What's the correct way to splice 4 conductor phone wire? [closed]

Question

Kind of a legacy question, because I'd rather be using 4 pair Cat6 than crappy 2 pair phone line, but I need to do it, and I'm thinking there must be a better way than the obvious twist-it-together-and-wrap-it-in-tape method.

Anyone remember the proper way to do this?

Answer 1

A phone only needs 1 pair. Red and green are the center (line 1) pair, yellow and black are the outer (line 2) pair. The phone company often puts two of these together by just screwing them down onto terminals, which isn't much better than twist and tape.

Answer 2

Depends on the wire. If it is solid, you can solder the two wires, crimp them together using a barrel, crimp them using a splice connector (the red/yellow/blue/green gel filled things - sorry, not sure what they're called) or you can just connect both to the same screw connector.

If it is stranded wire, you normally can try to solder, but mostly must put a plug connector and use some sort of ganged jack.

Answer 3

The method I used when I did telephone and alarms is to crimp with these connectors. They provide a quick, easy, and reliable connection. If you want to get really fancy, a soldering iron and heat shrink makes the best and most unobtrusive connection.