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Four Conductor Telephone Wire [Telecom]

Folks,

I hav been trying to locate a thousand foot roll of four conductor telephone wire.

I refer to the grey wire the telephone installer would use to run telephone extensions inside your home.

It doesn't need to be PVC as it won't be going inside walls, through ceilings, or in an underfloor. It is just for running extensions to analog [loop start] phones in a private home. I have a staple gun for running that wire inside a private residence.

I spoke to a couple of people at Graybar. They didn't even know what I was talking about. One of the folks there told me he was sixty years old and he didn't know. That seems weird. He lived when the phone installers routinely used that wire.

I was given a Belden part number. That turned out to be PVC. It is too expensive, not flexible enough, and not required for what I need.

I would prefer to buy it locally rather than pay for shipping. Graybar would have been ideal but they say they have nothing like that. I used to buy it from them in the eighties and nineties.

Other places tried to sell me CAT-5 or CAT-6. They had no clue what I was even talking about. One place tried to sell me the satin extension cord wire. They were clueless.

Any suggestions? Please email me directly.

Fred

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Reply to
Fred Atkinson
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As I recall, this is generally referred to as "station cable". Typically red/green/yellow/black, 22 gauge solid, not paired, jacketed together, not twisted particularly tightly, not impedance-controlled.

I'm not sure why you're referring to PVC here, or excluding it. PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is a veyry comon wire insulator/shell, and I believe it's used for most of the ordinary grey-jacketed station cable I've ever seen.

What you probably don't need, in this case, is "plenum-rated" cable. Plenum-rated cable has insulation which is relatively fire-resistant... in case of a fire it won't tend to act as an accelerant. Plenum-rated insulation _may_ be based on PVC (with fire retardants added) or a different insulation.

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Carol Cable C4412.25.17 is probably one part number that would work. Parts Express carries it although they are currently out of stock. Zoro has it in stock (free ground shipping, drop shipped) for $67.

My guess is that station cable has fallen out of popularity for new installations, because ordinary analog telephones are pretty much all it's good for. It may not work well for phone lines carrying DSL signals, or over-the-phone-line networking, and it's useless for Ethernet. Installers prefer to string Ethernet-qualified cable, as the price difference is minimal, it has many more potential applications, and it's very widely available.

Consider this: the Carol Cable part I mentioned above, costs $76 for a 500-foot roll from Parts Express, or $67 from Zoro.

If you go to Home Depot, you can buy a 1000-foot spool of Southwire

24/4-pair solid Cat5e gray-jacket cable for $97. That's twice as much wire (all that you would need) for less than twice Zoro's cost. And, it's better wire (the twisting of the pairs will make it somewhat more RF-interference-resistant).

Yes, it's a bit thicker and heavier and less flexible than station cable (4 pairs, rather than 4 wires) but if you're going to be staple-gunning it into place that seems like a small inconvenience.

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Reply to
Dave Platt

I think the proper name is "D Station Wire".

But I can understand it being obsolete since apparently few people want landlines these days, so it isn't being installed.

Amazon had a listing:

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But since telephones normally need only two wires, wouldn't any

22 gauge (or thicker) paired wire do? +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Reply to
HAncock4

....

First off you seem to be mixing up PVC vs. plenum jackets. Here you say it doesn't need to be PVC as it won't be going in walls, and then later you say that it was PVC and you didn't want it.

PVC is by far the most common jacket material. When it burns, it could break down into its base material (ie. chrlorine). Then again, Romex is all in PVC jackets too. So, buying plenum rated cabling (ie. teflon) for residential seems kind of pointless, when you have

1000's of feet of Romex installed for your electrical. OOTH, commercial buildings in most jurisdictions require plenum rated cabling when it is installed in the plenum, because the air-handling is all pushed through the plenum. Unlike a residence, where the air handling is only pushed through ducts and air handling is not pushed through the walls. Most likely your 4-wire telephone wire was never produced in a plenum jacket. Only PVC.

Next, just because it was widely used doesn't mean it was very good. They did have constant problems with the 4-wire telephone wire, but as you said, everybody just kept using it, as it was prevelent, damn the cross-talk problems that came with it. The industry got rid of it for a reason.

What you are looking for is at least 4 generations removed from even old standards. Ie. after the 4-wire telephone wire came voice-grade or cat1 4-pair cabling, (which is also now not a thing now). Then cat3

4-pair (again, which also is now not a thing). But all new telephone installation wiring would be using cat5e 4-pair cabling. Some installers may use cat6 for phone wiring as well as their data wiring just to keep it all consistant, although there still is a cost difference between cat5e and cat6, although it is pretty small now, so they may just stock one kind of wire and not worry about it. (If you do enough wiring, you get into a groove with one vendor, get used to their twists, how thick the jacket is, etc. so you get used to that brand/model, and having to switch out throws you off a bit).

If you really want to emulate as closely to what the old 4-wire telephone cable was, there is a modern equivilent. t-wire, or thermostat wire. You can buy it in plenum or pvc jackets (although see my comments above). You can buy something like a 20-4 section pretty much anywhere (ie. 20AWG, 4 conductor). It won't have the correct colors of conductors, but they'll be close. (ie. red-green-blue-white). If you go for 20-5, you'll pick up a yellow wire.

Although as I've said, the industry abandonded what you are looking for for a reason, and twisted pair is definately the way to go for analog voice circuits.

Reply to
Doug McIntyre

What jacket were you seeking? It will be PVC or teflon; you can no longer get the 1930's cotton insulated stuff....

Further, I doubt you can find any 4-conductor unpaired (JKT) cable. (Maybe "theromostat wire.." but that will be a bigger gauge.) You want paired cable anyhow.

CAT3/5 is far better. Home Depot sells it by the foot/box. It will avoid hum pickup when parallel with power distribution.

Note: never says solid copper; it may be copper covered steel. Avoid it.

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Reply to
David

If you search for "station cable" you can probably find it. I see a

1000' roll on Amazon for $256. Radio Shack has 100' rolls if it'd be adequate to buy ten of those.

Just out of nosiness, what's it for? Nobody I know is wiring their houses for analog phones any more. It's either gig ethernet or fiber.

Reply to
John Levine

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