Short and simple video on wiring your home phone jacks (residential). The wiring or home telephone service (also known as POTS or Analog) is fairly simple. The most important part is to keep the wire colors consistently on the same terminals.
Almost all residential phone service uses just 2 wires (also referred to as "one pair"). Each pair of wires has a "TIP" and a "RING". (or kind of like Neg and Positive, but not really).
In home phone wiring TIP is usually GREEN and RING is RED. However, you may have commercial cabling in your home that is refered to as "Category 3, 4, 5, or 6" cabling. With the Cat3 and above cables, the wire colors are different. Tip is white, with blue spots. And, RING is Blue with White spots.
Also, Category 3 (and above) cabling will include a total of 8 wires. If you are only dealing with one phone number, then you only need to worry about the White/Blue and Blue/White. If you have a 2nd phone number coming into your home then that would go on the White/Orange and Orange/White.
House phone wiring begins at the entry point from the street or Telephone pole. This is called a "Demarc" or "point of demarcation". This is the junction box where phone service from companies like AT&T, SBC, Verizon, PacBell, or Frontier begins. All the wiring from this point into your house is your responsibility. Unless, you have inside wiring insurance.
The wiring that goes from the demarc junction box back to the telephone pole or under ground is the property of the phone company. DO NOT mess with the wiring on THEIR side!
RESOURCES:
Tools: networkadvisor.net/tools/telec...
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