No dial tone on whole house wiring phones

[shumiron]

I have tried to connect a MJ to my house wiring to power 2 phones, Panasonic 900mHz cordless each with their own base plugged into wall jacks. The REN for these phones is listed as 0.1. I disconnected the ATT line coming from the pole to make sure the MJ didn't suffer from the 90 V on the ATT line. I tested the MJ and it worked with a phone plugged directly into it. I plugged the same cord into one of the wall jacks and the cordless phones do not get a dial tone and do not ring when the MJ number is called. The line from the wall jack I plugged the MJ into is quite long, 50 feet or so, CAT 5 cable which runs to the ATT box where all other wires to the rest of the jacks in the house are connected. The wires to the other jacks are old phone cabling, not CAT 5.

I do have Uverse network which uses a different pair in the CAT 5 cable - I left the network wires connected during my testing.

I hope this is enough info for someone to offer a solution to fix this problem. Will a powered USB hub that I've read about on the forum help?

[VaHam]

I have tried to connect a MJ to my house wiring to power 2 phones, Panasonic 900mHz cordless each with their own base plugged into wall jacks. The REN for these phones is listed as 0.1. I disconnected the ATT line coming from the pole to make sure the MJ didn't suffer from the 90 V on the ATT line. I tested the MJ and it worked with a phone plugged directly into it. I plugged the same cord into one of the wall jacks and the cordless phones do not get a dial tone and do not ring when the MJ number is called. The line from the wall jack I plugged the MJ into is quite long, 50 feet or so, CAT 5 cable which runs to the ATT box where all other wires to the rest of the jacks in the house are connected. The wires to the other jacks are old phone cabling, not CAT 5.

I do have Uverse network which uses a different pair in the CAT 5 cable - I left the network wires connected during my testing.

I hope this is enough info for someone to offer a solution to fix this problem. Will a powered USB hub that I've read about on the forum help?

Have you tried using a spliter plug right on the MJ and plugging both phones into it? This would tell you if there is a problem with the MJ powering the two phones. If so then using a powered hub may help the situation.

If the two phones work when plugged right into the MJ then the problem would more likely be in your wiring. The easiest thing to try next would be to separate the Uverse network signal from the cat 5 cable (maybe string another cable temporarily). You may also take a look at which pairs are being used in the cat5 cable to make sure your using the best choices for pairing to minimize crosstalk inside the cat5.

The following has some info on cat5 pairing I included from another project http://riggins.biz/MyOxiDump/Oximeter%20Adapter.pdf

[coreyjroman]

I would definitely test both phones like the previous poster says however it is unlikely that both phones are "not functioning" at the same time. Also note that MJ does not support the use of MFLO or multiple function line out so in order to get the results you desire you should definitely spend a few dollars and invest in and install new lines and jacks dedicated to the mj. ...Just a suggestion.

[shumiron]

Thank you for the replies. I did the splitter test connecting two phones to the MJ and both phones had dialtone and appeared to be working properly. Should I try getting a powered USB hub as my next test? Do you think this will overcome the old wiring problem?

By the way I forgot to mention that originally I had 3 Directv boxes plugged into the phone system and I had a serious hum on the extension phones when I first tried them. I unplugged the D-TV boxes and the hum went away but no dial tone. The hum reduced as I unplugged each D-TV box.

[shumiron]

FYI - I did try a powered USB Hub and initially the hub failed to make a difference, I was goofing around with phones and cables and voila all of a sudden everything was working. Possibly the problem was "the nut that holds the handle" - me! I may not have pushed the RJ connector all the way into the wall connector. I have not retried it without the Hub - kinda afraid to mess with something that is working.

All phones plugged in work and ring so I'm almost happy-jack. The only minor issue now is that tere is some audio very faint in the background when on a call. The audio is from a local radio station - KFMB 760 AM. We don't listen to that station and don't have any radios on in the house.

Any one else having issues with RFI from broadcast stations?