Using old home phone wiring for VoIP

Using old home phone wiring for VoIP

So, you've got a brand new VoIP phone line with a TA (telephone adapter) device.
Congratulations! Now you may want to use your existing inside wiring to share that line and you can do couple of things short of calling a pro to re-wire the place.

The following quick tips apply to the situation where you have a DSL service for the broadband.

The easiest solution would be to use a jack in your house that's wired for two phone lines
(green/red and black/yellow wires or could be white/blue-blue and white/orange-orange) back to the phone box outside.

This option is sort of plug-and-play as long as you have a few extra parts and as long as all your other phones are already wired back to the phone box outside (single line wiring is OK for the other phones)

So, you are going to need:

* a jack with two lines (hopefully the one the TA already connected to: will make it easier

* a two Line Phone adapter such as this one:
http://electrical.hardwarestore.com/15-61-telephone-accessories/two-line-phone-adapter-606865.aspx
(this is not an endorsement of the merchant, they just came up first in Google)

* a phone line slitter such as this one:
http://electrical.hardwarestore.com/15-61-telephone-accessories/duplex-phone-jack-116271.aspx

* an extra phone cord (length as required):
http://electrical.hardwarestore.com/15-61-telephone-cords-wire/phoneline-cord-with-plugs-116288.aspx

once you got the ingredients, you will have to do the following:

* Open your phone box outside and connect all green wires of the cables going to other phones to the back wire of the cable going to your TA

* Connect all red wires to the yellow wire going to your TA

* Now, back in house disconnect the DSL modem (device the VoIP TA plugs into) from the wall jack

* plug the two-line adapter into the wall jack

* plug the DSL modem back into Line 1 (L1) port of the two-line adapter

* unplug the phone from the TA, plug the phone splitter instead

* plug the phone back into any one of the ports on the splitter

* plug the extra phone cord into the other port on the splitter and then the other end plug into Line 2 (L2) port of the two-line adapter

This should conclude your install! Obviously do the testing first. If some of the phones are not working, check if they actually were connected to Line 1 (green/red) and not Line 2 (black/yellow). Change accordingly if discrepancy is found.
If NONE of the phones are working, check the Line 2 of the cable that goes to the TA. It won't work without a second pair (black/yellow wires) connected to the jack and continuous all the way through to the phone box outside (NID, by the way - Network Interface Device).
Sometimes wires are spliced in the house (and often multiple times), so if you get into situation where the wires are leaving into the wall but not appearing on the other side, I suggest that you actually do call the pros. It does not have to be the phone company - it's your (inside!) wiring - you can hire whomever you want.

Even if the plug and play did not work, you would have done a good reconnaissance (what cable goes to what phone, how many pairs etc.) that the pros will be able to use later to your advantage (read: less billable hours on the job).
Hopefully the extra parts needed for the plug-and-play option can either be found laying around the house (cord, splitter) or purchased for under $10 ($20 with shipping) online.
I can also think of RadioShack as a possible place to buy the parts.

Before we conclude : depending on how old the wiring to the phones in the house is your green wire could actually be white/blue, the red can be blue. The black can be white/orange and the yellow can be orange. Hope it's easy enough.

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Using old home phone wiring for VoIP

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