone line issue recently, and what's your go-to fix now?
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margaret2341mo ago
That "phantom phone line" thing is a real trap. I used to trust a dial tone too, but now I just skip straight to a cellular unit.
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the_daniel1mo ago
Wait, what's a phantom phone line?
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