What telephone cable to buy? 4 Core, 6 Core?

Question

Hi all,

I'm in the process of replacing my home telephone cables and I wanted to know what kind of cable I should be buying.

I've seen 4 Core, 6 Core and 8 Core cables. What one should I get?

I only need the cable to run 2 extension boxes.

Any help would be great.

Thanx

Answer 1

Phones only take 4 wires. if you want to play it safe, just get some plain Cat5 cable. The regular PC networking stuff. It is shielded to prevent crosstalk and interference and it comes with 4 pair, so that will leave you with 4 wires per phone and it might be cheaper per foot than high end phone cable.

Answer 2

Assuming that you are in the U.K., you only actually need 2-pair (4-core) cable to run extension jacks.   The standard coding for the jack terminals and wires is:

2 - Blue/white

3 - Orange/white

4 - White/orange

5 - White/blue

(where blue/white means blue with white bands, etc.).

In fact only three of the four wires are normally used, but all four are usually connected for neatness.

You can either run two separate cables from the main jack to each extension, or if the relative locations make it easier, you can run from the main to one extension, then continue with another cable from there to the other extension.

3-pair (6-core) cable often costs very little more than 2-pair, so you can use that if you wish and you will have a spare pair in the cable should you ever want to add a second line or make some other change at a later date.  You can either connect the green/white and white/green  to spare terminals 1 and 6 respectively, or just coil them up in the box and leave them unconnected.

There's nothing practical to be gained by using CAT3 or CAT5 network cable for regular phone wiring.