I've noticed that strangely placed thing, in the past. Are you suggesting, that it just desoldered itself? I have 2 motherboards with telephony function problems ATM, and soldering it back again would be much easier than trying to fix modem chip.

OTOH, if it would be related to that transistor, why spring-solution on other components would result in getting telephony functions back, even if only for limited time?

/Estel