I'm a network guy so I don't have a lot of experience with this. I would like to add one analog telephone line in my living room. I would also like to avoid paying someone from the phone company to do it if I can handle it myself. Can anyone point me to some whitepapers on how to splice an existing line, and add a new drop in the house? Thanks.
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Question about adding Home Telephone Line
- Thread starter softbatch
- Start date
netmanrick
Technical User
You can use cat5 or telco cable to run the line. On the outside of your house should be the Telco demarc.If it's one of the newer ones,just piggyback the new connections onto the existing one.
Rick Harris
SC Dept of Motor Vehicles
Network Operations
Rick Harris
SC Dept of Motor Vehicles
Network Operations
Most houses are wired with 2, 3, or 4 pair cable (since the 1980s.) Before that, "Quad" wire (4 conductors) was used (since the 1960s). Before that, Bell used 3 twisted wires.
Quad wire can be used to carry two phone lines; Bell used to do it, though it was discouraged. The original purpose of the wires was Red + Green for the voice pair, and yellow for ground. In some phone lines (certain party lines) an independent ground was needed. For traditional single-party residential lines, only two wires (red+green) have been used since the 1970s.
The yellow+black wires in Quad cable were often used to power the lights in Trimline and Princess phones. But local Bell craftspeople, perhaps lazy, would use the yellow+black for a second phone line. The problem with doing so is that you can get cross-talk between the two phone lines.
Since the 1980s, twisted-pair wire has been common. In these cables, you have pairs of wire twisted together, keeping them from interfering with other pairs. Typically, the first pair is White with blue stripe + Blue with white stripe (WH/BU + BU/WH) The second pair uses white and orage (WH/OR + OR/WH), then green, etc.
If you have that kind of wire running through your house, you can use the 2nd pair to hook up the second phone line.
Lots of 2-line phones these days happily plug into modular jacks where the first line gets the center 2 pins on the jack, and the second line gets the next outer pins.
Radio Shack used to have books describing home phone wiring, and they certainly have all the parts. Or, tell us more about what you have and we can advise.
Quad wire can be used to carry two phone lines; Bell used to do it, though it was discouraged. The original purpose of the wires was Red + Green for the voice pair, and yellow for ground. In some phone lines (certain party lines) an independent ground was needed. For traditional single-party residential lines, only two wires (red+green) have been used since the 1970s.
The yellow+black wires in Quad cable were often used to power the lights in Trimline and Princess phones. But local Bell craftspeople, perhaps lazy, would use the yellow+black for a second phone line. The problem with doing so is that you can get cross-talk between the two phone lines.
Since the 1980s, twisted-pair wire has been common. In these cables, you have pairs of wire twisted together, keeping them from interfering with other pairs. Typically, the first pair is White with blue stripe + Blue with white stripe (WH/BU + BU/WH) The second pair uses white and orage (WH/OR + OR/WH), then green, etc.
If you have that kind of wire running through your house, you can use the 2nd pair to hook up the second phone line.
Lots of 2-line phones these days happily plug into modular jacks where the first line gets the center 2 pins on the jack, and the second line gets the next outer pins.
Radio Shack used to have books describing home phone wiring, and they certainly have all the parts. Or, tell us more about what you have and we can advise.
Phone wiring is simpler than network wiring, you really
can just splice in almost anywhere.
There's two caveats that should go here; if you have multiple phone lines,
you need two pairs (red/green for the primary line, black/yellow for the
second line) connected. Single-line houses STILL should have both
pairs connected, for future expansion.
And, if you use or plan to use DSL, some phone drops are/should
be filtered (to avoid causing a DSL network with long wire runs to random phone loads), and those filters are often part of the voice-jack at the voice-only phone drops. Your new socket might need an external
dongle filter if you use DSL and the socket isn't connected downstream
of a filter already.
can just splice in almost anywhere.
There's two caveats that should go here; if you have multiple phone lines,
you need two pairs (red/green for the primary line, black/yellow for the
second line) connected. Single-line houses STILL should have both
pairs connected, for future expansion.
And, if you use or plan to use DSL, some phone drops are/should
be filtered (to avoid causing a DSL network with long wire runs to random phone loads), and those filters are often part of the voice-jack at the voice-only phone drops. Your new socket might need an external
dongle filter if you use DSL and the socket isn't connected downstream
of a filter already.
heres some links , maybe they will help
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