Many people have cell phones these days and the quality of cell phones is improving every day.  Many people have gotten rid of their landline.  Many others feel like if their cell phone goes out for any reason they still have their landline to fall back on.  Check out 10 reasons your landline phone service could get disrupted.

1. Testing the lines: There seem to be times when the workers are testing the lines.  They never say what they are testing for, but whatever it is it has knocked out your phone line.
2. Workmen cut the line: This happens a lot in new residential areas where workers are doing a lot of digging in the area and accidentally hit the line.  Once they realize what they hit and get someone out there to fix it you could have an outage for hours.
3. Storm knocked out phone lines: Big storms and tornado like weather tend to knock out phone lines.  It doesn’t always make sense, but something about the lightning that causes problems with the main lines.
4. Rodent chewed the line: Unfortunately rodents are a fact of life and there is little you can do about them.  The more contained your phone line is the better protection it will afford you, but nature will still strike on occasion.
5. Line cut by vandals: I don’t know why, but sometimes teens with too much time on their hands or something get it into their head that it would be fun to cut the phone line.  This line is a low enough voltage that it wouldn’t electrocute the cutter like cutting an electric line would.
6. Problem with fiber optic phone line: Now that fiber optics is replacing regular phone lines there are often multiple services running through the same line.  If there are problems with something else it may affect your landline as well.
7. Flood: Phone lines like other electrical lines don’t like water.  During floods and other major rain events the landline can be interrupted due to too much moisture in the ground.
8. Overloaded lines: During natural disasters and other times where thousands of people are on the phone all at the same time can over load the phone system and you will get a message telling you to try your call again. 
9. Power outages: So many people have only cordless phones these days that when there’s a power outage there’s also no phone.  If they had a corded phone it might work, but then again it might not.
10. Interference: This can happen if you are using cordless phones in your home and someone near you is using a CB radio or other short-wave radio device that can interfere with your phones.  This should go away when they stop broadcasting