Phone Jack

When I built my house 35 years ago, I had the phone company put phone lines and jacks in every room (6 to be exact). A year or so ago I started having phone problems. I called the phone company and all they said was that my phone lines were too old and had to be replaced. I asked him how was he going to replace all those lines and jacks. He said run new phone wire to each jack by drilling holes in my brick at each jack and run new wire through the brick holes to the jack. Can you imagine white phone lines on red brick showing the whole world where my phone jacks are. What I did was run a new phone line along side the cable line and bought two of those plug ins that plug right into the electric outlets. Works like a charm. I probably saved myself $400 bucks, maybe more. But I do have a question. Can I still use those old lines and if so how would I make the connections? There must be 20 different color wires all bundled together.

 

From my understanding, you have phone lines running either with a wireless adapter that you plug into the wall or you have a phoneline actually running over your electrical wires via a special adapter you can buy. You were wondering if you can still use your old wires. I think you are wanting to still be able to get phone service on them if I understand you correctly.

Yes and no, if your phone lines are that bad, they may not be. You are saying you ran a new phone line next to the cable line, does that mean you brought a brand new cable from the Telephone NIC box on the side of your house or what? If you did, you have basically just eliminated the old lines, if you re-hook up the new lines, they most likely will cause the same trouble they did before you unhooked them (as i am assuming) and ran the new line. If you really want those lines to work, you will have to run new ones.

In any case, AVOID having the phone company doing it for you, not only will they rip you off, they will probably do what they said, drill holes through your brick, which in most cases is not needed, and at the most probably onle needed in one spot to get the wire into your house.

To run new cable you will have to get it into your basement, crawlspace or attic, whichever you have and can be accessible. Than you will need to snake it through the wall to your jacks or run it in the crack of the floor, etc. Depending on how neat of an install you want and how much of a headache you want to create for yourself.

In the end however, in the price you will pay to buy extra power line adapters to get the phone in other rooms, you will probably pay the same to have an electrician come out to run new wire. If you elect to do it yourself, that would be your best cost saving method, providing you are willing to run all the wire everywhere it needs to be ran.

I am also assuming you have only 1 phone line, so hookup would be fairly simple. If you need any help with the color schemes, just post a new message here describing in detail what you have and either me or somebody else will try our best to help you out.

Please post back with the outcome of your project.

Best of luck,
Paul Miller