No dial tone, but all else works

[virtualmike]

I just had a strange phenomenon. I picked up my Fusion voice line, and had no dial tone. Checking the display of the phone, it said, "No line." Interesting, because my DSL connection was nice and strong--downloads were nice and swift.

Of course, I figured the phone was wrong, but after checking the cable, splitter, etc., I still had no dial tone.

I dug out my trusty 1980s AT&T Trimline phone and plugged it in. Same thing... no dial tone.

I grabbed my cell, dialed my home number, and the phone rang on the Fusion line!

I then picked it up, and I had dial tone. It seems to be working ok now, so I haven't called 611.

This was approximately 4:20 pm, in case anyone wants to investigate.

This reminds me of the small town where I was raised. It had a stepper until close to 1990, and every six months or so, we'd be unable to make outgoing calls--no dial tone. If it wasn't an emergency, then we'd wait until someone called us; otherwise, we'd go to a neighbor's, call home, and then be able to make calls again for another six months or so.

[dane]

That's very odd. Please let us know if it happens again!

[wa2ibm]

I have a phone line at an alternate location that I bring over to my place via a pair of back-to-back SPA VoIP adapters routed through a VPN. Every now and then I get the same kind of thing happening with the VoIP adapters. No dial tone. If I then call the line, the call comes through and the dial tone works again.

It's probably some type of sync issue with the tear down of the link at the end of a call, where some token is lost along the way, which prevents the next initialization, and the reverse butt-kick is enough to get it going again.

Dunno, just guessing.

[virtualmike]

@Dane: of course. Once is an anomaly. Twice is a pattern.

@wa2ibm: I'd definitely agree if this were a digital line, or an analog line going through an RT or some other sort of line concentrator.

[rbond]

I had the same issue this past Saturday morning. DSL up and fine, no dial tone. I double-checked all connections and splitters in the house, all fine.

Called Sonic Support. The tech asked me to disconnect my internal line at the MPOE so he could test. Did so. Problem seemed to be a short somewhere between the MPOE and the CO. Sonic dispatched an AT&T tech.

2 hours later, my Internet also goes down. And stays down.

I have been without voice or Internet now since Saturday at 10am - four days and counting. I have called for status updates pretty regularly, and the Sonic techs are all very courteous, knowledgeable, etc. But the issue is not fixed.

We don't have any wifi we can mooch. My wife is in school and needs 'Net to study and do her homework. I (normally) telecommute a few hours a day. This has been quite disruptive, and there's really no end in sight as we've now blown though (by my count) four "fixed by" commit times. Latest commit time from AT&T is 7PM... tomorrow.

TL;DR - Same issue, resulted in total outage of voice AND 'net for going on 4 days and counting. I suggest you have an alternative in place for connectivity.

[sehartley]

This happened to me this morning as well. No dial tone but functional Internet. I followed the advice on this thread and dialed my home number from my cell and that fixed my problem - dial tone returned. I'm not at the level of others on this thread where I can speculate about tokens or the software mechanics of what is happening. All I know is my concern that this does not start happening on a regular basis.

To the poster with the 4 day outage - my sympathies about the outage. It sounds like a slightly different issue than what I'm describing here in relation to the first poster on this thread. Don't flame me on this opinion, your situation really sucks compared to mine. I'm just trying to differentiate the situation for Sonic that my issue has me worried that this dial tone glitch will become a systemic problem with their service.

[jared]

In order to track this down, we'd need to see a line while it is in the broken state (no dial tone when you pick up the phone). This way we can narrow down the problem to either the copper or our equipment, and if it is our equipment, show the problem to our vendor so they can fix it in future software releases.
If at all possible, if anyone experiences this problem, please contact our support team before trying to fix it by calling yourself, so we can get a good look at it.
Thanks!

[Derek L.]

4 days down time is too long. Did Sonic.net address the problem promptly ?
I can image that it is so inconvenient without the internet and phone.

[paulgreen]

I had the same issue a few weeks ago --- no dial tone, but calling in from my cell phone to the home number caused the home phone to ring, and thereafter I got a dial tone.

If this happens again, I will phone Sonic tech support for them to run diagnostics.

--Paul

[wa2ibm]

If this happens again, I will phone Sonic tech support for them to run diagnostics.

--Paul

If it happens again, you should call Sonic tech support right away, while it's still not giving you dial tone. After you clear the problem by calling yourself, the problem condition no longer exists to diagnose.