Mystery wire

marty_0001

What is this strange wire, sticking out of my bedroom wall? I suspect it's for a telephone. But as you can see there's no socket. Why would tenants past have taken away a socket, if there ever was one? Or why would the builders have left this dodgy 2 metre coil of cable just sitting in a corner with nothing on the end?

Anyway just wanted to check, before I ring an electrician to put something on the end of it, whatever should go there. I'm in Australia if that's relevant.

Thanks

Atlus Parker

I think the colors in the pic are off but is that Red, Green, Yellow, and Black? It's telephone. As to the previous tenant's intentions your guess is as good as mine. And you don't need to call an electrician, it's low voltage. Just go to your radio shack equivalent and buy a wall jack.

marty_0001

lol sorry the peak of my phone's camera capabilities. It's red, white, blue and black.

Alright! DIY electrical fun!

Atlus Parker

marty_0001 wrote: »

lol sorry the peak of my phone's camera capabilities. It's red, white, blue and black.

Alright! DIY electrical fun!

That's different than what we use here in the US but when it comes to phone wires it's all about just matching colors up. You'll be fine.

FyreWulff

Usually you find stuff like that because the previous owner/whoever was trying to make improvements and ran out of time before they had to leave the house.

Cycophant

It's really hard to get a sense of scale with that photo. If the wire bundle itself is small (only a 1/4 inch or so in diameter), it's likely telephone.

But if it's much bigger than that, be forewarned that it could be an electricity line. Granted, with there being 4 wires, and none of them bare copper (a ground), it's unlikely. But I've seen stranger things. So if it's a larger-gauge cable, be forewarned.

Sarcastro

Definitely a telephone cable. Looks like alarm grade wiring, probably went to an interface at one time. When the prev guys moved, they took their security system with them or had it uninstalled.

You should still be able to use it as a phone cable if you wanted too - just buy a surface jack and pin down the red and green. You can also lick your fingers and touch bare copper on r/g or b/y. Or just tap them and see if you get a small spark. It's only 40 volts, and it will tell you if the cable is live. Whatever you do, don't leave them touching.

Oh n/m. I just saw your bit on the actual colors. Ya, that's different than what we use.

darkgrue

Atlus Parker wrote: »

I think the colors in the pic are off but is that Red, Green, Yellow, and Black? It's telephone. As to the previous tenant's intentions your guess is as good as mine. And you don't need to call an electrician, it's low voltage. Just go to your radio shack equivalent and buy a wall jack.

The telephone ringing voltage is something on the order of 90 VAC supimposed on a DC supervisory voltage (apparently it varies quite a bit in voltage and frequency depending on where you are).

It's enough to throw you across the room if you're holding the wires when the phone rings, and could possibly kill under some circumstances.

Phones aren't OMG dangerous as line voltage, but it's not trivial either.

When working on your phones, it's best to disconnect the house wiring by disconnecting it at the telephone network interface, there's usually a set of little attached patch cables or a disconnect menchanism on the customer side of the interface that you can unplug for exactly this purpose (example).