US 4,399,333 AGranted

Telephone fault detection system

AssigneeTelTec, Incorporated

InventorsSteven Gewitz, Raymond Z. A. Elia

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Abstract

A telephone fault detection system particularly suitable for use with a home telephone system is provided. The system includes a switching circuit coupled to a telephone company trunk line and to telephone customer equipment. In particular, the telephone customer equipment includes at least a monitoring device, such as a telephone handset, and at least one further telephone handset. When the switching circuit is in a first normally operative mode, the monitoring device and the telephone handset are coupled to the trunk line so that the monitoring circuit can provide indication of a fault condition on either the telephone company trunk line side or the internal telephone system side of the switching circuit. When the switching circuit is disposed in a second test mode, the additional telephone handsets are decoupled from the telephone trunk line and the monitoring device detects the location of the fault condition in either the telephone trunk line or the internal telephone system.

Claims12

Dependent claims

A telephone fault detection system for in-line installation with at least one trunk line comprising internal telephone means having first monitoring means and telephone means, switching means coupled in-line between the monitoring means and said trunk line, said switching means being disposed in a first normally operative mode for coupling said trunk line to said monitoring means and said telephone means, said switching means being adapted to be disposed into a second test mode for maintaining said monitoring means coupled to said trunk line and for decoupling said trunk line from said telephone means, said monitoring means being adapted to provide an indication of fault detection on the trunk line side of said switching means when said switching means is disposed in said second test mode, said monitoring means being adapted to provide an indication of a fault condition when said in-line switching means is disposed in said first normally operative mode, said monitoring means including a telephone monitoring handset and said telephone means including at least one additional telephone handset.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.