Nobody has invented the Voice and Data service that does not experience problems from time to time.  Actually, it's quite amazing that the services are as reliable as they are.  Even though all of the major Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILEC's) are investing billions of dollars into fiber optics, most services are still delivered via copper wire.   Most of this wire, especially that which is buried underground, has been in place for decades.  Most Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLEC's) utilize the wire from the ILEC's at some point to deliver service to their customers.  Therefore, every land line based company is subject to these potential problems. 

It's true that some companies never experience any problems.  This is typically due to their address as they may have newer copper wire between their location and the central office, they may be in an area where the weather does not affect their services or they may just be plain lucky.  But most companies will experience problems and this section is designed to provide information about how to resolve these issues as quickly as possible.

When you experience a problem, the first step should be to try and understand the breadth of the problem. 

If you are having trouble making phone calls, you should try to determine if the problem affects all outbound phone calls or just some of them.  If it's only certain calls that are affected, try to determine if they are local, in-state or out of state calls.  Also, check to see if you can receive incoming calls and if not, does the phone just ring and ring, or do you receive some sort of "out of service" message.  These clues are valuable to the service and support department to try and determine what the problem is. 

Sometimes the problem is your phone system.  When you call the trouble into the phone company, they will ask you a series of question, some of which are designed to identify phone system problems.  To read through a sample list of questions, go to the "how to report trouble" section of this web site.  The biggest clue we look for when determining if the problem is a customer's phone system is to call your main number from a different location or cell phone.  If the phone just rings and rings, there is a good chance it is the phone system which is faulty.  The reason is because if there is a service outage from the phone company, typically the caller will recevie an "out of service" message.  Another major clue is whether you can make outbound calls from some extensions but not others.  Again, this clue points to a phone system problem.  Regardless of whether you think it's your phone system or the phone company, it's always best to report the trouble to the phone company as quickly as possible because we see new, unexpected things every day.

As always, you can contact our office for help in troubleshooting these problems.  Often times customers ask for us to be the liaison between the phone company and your phone system repair company.  We can talk the proper language to each of these companies and work together to get a quick resolution.

Click here go to the list of our carriers with their support numbers and procedures