I use Southwestern Bell as my provider here in Fort Worth, Texas.

We've developed a problem with the telephone service where it has horrible static over the dialtone. The static/crackling is so severe you can't even call out, I mean you can, but you won't hear the other persons voice.

We called Southwestern Bell and asked them to come out, they said they would but they'd charge us $50 if nothing wrong was found. The next day I came home from work to find they found nothing wrong. I went right inside and checked the phone, I didn't even hear a dialtone, just intermittant crackling sounds.

I grabbed a screwdriver and went outside to the telephone inteface box. Took the panel off, and unplugged the house from the phone. I plugged a tone generator in to the house and when listening to the phone the tone was crisp and clear. Apparently the in-house wiring is OK.

I've tried a few other things:
Unplugging the house from the wire, plugging back in (Sometimes when I plug it back in I hear a busy signal tone. Other times I'll hear a off-hook tone. Sometimes I'll hear a distorted staticy dialtone. Sometimes I'll hear nothing but crackling and static.)

The Phone Co. insists it's within our house, and they'll repair it for $150/hr.

This can't be our house, because after connecting the house to a tone generator and testing it, (while unplugged from the telephone line at the pole) I've concluded that it CANT be our house. I've tried different phones too.

(We even have a DSL line we use for our internet, and it works, but it looses connection with the ISP a lot, obviously related to the problems with the phone. I've tried disconnecting the DSL thinking it was generating the problem, but the problem persists. I've noticed the DSL modem gets disconnected more often at night, and the static is worse at night too (around 1-2am))

Any suggestions on what the problem is who's worked with the Telco before? Anyway to get the telephone company to fix their problem?

do you have the dsl filters on your phones?

Disconnect all your telephones and answering machines.

Connect each telephone one at a time to see if the quality is any different between any of them. Isolate the faulty device and replace it. Make sure you try to eliminate those stupid converters that you have to attach when you got DSL are not faulty either.

If necessary, take a known good telephone and connect it to the wires outside. You'll see that the connection to your house is OK.

You can't assume that a tone generator is going to show a problem when your telephones are not receiving any power from SBC.

The one time this happened to us was after a lightening storm, it was our actual phones causing the issues. Replacing the phones did the trick, sucked but we eventually discontinued land line service and just stick with having cell phones now..

So before buying new phones.. try to get a cheap non-cordless one for like 10 bucks or borrow one to plug in and see if it does the same thing as your other phones, getting a clear signal from the box, it is something within the house itself or all of your phones got knocked out..

I had a similar problem once, it was a vine that had grown up the pole and wrapped itself around the phone box (which was attached to the pole) causing moisture damage. The phone company refused to come and look at it until the power company came and cleaned up the vine, since it was their pole (and so there was no risk of shock). It took several weeks for each party to get around to fixing their part of things, and several calls from me insisting that I wasn't liable.

In the end the phone company gave me a refund for one month's service.

Does the crackling ever clear up?

Sometimes the noise gets better or worse at times because of either temperature or more commonly because of moisture because the problem is often water getting in the lines. You can tell them to come at times when the problem is the worst so that you'll be sure that they will observe the problem.

If you can, connect a phone at the "demark" point on the outside of the house where you were connecting your tone generator with the house wiring disconnected to verify the problem is originating from their side. This is exactly what they will do to determine if there is a problem or not.
Of course also make sure that the phone itself is in good working order.

It also would help if someone could be at the house to demonstrate the problem to them.

In any case, don't let them "close the repair ticket" until you are satisfied with the repair, especially if they then try to charge you for a "no problem found". My experience with phone companies (which I do a lot of at my employment) is that about 20 percent of the company is very good, the other 80 percent are *very* incompetent, so you might try to find one of the 20 percent, then be sure to get their name so you might be able to ask for them later.

The competent ones know about intermittent crackling problems because this is a very common failure, and should be able to help you get the problem fixed.

i just went through the same issue with SBC.it took 3 years of calls and complaints before they finally replaced the cover over the phone box in the alley.every time it rained i would lose my phone,and for some reason the black plastic trash bag and duct tape (their "repair") didn't make a sufficient replacement for the metal box cover that was supposed to be there.
try calling from home when it happens and have them run a remote line test.let them know that you have tested the connection at the outside box,the wiring from that point out is their responsibility and not your liability.it can be frustrating for sure,at one point they changed my number without telling me and it was only after calling them i was told "we found a problem on that line so we changed it."

We have Verizon here, and some time ago we had a problem in which incoming calls would ring once, and I would get a dial tone when I picked up. My wife has to check up on her ailing parents, and she couldn't get them, and they couldn't talk to her half the time. Calling the repair number got us the runaround. The last straw was when we got a rather rude service technician who insisted the problem was in their home, and we knew better. We both did the interface box thing and still had the same problems. Finally, the wife called their customer service number and complained about how the service tech had treated her. They fixed the line next day! Also, she got a call from the area service manager who gave her his number, asking if she had ANY problems with her phone service to PLEASE call him before calling customer service!

