Phone connection removal

Musefan

Hi. I am due to do some panelling in my bedroom and there’s an old phone connection in the way. I would like to remove and fill it. Can I just tape up the wires and push them back into the wall and fill? Thanks.

tech

it more than likely just a CAT 5 cable, if so you can tape up and forget about it.

Pandiculation

If the phone line is still connected, just make sure that you snip the ends of the wires so there are no bare ends showing. Otherwise there's a risk you could cause signal issues for DSL devices or short out the phone line.

Ideally, if you're no longer using the phone wiring, just disconnect it at the point it comes into the house i.e. usually behind the first Eircom socket, or at a little junction box often in the hallway.

coylemj

Pandiculation wrote: »

If the phone line is still connected, just make sure that you snip the ends of the wires so there are no bare ends showing. Otherwise there's a risk you could cause signal issues for DSL devices or short out the phone line.

They take care of all that at the local exchange.

Pandiculation

coylemj wrote: »

They take care of all that at the local exchange.

Would you care to explain how?

If the line's cut off at the exchange, it can continue to be powered for years - possibly even indefinitely with 48V DC. OpenEir don't generally disconnect lines unless they have to. Rather, they just kill the phone and DSL services in software.

A lot of exchanges have no shortage of line cards anymore as people are moving to VoIP, VoBB, cable or ditching landlines, so there's no particular reason to isolate the lines from the line cards.

All the local exchange does is send a voice/POTS signal, which is pretty heavy AC and DC, far more capable of sparking and arcing data wiring, and it piggybacks a VDSL or ADSL signal onto the same pair, which is filtered at your house, not their end.

Any noise introduced in local wiring in the house itself will potentially result in signal issues. The DSL signals are just carried on the wiring, which is mostly unshielded copper pairs. So, you need to aim to keep it simple.

Eir's VDSL installations are normally filtered by the NTU, but it's not necessarily ideal to have superfluous extension wiring dangling behind walls. If it can be disconnected, it should be.

Also, with regard to the voice PSTN line aspect, they run at -48V DC and ring at up to 75V AC 25Hz and just touching the two wires together will show a visible spark and short the line.

They're not a big risk, but they're also not insignificant enough to just assume they're entirely harmless either.

Phone wiring is frequently involved in issues around lightening strikes too as the lines are often quite exposed, which is another reason for ditching unused extensions.

If you're totally abandoning copper PSTN services, I'd always just find the point where the line enters the house and disconnect the two wires coming in from the network, snip the ends so no copper's visible and just tape them off in the NTU. If you ever want to reconnect again (highly unlikely in this day and age if you've fibre alternatives) you just need to reconnect the two terminals/lugs, but it removes live DC behind your walls and exposure of your house to an external overhead wiring system.

Also btw: the other rather handy use is if you can use the old phone wire as a draw line to pull in CAT6, you've wired ethernet possibilities.