Telephone Wiring Connections

Whether you're wiring connections for telephones in a new house that is under construction, or whether you are installing new telephone wiring in an existing residence, you'll need to know something about telephone wiring jacks and the wiring you connect to those jacks. Below, you will find 6 useful tips to guide you through connecting your telephone wiring.

Things you'll need

• Telephone jacks
• Screwdriver
• Punch-down tool
• Needle nose pliers

Tip 1 – Identifying your Telephone Type
You'll find that not all telephones require the same wiring, not all jacks have the same type of connection terminals, and not all wiring is the same. Therefore, you'll need some basic information about each of these factors.

Tip 2 – Analog Telephones
Standard analog phones, the type you generally connect to traditional, analog telephone service, receive electronic analog signals through two copper wires inside a phone cable. These 2 wire are normally referred to as a wire pair. One end of the cable is connected to a telephone wall jack the other end to a jack into which is connected your dial tone service. At a wall jack, one end of a telephone line cord is plugged into the jack, the other end is plugged into the telephone.

Tip 3 – Digital Telephones
Digital telephones, although they use the same type of jacks and cables as analog telephones, receive electronic digital signals. Usually these signals are delivered by the Central Processing Unit (Key Service Unit) of a phone system.

Tip 4 – Telephone Wiring (Cables)
A single wire pair can be found in a cable that contains only the single pair. Or, it can be found in a cable with 2 to 4 pair (4 to 8 wires). All these wire pairs are identical except for the color of the plastic sheathing covering the copper wires. It is important that you connect all telephone wires of the same color to all jacks connections with matching terminal colors. For example: colors for the main cable pair are solid blue with white stripes for first wire, and white with blue stripes for the second wire.

Tip 5 – Telephone Jacks

In some jacks the terminals are slotted, while in others the terminals are screw-type. You can intermix the two jack types as long as you match wire colors with terminal colors. Terminals on both types of jacks are colored coded to match wire colors.

Tip 6 – Connecting Wires to Wall Jacks
To wire surface telephone jacks—those fastened to the wall surface—remove the jack cover to expose the terminals. For screw-type terminals, strip about 3/8" of the sheathing from the wire. Loosen the screws on the 2 blue terminals, wrap the bare wires of the blue wire pair around the terminal. The blue-white wire goes to the blue-white terminal, the white-blue wire goes to the white-blue terminal. Then, tighten the screws, attach the jack to the wall, and replace the jack cover. For slotted terminals, you don't need to bare the wire. Just place the 2 wire into the 2 color coded slots (white-blue wire to white-blue slot, etc.) and push these wires down into the slots, using a punch-down tool.