Using cat5 to connect a phone line?

Answer Best answer as chosen by user sliron

Yes you can,

by mrmacfixit - 1/30/12 4:21 PM

In Reply to: Using cat5 to connect a phone line? by sliron

Your Cat 5 ethernet cable is only using two pairs to carry the data traffic to and from the modem.
That leaves two pair spare.
You can use one of those pairs to carry the voice traffic. Telephony only uses one pair of wires.

A little research on Google will tell you what pins/wire is not being used but, just because I'm a good guy, it's pins 4 & 5 and 7 & 8

If I were doing this, I would go with pins 7 & 8 which are the last two pins on the plug/socket and are Brown/White and Brown.

How's that?

P

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Answer Best answer as chosen by user sliron

It's the same . . .

by Coryphaeus - 1/30/12 1:07 PM

In Reply to: Using cat5 to connect a phone line? by sliron

All telecom cable is twisted pair. The only difference is that Cat-5 has more twists per inch.

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Answer Best answer as chosen by user sliron

Extra cat5 cable = 4 phone lines :)

by cw00dward007 - 4/25/12 7:30 PM

In Reply to: Using cat5 to connect a phone line? by sliron

Your standard phone line only requires 2 pair (tip and ring, i think they're called). The cat5, being that it's extra has 4 unused pairs of wires inside the outer jacket (usually blue). The little plastic connectors on the end of cat5 are called RJ45 jacks. Instead of RJ45, get RJ11 jacks to put your cat5 wires in (you will need a crimp tool). These are the smaller, but similar jacks you find on pretty much all phone lines. Since you are in Colorado, if you need help, check out this company for Denver telecom work in your area and I believe they are very reasonable. Might even do it for free, i don't know. I think my cousin got help from them with his office or something. Good luck, it's a lot easier than it sounds, but definitely try and borrow the crimp tool if it's just for one job!

-cw

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I must have missed something here,

by mrmacfixit - 4/26/12 3:21 PM

In Reply to: Extra cat5 cable = 4 phone lines :) by cw00dward007

where did you get the "Since you are in Colorado" from?

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