Structured cabling for fibre and home phone

[Rubato]

Hello.

I’m doing a full basement reno in our 70 year old house, so all the walls and ceilings are open for excellent access for wiring. We plan to install ethernet cabling and phone lines to several locations in the basement and on the main floor. Our current Telus account includes Purefibre internet and Home Phone. So I’m drawing up a plan to install a modest structured cabling system, including rack mounted power strip, unmanaged switch, and patch panel. I’m pretty clear on how to deal with the internet end of things, but I’m asking for guidance on how to work the Home Phone into this scheme. Can the phone lines be switched? Or can a hub work? Or should they just be hard wired as a daisy chain? Or what?

I wanted to attached a block diagram of my plan to this point, but there seems to be a problem with photo uploads, currently. The internet side of things looks like:

Purefibre -> ONT, ONT Data 1 -> T3200M Wan, T3200M Lan 1 -> Switch -> Patch Panel -> house locations.

The phone setup is:

ONT POTS1 -> J-box -> current RJ-11 jack

As you can tell, I am not a telecom pro. Any suggestions for a workable approach for the phone would be very welcome. Thanks very much for any input.

[polecat]

@Rubato  You have things well  thought out. Could you not draw a diagram and put it on this post. Why not put your home phone on pure fiber the old copper lines in our town were very noisey but clear now.  I am not teck savey but wire routing i am so ran double runs to some areas just in case. I have fiber phone with battery backup and telus satellite. We have  25/25 internet we are not heavy users of net or tv. 29 down and 29 up all the time sate is basic and time shift all we want. Approx  38 feet out wifi strength is -51db to -60db and rarely changes. A central service closet with power available is a good idea. Don't forget cate runs for security cams and other things. Polecat

[Rubato]

Thank you, Polecat.

Sounds like where you are is a bit challenged for high speed telecom services. Until recently, I lived for 25 years in a remote part of BC; so I’m familiar with the fun and games of rural internet and phone. Always made life interesting!

We are in the city now, and are on the Telus 300/300 plan with home phone. The phone definitely comes through the fibre line. Please have a look at the two images below. One is a photo of our current temporary installation, and the other show the scheme I’m considering (with the phone question mark).

 

 

The phone cable comes from the POTS1 port on the ONT, changes from RJ-11 cable to cat5 in a white small j-box, and then exits the house through the same hole the fibre entered. It then climbs up the exterior wall and into house on the main floor to supply a single RJ-11 jack.

Hopefully, that fills in the picture a bit more clearly. Thanks again for your thoughts. 

[polecat]

@Rubato  I am in Creston one of the first towns to get fibre in bc.   I waited a year an asked people about the new service and comments were all good. Called  Telus for fiber internet and they asked if i wanted my home phone moved to fiber and because of noisey lines rain storms etc i said yes. Old copper line still in house not hooked to anything. All phone lines in house and garage are on a service block hooked to the fibre equipment with a battery backup good for one hour only span i think. Power out fibre phones will not work with out battery backup. Your images do not show up ??? I was on satellite then with a real slow copper internet They tried to sell me optik but i don't like the optik format and especially the control wand. Tried it at my daughters in calgary did not impress me at all. Power out cordless will not ring or work but older tone phone in house can be used. Our cell is road trips only and then only for texts.  

[Rubato]

Hi Polecat,

Thanks for mentioning that these fibre-based phones won't work without power. That makes sense, now that I think about it. I'll put the ONT and other components on a UPS.

Regarding putting images in these posts: I started out trying to use the "insert photos" icon at the top of each new post. That brought up a drag and drop window that never seemed to finish uploading --- like it was caught in an endless loop. So I wondered what would happen if I dragged the image files right into the post, and that seemed to work. I hope that you (and others) can see the images. Please let me know if they're not showing up in the post.

Again, thanks for your input.

[polecat]

@Rubato  Telus supplied the battery backup and 3200 at no cost to me mind you i worked for the power company and know the telus crew.

[NFtoBC]

Phone lines as simple daisy chain is fine.

[Rubato]

Thanks for your post, NFtoBC.

So treating the phone end of this setup just like the old copper based systems would work fine. Is this the most elegant way to go about this? Are there other possibilities? I'm really just curious and want to know more about this type of phone through fibre.

Thanks again for your input. I appreciate it very much.

[polecat]

@Rubato Had to add this .One year ago 24 hr outage our cordless phones did not work old push button worked  just fine for that time and battery held up. Old rotary will not work at all unless you buy a pulse to tone conversion kit $70.

[NFtoBC]

The telephone output of the ONT was simply connected to the existing copper phone wires (4 conductor) in my house. The Tech simply disconnected the incoming copper phone line at the demarcation point, and connected the ONT output instead. It took longer to reprogram the line from copper to Fibre than to make the connection.

[Rubato]

Interesting! I'll start strategizing my wiring plan with simple parallel connections in mind. Any thoughts about the quality of the cable I should run to the room jacks, perhaps with any kind of future-proofing to consider? Are there any standards that I would be wise to adhere to. In old houses that I've added phone line locations to, the red and green wires in the 4 wire solid copper cable were the relevant ones. The Telus tech who did our temporary installation ran cat5e cable from the J-box that connects with POTS1 of the ONT to the main floor phone jack, and used the blue and white wires of the cat5e.

Thanks again for your help. It's so nice to to have this resource, and I thank Telus for hosting this forum.

[NFtoBC · Accepted solution]

I recommend at least 2 runs of Cat5 to each location in your home, and 3 to TV locations. Phone is easily managed with cordless handsets, and one central base station, but internet is best served by wired connections. Use standard Ethernet B wiring diagrams.

[Rubato]

Hi NFtoBC,

Thanks for your advice on this. Although we don't have (or want) TV, I'll consider running cable for it to 2 or 3 locations for future owners of this house. Have to see how the budget is!