"Underground" demarc? [telecom]

I couldn't tell you about Ohio, but the buried drop serving me in Oklahoma rises out of the ground and comes up to the conduit holding the electric meter (to which it is grounded) and the demarc is at about eye level, accessible to the customer, as it's supposed to be.

Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

I have lived in many states, not Ohio, but in the old homes I lived in that had phone service hooked up between the 50's and 60's the phone cable aerial or underground terminated at a phone company junction block either in the basement or the crawl space.

Most of those older homes did not have a modern phone demarc inside or outside unless repair work had been done by the phone company in the last 10 years or so. They just had the black plastic looking block with the 4 terminal screws. Two for the actual phone line and two screw terminals for the rest of the house phone wiring. A ground wire is normally attached to the block as well.

After physically verifying if the more modern phone demarc, with the RJ-11 jack, is missing you might give her phone company a call. In homes where I lived in Massachusetts and Iowa they came out and installed them for free once I requested them. It has been 10 years or so since I last had one installed so things may have changed.

Just be sure to nail down if the installation would actually be for free or if they would charge for the installation of the new demarc.

Authoritative answer: "it depends".

First off, it is possible that there is _no_ such "device". For _existing_ single-family dwellings, the ILEC tended to install a NID/demarc device _only_ when they had occasion to make a 'premises visit' for some other reason.

Secondly, some 'underground' service to single-family structures runs underground _to_ the foundation of the building, then goes up the _outside_ of the foundation wall, to the level of the ground-floor, and _then_ enters the building. In -that- situation, the NID/demarc is usually installed on the building exterior at approximately the point where the wiring goes _through_ the exterior wall.

Otherwise underground service may enter the structure _below_ ground level, right through the foundation, In _this_ situation, the NID/demarc (if any) is found inside the building, in the basement, usually in the rafters right by where the wiring enters.

Secondly, it is 'not necessarily' gray. A demarc for interior installation may well be 'telco beige' -- about twice the size of a regular surface-mount jack, with a short (less than 6") cord that plugs into a modular jack, all part of the same assembly..

_IF_ there is no NID, per se, then, generally, the telco 'legal liability' is up to the first splice point in the wiring, 'at or inside' the building. Things can get complicated if the structure is something like a townhouse.

I would think wherever the telephone service entered the building. If there's no obvious place where the service is distributed in the building it may start at one of the jacks. Many times if there's a jack in the kitchen all other jacks will feed from that jack. There has to be a distribution point somewhere in the house whether it's a terminal in a utility room or where the cable comes into the house if you have a basement or through a spot in a utility room or even through a garage. If the house was built in the mid to late seventies there should be a telco provided NIC where the subscriber can have their own wiring done and where you can test the line by plugging in your regular phone to see if the line is OK.

Check carefully around the outside of the house.

If this is an older property, it is possible there was never a physical demarc installed (like in my case.)

If she is in older construction, she may have one of the original resistive-fuse terminal block demarcs. If so, she can identify it because it's the thing that connects to the cable rising out of the ground, the wire coming from the house, and the ground wire. Could be a silver box or a black plastic tube or various other configurations.

A call to the telephone company will get it replaced with a modern demarc for free if she wants. This is usually a good idea since it makes diagnosis of problems easier.

An awful lot of intermittent telephone problems these days seem to be caused by cheap flaky telephones, and when people have five or six phones in the house, finding the one that is causing the problem may not be all that easy.

--scott

In my (limited) experience, even if there's no official demarc, there's invariably a lightning protection block, with four or more screw terminals, cylindrical fuses, and a ground wire.

R's, John

What is the definition of the "first splice piont in the wiring"? Is that where the house line branches out of the cable, where the line splits to serve various extension telephones in the dwelling, or something else?

What is the policy for older multi-family housing? Ours has a large junction box that serves many dwelling units. In a sense, this junction box could be seen as a demarc, but since many people are served by it, I would think access is restricted to phone co personnel only (to avoid accidental or intentional disruption to someone else's service, plus, the terminals could be poorly labeled.)

(In our building, there are multiple jacks for extension phones within each unit, but no one 'centralized' jack for the unit.)

