ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Telephone network termination requirements.

Classicsat:

Very similar here.

Internal domestic or similar wiring is 3 twisted pair (solid copper core) or Cat5. It's been 2 or 3 twisted pair since the late 1970s / early 1980s.

Older cabling tends to be heavier open twisted pair with a solid copper core grey and white coloured. About the thickness of bell wire.

Any non-twisted pair cable was not installed by Telecom or to Eircom/Telecom specs.

Telecoms cabling is either ducted/dropped loose underfloor boards, thru the attic or behind plasterboard walls.

or, more usually, stapled with round cable staples into the grove of the skirting board. If it has to come down from a ceiling it's usually stapled along a door architrave to hide it.

The old and the new cabling systems are pretty neat though. It's usually pretty narrow round beige cable and is easily painted over.

The new NTU2001 main phone socket is a big brute of a thing though. About 1.5" deep when not flush fitted.. the DSL splitter version is 2" !
Flush fitting's rather tricky too as eircom require an extra deep box.

The old sockets were much neater... square (about the size of a UK lightswitch) rounded beige box surface mounted it only protruded about 1cm.

In general in Ireland Eircom / Telecom were never very fussy about what DIY work people did. Provided you left their main socket connected as the first point you could always do what ever you wanted.

They always sold DIY self-install extension kits which contained 3 RJ12 (6-way) sockets a load of cable and a tool for pushing cable into those little connectors they use. You didn't even have to pare the cable.. just push it in. Each socket has an IN and an OUT side you simply daisy chain them along. Considerng that my grandmother managed it it was pretty simple stuff

There's also a DIY PBX.

1 line + 4 extensions.. it's been around for years and is made by a company in Ireland called MDS.
Basically a very small digital switch in a 10cm X 10cm wall mountable box.
Plug a phone line in one side. 4 Extensions out the other. "Interlink 1+4"
The fancier version included a printer socket and was aimed at small guest houses / B&Bs. Called "Interlink 2+6" (2 lines + 6 Ext)

They retailed at about €100 - €150
and shipped with EVERYTHING in a box..
1 X PBX
1 X AC adaptor
4 X standard eircom sockets
and plenty of cable.

You had to provide your own phones and you programmed it from extension 1 with */# codes.

There were a list of standard phones: (Quite a pitty that these are no-longer available they were FAR better than any of the cheap rubbish on the market today) and had weird celtic names
Oisin, Aisling, Shannon, Boyne, Aires (DECT), Contempra and Harmony

Those interlink systems were EXTREMELY popular and you'll still find them in homes, small business, doctors surgeries, shops, restaurants, B&Bs everywhere.

These days it's an ISDN PBX or Eircom Netlink (Small IP based PBX) else they push their re-badged Siemens Gigaset (DECT) systems.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-15-2004).]

I think the 3-wire cable and phone cords were probably the norm years ago. I have an old Western Electric 500 phone dated 1962 which is fitted with a cord containing only red, green, and yellow conductors. The yellow would have been used where a ground connection was required, such as for party line ringing.

The old GPO 700-series phones were usually fitted with a 4-wire cord (red, white, green, blue), although some turned out specifically for PBX use were fitted with with only 3-wire (red, white, green).

Quad station wire was almost always used in the past, with cores of blue, orange, green, and brown. (Blue and orange carried the line.)

Since the early 1980s all new cable is the now-standard striped pairs, for residential use most often 2-pair or 3-pair depending upon the installer.

I figure on using at least 3-pair for new installs. The cost difference is negligible, and it never hurts to have a spare pair.

PaulUK:

Almost ALL old rotary dial phones here were Northern Telecom and idential to the typical US standard phones that were around for years.

The later versions were even modular with RJ11 sockets and the standard handset fittings.

I think the American 500-set (and the 1500/2500 TouchTone derivatives) has to stand as one of the best designed telephones ever made.

The GPO 700-series comes close, but the 500-set has the edge with better cradle and handset design.

We still have one of those touchtone versions.. Northern Telecom built to survive ANYTHING.. has even been dropped down the stairs

I've seen plenty of 500-type phones here with Green, Red and Yellow wires too. The terminate on spades.

The yellow would generally be connected to a non-connected spareterminal screw in the junction box just to keep it out of the way. Only the green and red are connected.

The later versions had that heavy high quality RJ11 cabling that you could only get in the 1970s ..

We had
standard 500 dial phones
wall phone version
touchtone version which was initially used in areas where Ericsson ARF crossbars used internal MF signalling (c. 1963 onwards) and could cope with DTMF dialling.

The dial version was a lot more common.



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-16-2004).]

Internal Northern Telecom 500 phone

The older phones were certainly built to last. I have the ITT version of a 2500-set sitting next to me on my desk. It's a later modular version from the early 1980s, but still feels hefty compared to today's junk. The old 1962 Western Electric 500 is still much heavier than that though, and the couple of 1970-ish 500s I have aren't that much lighter.

Here's a GPO 746-type phone. Note the different internal layout compared to the 500 sets:

What's the long button on the top of the old GPO phones used for?

Is it an R "Register Recall" button? And if so how was that used in an old system?

Btw, you can answer call waiting on our old Northern Telecom Phone:

On beeps dial 1 (the equivilant of R) and then dial (2) switch calls!

Works fine

The buttons were wired for various functions according to the subscriber's requirements.

For extensions on a PBX the button was commonly used for recall (old GPO equipment always favored earth-recall rather than time-break). Pressing the button switched the incoming call to hold and gave you a new dial-tone from the PBX to call the required extension. After speaking to the other person, you could then either (a) Hang-up to have the call on hold switched through to that extension, or (b) Press recall again to ditch your internal PBX call and be re-connected to the held caller. Really not much different to today's systems in basic terms, though on the older PBXs that was about the extent of switching possible (no call forwarding, camp-on busy or other modern features, although the PBX operator could do more from her console).

The GPO also had some simple intercom plans for small offices, typically just two or three phones. The button(s) could be wired to buzz an extension and switch the line to a local DC supply to provide an intercom facility.

In domestic situations, the two most common applications were a bell shut-off switch and for party lines. The first is self-explanatory.

Two-way party lines used to be quite common here in rural areas, and were always the ground-start type. Instructions for party-line customers were always along the lines of "Lift receiver and check that the line is not in use, then press the CALL EXCHANGE button to obtain a dialing tone." (The GPO always used to call it dialling tone rather than dial tone.)

The switch in this case actually had changeover contacts and opened the loop while grounding one side of the line. The phones at each house were actually wired the same internally, but the tip and ring (white and red) leads were just reversed at the connection block.

We didn't have anytrhing like the complicated relay box to ensure privacy on party lines such as Texas-Ranger has described for old Austrian systems.