Newer home Verizon box, no jack plugs

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

That's odd. I would have expected that opening that door would break the connection to your house wiring. Are you sure that you're dealing with the right box/line? Is it a single house or an apartment/condo/duplex? If you stick a phone cord into that jack and just let it hang, do you still get a dial tone inside?

In general, the wires servicing the jacks in your house should be colored blue and blue/white (newer wiring) or red and green (older wiring). To service your house jacks, there may be just one pair like that going into the house, or more than one. Disconnecting the landline from those pairs should disconnect you from the telephone service. However, if there is more than one pair going into the house, they all need to remain connected to one another.

Needless to say, don't do anything without keeping notes and making sure that you can get back to where you started if necessary.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 4

Thanks again for the reply Steve. I tried plugging a wire into the phone jack at the box as you suggested, and this cut off the single inside the house (no dialtone), therefore I was considering the purchase of a small cord to leave plugged inside the jack, and I assume this will solve my problem? I live in a single family home built in 2004, and my goal is to use Vonage on my line 2 wiring, and Verizon for line 1, but since I already cancelled my line two service, I wanted to see whether my removal of the wires leading to the red and green screws for the middle box (line two) was actually cutting off signal to the inside line, as I had no way to test this. So, I decided to remove the wires leading to the red and green screws for the top box (line one), and when I did so, there was still a dialtone inside the house, so I posted my question here. Now that your suggestion of plugging a hanging wire into the top box (line 1) cut off the dialtone inside the house, I assume that if I plug a short, empty cord into the middle box (line 2) to leave hanging indefinitely, my line 2 signal will be terminated, identical to the line 1 experiment, and I can then run Vonage on my line two wiring without risk. I have purchased the line 1/2 splitter for my phone jack which allows me to plug Vonage into the line 2 portion of the wiring, but I had to make sure the signal was terminated inside first.

So, do you believe that by just plugging a short, hanging wire into the outside box (small middle box, which cooresponds to line 2), I will have accomplished the goal of creating a safe environment for the Vonage service to run on line 2? Keep in mind that doing so for line 1 (upper small box) as you suggested did cut the dialtone from inside my house. If this sounds correct, I assume they sell a very small wire to plug inside (so that I can close the little swinging door, which must be done prior to shutting the big box).

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

I think you've got it all right.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 4

Thanks for all of your assistance Steve!