From the main building, I am dealing with underground telephone cable (cable is meant for and armored for underground use and contains 100 pair of wires) and runs about 350 feet to another building; this cable runs underneath a two-lane highway. The cable was installed perhaps better than 40 years ago. Lately, when there is a heavy rainfall, some of the telephone circuits on these line gets a bit of static or cuts our all together (the telephones used on these lines are Nortel digital telephones with a Meridian controller and line cards).

With the number of problems I have been experiencing, should I suspect I am having wire pair going bad and should probably replace the cable. Would it be worth while to replace the cable with fiber-optic, especially since I am driving some computer network traffic over some of these cable pair via ADSL modem repeaters. My other option would be to replace the cable with a new copper twisted pair cable.

We recently had digital phone hooked up. We had cable for the computer and tv for years. I heard great things about digital phone, which, eh, it’s ok. Clarity is not so great, even with a 5.8MH phone which is brand new.
That’s not my problem though.
We have a security system for our home, and that was installed 12yrs ago and is hooked up to the telephone line.
Apparently when cable goes out for just a second, our alarm sounds. It happened last night at 2am.
One box (alarm system) is located in my son’s closet which is locked and I do not have a key. I would assume that is where the hook up is for the telephone cable.
Second box is in my other son’s room, which is the electrical supply.
The company that installed the system is no longer in business.
My question is:
How do I get into the metal 20" X 15" box to disconnect the telephone line and which line is it , and how to do this without interupting the normal functions of alarm. It is not monitored.