The other day I noticed a lot of static and humming on my phone lines. Then today I noticed that sometimes I can't get a dial tone, it sort of goes in and out. I also noticed that the upstairs phones are the ones that have more problems with getting a dial tone and the static. So I went out to the phone box (NID) and tested the line with two different phones. There was static and humming on both but it wasn't terribly bad.
So it seems that the static is not so bad at the NID, at the downstairs phones it gets worse and then on the upstairs phones it's horrible. Since I get static and humming at the NID, that indicates the problem is in the outside wiring. If the problem is outside, then shouldn't all the phones have the same amount of static? Why would it be worse upstairs if the problem is outside? Is it some sort of signal problem? The further the line goes, the worse the problem gets?