[VoIP] Strange happening with DSL service

[Jayson smith]

Hi all,
     This weekend, we've been listening to the annual men's Barbershop Harmony Society convention webcast. So it's going along nicely, and poof! the stream dies. No big deal, I'll just restart it. No dice. Reboot the router and computer, no dice. Finally I realize we've got no DSL, and for a very good reason. There's static on the line. That's strange. We sometimes get static after rain, but it hasn't rained here recently. Anyway, a couple of calls to the ringback circuit strangely takes care of the static problem, but still no DSL. So now we're stuck with dial-up, which is how I'm sending this message. I've tried all sorts of stuff with the modem and router, all to no avail. So finally this morning I get the bright idea to take a phone and plug it into the DSL jack. I plug the phone in, pick it up and... Nothing. No dialtone, no battery, just as if it wasn't plugged in. Further tests reveal, it's not the phone cord, it's not the phone. After all this frustration, I find out the DSL jack has decided to go to that place in the sky where all good phone jacks which have lived full lives go. My question is, what would cause the jack to do this, just suddenly? Can something actually happen to the jack or its wires, just like that, or does something have to have gotten disconnected somehow? As far as I know, all the other jacks on that line work. Looks like we're stuck with dial-up until sometime next week. Man, being blind is sometimes a pain! If I could see, and knew halfway what I was doing, I'd go out to the box and see what was what. BTW, our line is the type where there's a DSL jack, then a DSL filter, behind which are all the other phone jacks. If the DSL filter got fried, that would do just the opposite, DSL service but no other phone service, right?
Thanks for any help on this.
Jayson