Landline Phone Problem

[Atheist]

We have a landline and a router which works off the landline. The incoming cable is copper from the nearest street box to the house, and fibre from BT central to the street box. In the house is a main phone, and there is also a phone upstairs fed by a cable from the main incoming box near the downstairs phone.

The internet works fine, but the two phones have an intermittent problem, where the dialling tone keeps on humming when we dial out to make a call. This happens more with the upstairs phone, but also with the main one. It's only happening about once a week, and usually if we keep trying it eventually works and we can make our call.

Is it likelier to be a problem with the incoming cable or with the handsets?

[Maydup]

We're the handsets bought as a pair that synch to the same base unit? If so probably the base unit. We bought a new one recently from Argos works a treat now.

If not try buying a a cheap ish new unit and handset for the upstairs one and see if it solves it. 

[Atheist]

Maydup. The phones plug into the internal phone cabling which has been there since we moved in. We had a BT engineer in some years ago when we got the new Plusnet router, and who who replaced the incoming phone line box and checked out the internal wiring, which seemed OK at the time. There's no base unit and no synching, just old-fashioned stuff. Thanks for your reply.

[Maydup]

Ah, OK I wondered if they were cordless and sat in a base unit.  Eitherway it sounds like it's time to replace the phones - it's very unlikely to be the cabling. Good old fashioned simple ones like ours are available in Argos. 

[bhg481]

When we went fibre-to-cabinet then copper to home the engineer disconnected the extension phones saying they wouldn't work. Try disconnecting the extension one and see if the other works normally.

[Atheist]

Thanks both.

bhg, our engineer told us the router would no longer work upstairs when we went to Plusnet fibre so we took the router down to a position close to the main incoming socket (and then had to add a wifi dongle to the upstairs PC); but he did leave us with two working phones.  I'll try your suggestion. If it doesn't work I'll maybe follow Maydup's route.