Why does my phone only ring once or disconnect mid-call?

If you have landline phone service, it can be frustrating to experience problems with your phone ringing only once or disconnecting in the middle of a call. Use this quick troubleshooting guide to help identify why your phone rings only once or disconnects while you’re on a call.

Determining why your phone rings only once or disconnects

To troubleshoot these issues, start by checking your landline phone equipment and cords, then the settings and calling features on your phone.

Check your phone and cords

These tips are covered in the phone equipment article in more detail, but since they're common causes for this service issue, we want to draw your attention to them.

• Check your cord. Is it snug, both going into the handset and at the wall? If not, tighten it.
  
• Check all your phone cords for damage. Even small nicks and cuts can cause dropped calls. Replace any damaged cords.
  
• Change the batteries on a cordless phone.
  
• Is the problem only with one phone? Can you try a different phone?
  

If you determine that you have a problem with your phone line, learn about how to get phone wiring repaired.

Check your calling features

If the problem happens on all calls and all phones, the issue might be with one of your calling features.

Call Waiting is an especially common feature that causes beeps during a call. When you receive another call, you will hear a beep that might cause you to miss a bit of the conversation. You are still connected to the original call and haven't been disconnected. You can read more about Call Waiting.

Call Forwarding is another feature that can cause seemingly unusual behavior on your phone. If your line has call forwarding activated, any incoming calls will ring once before they are forwarded. It's easy to turn off call forwarding — press *73 or 73#, depending on your location. This will allow calls to ring through to your line as normal. Read more about Call Forwarding.

After checking your equipment and your calling features, if you are still having problems, please contact us for more support.