Also, how would FIOS be installed in a multi-family building? I would guess the FIOS boxes would be placed adjacent to the old landline junction box, or would entirely new wiring methods be used? FWIW, cableTV lines are simply punched right through exterior walls.

:What is the policy for older multi-family housing? Ours has a large :junction box that serves many dwelling units. In a sense, this :junction box could be seen as a demarc, but since many people are :served by it, I would think access is restricted to phone co personnel :only (to avoid accidental or intentional disruption to someone else's :service, plus, the terminals could be poorly labeled.)

In my experience, an installer moves the pair serving a unit from the common junction box to a normal demarc, either by extending the pair from the common junction box, or by cutting it before it enters the junction box. Or both. Sometimes, at the same time. If the next person to come along is lucy, he writes what he did on the wall in sharpie.

:(In our building, there are multiple jacks for extension phones within :each unit, but no one 'centralized' jack for the unit.)

:Also, how would FIOS be installed in a multi-family building? I would :guess the FIOS boxes would be placed adjacent to the old landline :junction box, or would entirely new wiring methods be used? FWIW, :cableTV lines are simply punched right through exterior walls.

Probably, whatever requires the least work on the part of the installer, but I dont have any first hand experience.

In our condo (112 units), it was run to the same junction box in each unit as RCN uses. When RCN was installed, they built a new node outside each building at attic level, and dropped into an upstairs closet in each unit, where a cheap plastic junction box supplied the new coax and twisted-pair lines to the bedrooms and living room. The original 1958 phone wiring follows a different route, parallel to the electrical supply, which runs through the basement. RCN (rightly) didn't want to deal with the original wiring, which doesn't follow any obvious path.

-GAWollman

In many states, including Oklahoma and Texas, houses are customarily built on slab and there is no basement or crawl space.

Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com snipped-for-privacy@aol.com

And in states where houses do have crawl spaces, concerns over the Hanta virus keeps many of us from ever crawling into them, no matter what.

That block is, for all legal purposes, the demarc. You own the wiring after it, they own the wiring before it.

--scott

Look for the electric service meter and power main disconnect.

The teleco demarc should be close to it, (for grounding/bonding purposes).

For [those] who cannot read, I repeat: "'at or inside' the building." This _clearly_ eliminates the first alternative in the [above] question.

As for the rest, "it depends'. On _how_ the wiring is done, and _where_ the end of the wire _to_ the building is.

What you think is 'immaterial and irrelevant'. There is an old saying that "logic and the law have _nothing_ in common."

The telco liability, in all probability _does_ end at that junction box.

IN GENERAL, the unit owner is responsible only for all the in-unit wiring, the *building* owner is responsible for the in-building wiring _before_ it reaches the individual unit, and the telco responsibility at the main junction box. Condo's can be more complicated -- the assn. _may_ be responsible for everything that is 'inside a wall'.

Ok, but how does it work if above "block" handles a group of dwelling units (as does the unit where I live)? I don't think it would be a good idea for individuals to be fooling around in a junction box that serves multiple customers.

That's how it works. And no, it's maybe not a good idea for individuals to be fooling around in there, especially since that box may contain multiplied pairs from other buildings as well. But that's how it works.

--scott

Often, but not always. On our house the meters (day/night) are on the front, the phone is on the side with its own ground spike, and the main breaker is in the basement, but there's no phone wire down there.

Admittedly, both phone and power were retrofitted in this house probably 50 years after it was built, and in new construction it's more typical for it all to be together.

R's, John

We're talking about the law, not what is or is not a good idea. :-)

The demarc is just where "Telephone Company" responsibility ends and "someone else owns this" begins. If you're in an apartment complex, the complex is responsible from that point (and getting something fixed from the demarc to your jack depends on how nice the apartment complex is). If it's a condo, then the association is probably responsible.

I once lived in an apartment that gave all of its tenants keys to the closet containing the main punchdown block for the whole facility, so that anyone could let the phone company in for maintenance. Of course, that also meant anyone could go in and mess up someone else's wiring, or make outgoing calls on someone else's line, etc. Needless to say, I got 900-number call blocking while living there. There weren't any real problems, though, just theoretical ones.