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To hook up a phone line from an outside box, follow these steps:
1. Locate the outside box: Look for a box typically mounted on the exterior wall of your house. It may have a removable cover.
2. Open the box: Remove the cover to access the wiring inside. Be careful not to damage any wires.
3. Identify the incoming phone line: Look for a thick cable that connects to the box. This is the main phone line coming from the telephone company.
4. Prepare the phone line: Strip the outer insulation of the phone line using a wire stripper. Make sure to expose enough wire to work with.
5. Connect the wires: Inside the box, you’ll find terminal blocks or screw terminals. Attach the corresponding colored wires from the phone line to the appropriate terminals. Typically, red and green wires are used for the primary phone line.
6. Secure the connection: Tighten the screws or terminal blocks to secure the wires in place. Ensure there are no loose connections.
7. Test the connection: Plug a phone into an inside jack and check for a dial tone. If you hear a dial tone, your phone line is successfully hooked up.
Remember to exercise caution when working with electrical connections. If you’re unsure or uncomfortable, it’s best to seek professional assistance.
The telephone box positioned on the side of a house serves as the connection point between the phone system inside the house and the main phone lines coming from a pole or underground. This box, also known as the network interface device (NID), is installed by the telephone company.
The NID is owned by the telephone company and certain parts of it are inaccessible to customers. However, you can gain access to the necessary part for installing a phone wire using a Phillips screwdriver. Inside the NID, there are modules that correspond to different phone numbers. When setting up a new landline phone, the company activates one of these modules and labels it with the phone number, but you are responsible for the rest of the wiring.
Selecting and Routing the Wire
When purchasing telephone wire, you may come across the old-style cable with four colored wires (red, green, yellow, and black) or Cat5e cable with eight twisted wire pairs (blue, orange, green, brown) and a white wire with corresponding colored stripes. Only one wire pair is needed to connect a phone, so the other wires do not matter.
After determining the location for the telephone wall jack, drill a hole in the wall behind it and feed the cable through. Pull the cable to the side of the house where the NID is located using the most convenient route. Drill another hole on the side of the house and feed the wire through it. Finally, pull the wire to the NID, ensuring enough slack on both ends for making connections.
Connecting Wires to the Telephone Line Box
After opening the NID and finding the module for the phone number you are using, you can test it by plugging in a short phone cord, connecting it to a test phone, and listening for a dial tone. If you do not hear a dial tone, contact the phone company. Inside the NID, you will see two terminals with either red and green wires attached to them or labeled T and R (tip and ring).
The specific wire pair you connect to these terminals does not matter as long as you connect the same wire pair to the terminals in the jack. It is recommended to follow a standard color convention for simplicity. For old-style cable, the green wire is the tip and the red wire is the ring. For Cat5e cable, the blue-and-white-striped wire is the tip and the solid blue wire is the ring. Strip about an inch from the end of each wire using a wire stripper, wrap the wire ends around the corresponding terminal screws, and tighten the screws with a screwdriver.
How to Connect Wires to the Telephone Jack
If you are using a standard RJ-11 surface-mount jack, there will be four terminals, each with a different-colored wire connected to it. The wire colors are red, green, black, and yellow. Since you are connecting a single phone, you will only need two of these wires, usually the red/green pair. In some cases, the terminals may be labeled T1, R1, T2, and R2. In this case, you will use the T1/R1 pair.
If you followed the standard color convention when connecting to the NID, wiring the phone jack is simple. Connect the green wire to the green terminal (T1) and the red wire to the red terminal (T2). Alternatively, connect the blue striped wire to the green terminal (T1) and the solid blue wire to the red terminal (T2). If you used different wires, you will need to remember which wires you connected to the NID terminals and connect those same wires to the corresponding jack terminals. Strip the wires, wrap them around the terminal screws, tighten the screws, and attach the jack cover.
