Telephone cable is used to connect the telephone to the phone network box located outside your home. The telephone company is responsible for installing and maintaining the wiring outside your home or building. They can also install the telephone cable in each room or location as required, but there is an additional fee for this service. You can save money and do this installation work yourself.
There are four main items involved when installing telephone cable: equipment, location, wiring, and topology. Installing this type of cabling is a great home improvement project. It is fairly easy to do and test and it improves the functionality of your home by increasing the locations where you can plug in a telephone.
The equipment needed for this project is: telephone wire, wall jack, screwdriver, drill, and wire strippers. All these items can be purchased at any home repair or hardware store. When selecting your equipment, look for quality telephone wire. The wall jack is a uniform item that should be fairly inexpensive. Invest in telephone wire or cable that is sturdy to ensure a long, useful life.
Walk around your home and think about where you will install the telephone outlet or jack. There should be a telephone outlet in each room and it is best to locate them two feet (0.6 m) off the ground. This provides the most options for telephone location and does not affect the decor. The only exception to this rule is a phone in the bathroom or kitchen. In these locations, it should be installed at just below eye level.
When wiring the cable, the first step is to make a hole in the drywall where you are going to install the jack. This hole should be smaller than the wall jack, so that the faceplate covers the hole. Attach a weight to the end of the cable and drop it down the hole. Ask someone to help you by going to the basement and looking for the telephone cable. Once they locate it, they can pull it into the correct position.
Do not cut the cable length from the roll until it has been connected to the main telephone box. This will ensure that you have enough cable to accommodate any obstacles that it needs to overcome. Leave at least six inches (15.2 cm) of slack in the cable to ensure that it will remain connected.
There are two topography options for telephone cables: direct or daisy chain. In a direct model, each telephone outlet is connected independently to the main box. A daisy chain model allows you to split the cable going to one phone jack and run telephone cable to another room. Either model will work, but the daisy chain model is harder to troubleshoot.
