Telephone wire

[Dan Espen]

I just had occasion to put in a new telephone outlet.

I went down to Tru-Value and bought 50 ft of wire. I didn't have any choices, I got the last one in the store.

My first problem was that I cut off about 4 inches of the plastic wrap around the wires and only found 3 conductors. After being a bit mystified for a few hours, I discovered that one of the wires didn't reach the end of the cable. Cut off another 4 inches and there was the forth wire.

The thing that really surprised me though is how thin the wires were. I had real problems working with the hair thin wire. If I bent the wire more than once, the wire just broke right off. I couple of times I cut the insulation off, went to pull the plastic off, and the whole wire just broke off. I bent one wire around a terminal and the bend wasn't quite right so I bent it again. Wire snapped right off on the second bend.

Next time I want to work with telephone cable, I'm going to do some searches and hopefully find something with a heavier conductor.

Just commenting, I know copper has gone up in price but this stuff was ridiculous.

[recyclebinned]

Was it made in China? Like I don't know.

[Doug Miller]

Dan Espen wrote in news: [e-mail]:

[...]

24ga is normal for phone wire.

[badgolferman]

Phone wire is usually single strand 24 gauge, at least the decent stuff that I worked with years ago. In recent years I have seen CAT 5 network cables being used in lieu of four conducter phone wire. Not sure if the price is any better though.

[Paul Drahn]

Made from recycled copper. Unknown purity.

Paul

[passerby]

Contaminated copper, most likely recycled, does that. High quality copper is usually very pliable and withstands quite a bit of bending, at least if you didn't nick it when you were stripping the insulation. My guess is that if you are able to connect it eventually, and the outlet stays put, you won't see much of a difference in the phone's operation.

[dpb]

...

Probably was 24 ga which is normal; problem is it wasn't annealed well so was/is very brittle. W/ stuff that small any nick is likely to cause a break but especially bad if it's particularly brittle.

As another guessed, likely it's from recycled material and purity and control not the greatest...

I had a whole roll of Western Electric cable that an installer had left at the house in TN. When we were packing to leave for the move to KS there was some reason for a service call; I no longer remember what. The roll was on the bench in the garage awaiting going in a box w/ other like stuff--when went back to the task discovered it had walked off w/ the service tech. :( Easy come, easy go... :)

[Tomsic]

Cat 5 cable works just fine for telephone wiring. Yes, it's more expensive; but you can buy a big reel of the stuff to get the cost/foot down and then use it for phone, internet, remote speakers, alarms, etc. It's usually

24-26 AWG as I recall. I did find a sale at HD one day such that the prepared ethernet cable (with connectors) was cheaper than the big reels though.

I'm one of those people, however, who think there's never enough conductors to do everything that you might want to do and so pull extra wires as long as I'm pulling one.

Tomsic

[Dan Espen]

Unfortunately, looks like I threw out the package. I've used phone wire before, this stuff looked more like 1 strand from stranded wire.

[Dan Espen]

I think you may be right. After my first experience with the wire breaking I was extra careful to only score the insulation lightly. I still had the wire break.

I figured the phone didn't need the extra thickness, it seems to work fine, it was just a challenge to work with.

[Nate Nagel]

Really, next time you do this just pull CAT5 or CAT6. works better and is more future proof (if you decide you want to convert your phone outlets to ethernet)

nate

[Dan Espen]

Makes a lot of sense. In this case, the run was across the attic then drop into a closet and back into the wall with the cover plate right next to the closet door. Running a new wire would be pretty easy.

[micky]

Any chance you'll be using it for internet DSL? How many feet of it did you use. Regardless, if you don't get the proper speeds, you'll want to replace this thin wire with something thicker.

Even if you get FIOS, doesn't the in-house wiring stay the same, and this wire might be slower than thicker wire would be.

Wow. Never heard of that before.

Despite what so many posters are saying, not all phone wire is 24 gauge anymore. They probably haven't noticed because they don't buy the really cheap stuff, but as that story goes, there isn't anything that can't be made cheaper. etc.

Wire meant for modular plugs comes in different thicknesses too. I bought 100 feet of something -- I'll see if it's marked on the spool

-- and the wire was so thing that though internet radio was still working, other parts of the net didn't work. I ended up calling Verizon, just to check the line from the office, and they ended up sending someone out. I don't know if they charged me or not. I hope not since I didn't ask for anyone to come. Nonetheless, he told me that parts of the net can work while other parts don't, and one reason is wire that is too thin.

I went back to the wire I had been using, and everything worked again. But later I compared my download speed (as shown on that webpage) with what Verizon said it was selling me, and my speed was 1/3 what it should have been.

First I was mad at them, but I thought about a while and figured out I might be the cause. Found myself some even thick, round, white inside-the-wall phone line and used that instead, and my download speed tripled.

[micky]

The others are right. Because of the shielding in CAT5 and 6, you can run thin wire and still get high computer speeds. At least that's what they tell me in a ocmputer connectivity ng. I'll know for sure when I change wires later this summer. (Even though my current wire is fast, I need thin to get past an obstruction.)

[Jon Danniken]

It should say on the cable housing. I haven't seen anything other than CAT-3 offered for telephone use in any of the hardware stores around here.

Jon

[The Daring Dufas]

One of my suppliers sells copper clad aluminum CAT5 cable which may not be as workable as all copper. It's possible that you got a similar wire which costs less than the all copper conductor cable. Back in the 1970's I worked in the electrical supply business when aluminum ROMEX appeared on the market and some manufacturers developed copper clad aluminum ROMEX as a safer wire to use which didn't require special connectors. I remember getting in a roll of copper clad thermostat cable and it was so light, I thought something was wrong. I stripped some of the wire scraped it with a knife and saw the aluminum core. Needless to say, some of the salesmen were freaked out about it. You can scrape the wire to see if it has an aluminum core which could explain you trouble using it. o_O

TDD

[clare]

In my experience 22 guage is normally used for telephone wire - and on a single line system you only need / use a single pair for a POTS system

[gregz]

I use whatever two conductor I have. I've used cat 3 and 5 I got for free. Red white twisted pair is all you need. Depends on how your stringing it.

Greg

[clare]

Cat 5 is 24/26 - 5e tends towards the 24. Cat 6 is 23 or 22 guage..

For phone wiring I generally use 4 strand 22 guage station wire unless there is a likelihood of switching up to IP Phones or needing data connections - but with gigabit you can't share a 4 pair with phone.

[clare]

The number of twists per foot is important too for internet speed. Cat 5 is different than cat3, for instance. Cat 3 is 3-4 twists per foot. Cat 5 is 4-4 twists per INCH