Is telephone cable only of the kind that contains four wires (red, black, green and yellow)?

I have a cable running in my basement that looks like a telephone cable but with four wires of teh following colors: light blue, orange, and two white (one of which has orange on it every inch or so).

What kind of cable is this, and what is it suitable for?

Thanks.

 

The cable jacket should tell you what type of wire it is.

Telephone wire comes in twisted pairs. So you would just have four wires. You would have 4 pairs of wires or 8 total wires.

 

Telephone cable has 4 wires, and they are not always twisted. The colors are green, red (first line), yellow and black (2nd line). You could also find Cat3 and Cat5 cables, those will have 8 wires, and they will be twisted. There are multicolored, but I believe all of them will have the following colors: orange/orange-white, blue/blue-white, brown/brown-white and blue/blue-white. That cable that you have is probably a phone cable due to the colors, but I've never seen a 2 pair cable with those colors. Find out where it's coming from and where it's going. That will tell you what type of cable it is.

 

Although cat3 cable is commonly sold in 4-pair cables these days, it appears you have a 2-pair cat3 cable. It's fine for phone wiring. The old untwisted phone cable (red, green, yellow, black) is not used much these days because it's subject to too much interference, especially if you attempt to use a modem over it. I think if you look more carefully, you'll see that the wire you think is white does have some blue on it similar to how the other white has orange on it.

 

cat3 cm/cmx is a twisted pair four conductor. This is probably what he has. It is a much better cable than the old red/black/green/yellow phone wire, but they do also sell a cat3 rated twisted pair station wire in the old colors for the weekend warriors.

 

I've been doing phone/network installation for a while now, and never encountered such a cable. Now I know it exists....

 

Thanks a lot guys. You are right, one of the white wires does have some blue on it.

Now that you've helped me determine that it is in fact a phone cable, how do I match up the wires to the colors on the phone jack, which are, of course, red, black, green and yellow?

Thanks!

 

Blue and blue/white to red and green (line 1). Orange and orange/white to black and yellow (line 2).

 

Just to confirm:

Blue to Red
White-Blue to Green
Orange to Black
White-Orange to Yellow

Ok?

Thanks again!

 

That is correct.