The Silence of the Phones

For some reason, all of our phone lines are down. There is no outgoing dial tone, and incoming calls get static. The single exception is, of course, the DSL line.

And my employer can't figure this out. I tried to explain (and I hope I'm right. If I'm wrong, please tell me.) that the dsl line is always open - that there is a continous signal in both directions so it could not be interrupted. As an example, and it's a good one - we were receiving a fax at the moment the phone lines died, and we continued to recieve it as the lines died, but were not able to send an outgoing fax at that same time. They say it could have been in memory, and that's a possiblity, given that the last page may be missing.

So. What would be the reason we can have DSL while all the other phone lines, all going through the same junction box, have failed?

(no subject)

Happy birthday, ailsaek!