Telephone Service Installation & Repair Tips

When working with or installing your own local telephone service lines and wiring, the following tips may help to make your job a lot easier

Sometimes the wiring color scheme used in your residential phone service is not accurate because someone did a non-standard installation. This can be extremely frustrating, especially in a two line set up.  You then have to figure out which line is which. The only way around this is to connect the wires one by one and check for a dial tone and then ascertain the phone number through caller ID or trying to call the number. Be methodical. Take Notes. This can be especially exasperating when working with more than the four basic wires.  Many of today's newer houses have local phone service wiring with up to 5 pairs in the basic cable.

Label what you can.  Items such as phone numbers, which line is which, where the lines are routed and anything relevant should be labeled.  Residential phone service wiring projects and troubleshooting become much simpler.

If you are trying to diagnose problems such as line noise or a phone not working, you can plug a phone directly into the Network Interface Box. Some people put locks on these boxes as someone could potentially easily tap into your phone lines and listen or make their own calls at your expense.

A spare phone plugged directly into a computer can be useful to diagnose problems and make quick calls.  Keeping a conventional corded phone (one that doesn't need AC power) can make local phone service wiring/troubleshooting much easier.

Sometimes, as with any electrical problem, you may solve a problem more quickly by abandoning and leaving in place an old wire that does not work and simply running a new one.

Keep your wiring connections short. The more phone extensions you have, the lower the power output. Often, problems arise from cheap telephones. When diagnosing telephone service problems, a preliminary step can be to unplug, one by one, phones, faxes and other phone service devices.

Lightning can be a real threat. Do not work on phone wire during electrical storms, and a conservative practice would be to not be online, or even pull the phone wire from your phones & modems, during electrical storms.

Water within the phone lines can be a source of shorts or line noise.

Keep the modular connectors clean. I learned this from a phone company employee. Crap from carpets and dust can embed into the connectors and wiring. Sticking the modular connector into a carpet is asking for problems.

Good Luck.