You have to take a functional telephone and cord to the interface and where you unplug your wiring,plug it in. if it sounds bad, make sure to verify that the telephone is actually in good working order, then call the repair service and meet them out there and make them show you how they are checking service. if they arent doing something very close to that, you dont ahve to pay a dime cause that is the point of those test jacks, and the company is supposed to make it easy for someone to check for problems like that. if it does sound good, you need to one by one disconnect the wiring that is connected to the terminal posts til you find out which one is causing the static. just like the first post said, verify that you have the dsl filters on everything, this includes all phones, answering machines, fax, satelite boxes, and even the alarm system. when you do find the one that is causeing the problem you have to connect the other ones back to the terninal leaveing the problem one off. then check all of your jacks in the house and find out which one is not working, or more than one. then things will be narrowed down some. recheck equipment in the home, and then look inside the jacks. if nothing seems out of order, get in the attic, or outside wherever the wireing is and check it. look for juction boxes and bad spots. that is about it. if you realy cant find anything, you can narrow it down better with an ohm meter. with the test jack in the interface unplugged and all the equipment on that path in the house unplugged, use the ohm meter and check the resistance between the tip and ring, well if you dont know what the is it would be kinda like the hot and ground, probably red and green, maybe blue and white, may even be two other colors but basically the 2 wires that the sevice is on. it should register rather high. ideally around 65 Megaohms, maybe 30 Megaohms if the pairs are of a small gauge wire. but still in the megas. if they arent then you have a short. you will have to locate the short. this can be hard without the proper equipment, but your eyes and hands should do fine, but remember that by the time you search for a problem that in depth, you might as well been pulling a new wire to the jack. if you do find junction spot, which may even be inside the jack if you see the pairs looped in the jack. this will be identified by two wires to each post inside the jack. in either case you might be able to pull the wire just from the interface outside to the first jack or junction place in the house. but if that doesnt fix it you will need to rewire that entire path. a tone generator will not tell you much as it doesnt have near the voltage of actual telephone service. a tone generator is about 9 v and telephone service is about 48 v. Here is another trick. try calling your number from your phone. when you hang up the phone will have a revertive ring. when you pick it up, see if the phone sounds worse than it usually does. the ring is extra voltage that will cause more static. if the telco told you it is in the house it probably is. try not to argue too much with them. they are usualy right when it comes to that. hope this helps.

Thanks for everyones suggestions, it turned out to be the interface itself. The interface had a loose connection between the cable going to the poll, and the wiring going to the house....

I had to actually insist and talk to the tech myself and once he knew I wasn't a complete moron in the issues of telephones, did he actually do some investigation.

I appriciate everyones help, thanks!

;-)

Dont be too quick to blame the telephone company or the techs, I used to work for Telecom back in New Zealand and some of the idiots that we had to attend too. ..... and everyone of them an expert ...... sigh

and yes there were a few dorks working for the company, just like there is in any company, but the general public is really quite ignorant.

I worked with one foreman who used to have a lot of fun with public morons. He decided once to start telling customers that their phone had radioactive material in it in order to make the signal tones ....... He used to send me out for the radiation shield where upon I would return to say that it had been stolen again ! This used to make customers really worried. He would warn customers that if the phone fell off the wall, ( which they strangely do during a domestic ) they had to get out of the house immediately and call "faults".

One couple I remember were particularly terrified, particularly when he said he couldn't install the phone until the other lineman had "discharged" the line at the pole. This done - I was sent to get the radiation shield - and as usual stolen. This couple were really up in arms - I had to leave as I couldn't take any more. He got them so wound up that they wrote in to the national paper to break the story, BUT my foreman warned them that Telecom would deny everything and cover it up, and yes of course Telecom did deny everything, which just added to the conspiracy .....

Then there was a faultman who got into an argument about whether phones worked on electricity or not, well what do you think they work on - Black magic doh ! Nope plugging the multimeter into the connection didn't work either.....

So you see, Linesmen sort of see it all, and some of it is pretty scary.

floppy

some good steps above, but i would start at the NID (network interface device) that is the grey (unless painted over) phone box outside the house you put the tone generater on to test your house wiring...

grab an old analog phone and plug it directly into the line that goes into your house. you can then pick up the phone and check for dial-tone. if you hear the crackling then you can call your LEC and tell them to check again they did not do their job as you tested at that point on the NID and still have the bad static on the line.

if you hear no static, then the problem is inside the house. this is the reason i pay for line-guard with my LEC. this means as long as it is not my phone(s) then i do not pay for service all the way inside my property up to the jack(s). this gets rid of the $150/hr fee you are going to pay. in most cases something like line-guard is roughly between $2-10 a month depending on your LEC.

start outside at the NID with a KNOWN good working phone (take it to a friends, neighbors, someplace that has good lines that you can test it at first) then work your way inside the house. just becuase you have good tone, does not mean you have clean connection, just that the wires are there. you could have a short, your could have a lose wire, etc... heck you could have a bad punchdown block in the atic for that matter.

again if you test with a known good analog phone (yes it can be touch tone, but needs to be a phone that does not require a power adapter) at the NID, if you have bad noise on the line call your LEC and get them to come out there ASAP as they did not do their job. if no static on line at the NID, you know the problem is internal.

best of luck to you.

Good stuff... did you get your 50 bucks refunded?