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Old rotary phone installation

I have an old Western Electric rotary phone (probably model 500) that I want to connect to my home phone network, which already has a modern phone. When I pugged it into the phone line it could receive calls but when I tried to dial a number, there was no dial tone. All the electronics inside the phone are working fine, and I’m able to answer incoming calls. The only problem seems to be that I cant make outgoing calls. What could the problem be? I’m wondering if maybe my home phone system isn’t set up for a rotary phone, and how I could fix that?

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Constructive

Former Employee

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32.9K Messages

4 years ago

rotary dial phones are pulse dial. The phone has to have touch tone capability to dial through your digital line pulse is a series of clicks touch tone is self explanatory

3

spoom2

Expert

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19.3K Messages

No dial tone wouldn't have anything to do with the actual dialing out that's mentioned by @Constructive if you can receive calls and hear the other party there's no reason you shouldn't be getting dial tone. As far as calling out, if you have digital service and even some wired services dial pulse won't work but they do make adapters to convert dial pulse to touch tone, just do a search for them.

Like

4 years ago

Constructive

Former Employee

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32.9K Messages

@spoom2 ive never had dealings with rotary phones when i installed uverse but old phones that switch from pulse to tone would not get dial tone from the voip, as soon as it was switched to tone it got dialtone, may be different now as i havent done an install in 10 years

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4 years ago

0

spoom2

Expert

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19.3K Messages

@Constructive We've had other customers say they couldn't dial out, but hadn't seen one before that said they couldn't draw dial tone. There's no reason I can see where going off hook wouldn't get dial tone as long as you can talk on an incoming call. There were different wiring options on party lines, but that wouldn't prevent drawing dial tone. I've put a few of the adapters on for people that were using cable digital phone service and they do work.

(edited)

Like

4 years ago

0

ATTHelp

Community Support

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231.3K Messages

4 years ago

Hey, @Irishbreakfasttea. We'd be glad to help you look into setting up your rotary phone.

Thanks to @spoom2 and @Constructive for the very helpful information.

As they said, you may need to look into getting an adapter for your rotary phone in order to dial numbers. Let us know if you have anymore questions, we're here to help!

Ramses, AT&T Community Specialist

0

Irishbreakfasttea

Old rotary phone installation

Constructive

spoom2

Constructive

spoom2

ATTHelp

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