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?
Did you disconnect the inside wiring when you did the NID testing?
Different makes of phones might explain it. But if you have the problem with the inside wire disconnected, I'd call the phone company before worrying about cascading effects.