House Phone Line Wiring

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!

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[Rellims]

Thank you Sir. You have no idea the relief your easy to understand explanation and visual has given me. Thanks to you I can now fix the wiring, instead of having to beat the crap out of the tech who installed my home WiFi. I am grateful, thanks again!

[OtterCreekRedneck]

Super explanation! The jacks in our house were over 40 years old and with your help, they are all brand new now. Thank you.

[ericsevern]

Thank you VERY much for this video. It told me EXACTLY what I needed to know to figure out the wiring in my new (old) house. Fantastic!

[dannydanix]

Appreciate you explain this phone wiring, the step by step illustration was awesome. Didn't know of any red, blue or green wires LOL. I can't believe a large house we bought comes with only one phone jack, and oddly from all places, it's built-in in the kitchen wall. Anyway, thank you very much !!

[cseneris]

Thank you so much for this tutorial. I looked at several videos and my phone didn't work. But your explaination of the blue wires helped a lot. Now my phone line is working properly.

[GHagar]

Very useful instructions, very skilled at teaching in a clear & concise fashion, much appreciated, thank you.

[Kenhos]

Excellent Explanation, I am going to use this for some of my less analog knowledgeable people on my crew, thanks.... Great work

[jamiesomerville]

THANK YOU!!! You're video is the only one I found helpful when working with the 4 paired wires.

[willdogsdroid]

Thank you for your videos. They are really helpful! I just started a new job as a field tech and while they provide on the job training, being the "new guy" I sometimes feel like asking too many questions makes me a bother when on work sites. By watching your videos it helps me learn at my own pace with my tools in my home lab!

[vorpalcheezit]

Explanation makes phone wiring so easy a child could do it! A thousand blessings upon you good sir!

[mrj]

I had an issue with my phone line.
Your video helped me resolve the issue.
Thank you for the help. Very informative 👏

[SaifAli-qgsi]

Thank you so much, as a tech I struggle to troubleshoot phones😂, but now thanks to you. Made it way easier.

[charlottemorris]

Not sure what the installer did when we changed carriers, but I was able to fix it with your help! MANY THANKS!

[dalecarlson]

Great, easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow video. What really helped me was explaining the difference between the commercial and residential wiring. For some odd reason, my house has commercial phone wiring. The description of matching the colors from the commercial wires to a residential wall mount helped immensely; the phone worked perfectly the first time. Thanks much.

[wormchickenwizard]

I'm an intern at my local telephone company. When I was in I/R, we never installed the older, cat3 style of cable. We'd always use cat5e on residential installs. For bonded DSL installs, in particular, adjacent pairs found in cat3 are prone to experience interference from each other. Nowadays, you can often find cat5e for less than cat3.

[jaredvanblankenstein]

Thanks a million!!! i was trying to terminate an old 4 color ribbon cable with a cat 5 keystone jack and your explanation at 8:30 was exactly what I needed. I appreciate your video.

[JJ-vlyy]

Great video. Complete, to the point and clear. Thanks.

[cadillacshak]

This saved me a call to verizon today. Thank you!!

[Glorious]

Perfect instructions!!! I did turn off all the electricity in apartment.

[SK-qcfb]

Great, thanks.
Just troublshooted a broken blue/white wire on the wall outlet!