Damaged Telephone Wire

Telephone Repair Service and Information

If your telephone wire is run on the outside of your building, here's something you might want to check out to prevent an interruption of your service.

The telephone wire which runs from the telephone terminal on your building, or, from the Network Interface (NI) or the lightning protector is called Inside Wire (IW).

It's called Inside Wire for a reason; that where it is design to be installed - inside your building. That being said, most "inside wire" is also routinely used outside - to bring the service to where you need it in the building. The problem is, this wire is not greatly resistant to the ultraviolet light in sunlight.

Ultraviolet light has the propensity of making telephone wire become very brittle over time - in as little a four or five years depending on the circumstances and the amount of exposure to sunlight. In fact, your telephone wire is far more likely to be damaged by UV than by anything else.

All IW consists of an inner wrap on each of the individual copper wires themselves and an outer jacket encompassing them all. As you will notice in the pictures below, once the outer jacket has become brittle and cracked, parts of it fall away thereby exposing the insulated wiring underneath to the elements.

Just as the sunlight's UV did a number on the IW jacket, so it begins to work on the insulation around each wire lead itself. This inner insulation is the last barrier to service affecting problems caused by moisture and humidity.

Humidity alone, once it reaches the copper wire, will begin its corrosive effect ultimately leading to a failure of the wire - that is, the wire will eventually break. Before it finally separates irrevocably, your telephone service can be affected by static on the line before service ceases all together.

Service will also be affected by this breakdown of the inner insulation when it rains. On these occasions static will be noted on one or more of your phone lines. Cross talk between your lines can also occur as can false ringing of your phone line(s) as the electric current and ringing current in the various pairs of telephone wiring is conducted across the rainwater from one line to another through the breaks in the inner insulation. This cross flow of current can also knock your lines out of service altogether as the water creates "short circuits" from one line to another or to the earth itself (ground).

In time, your service will become permanently interrupted. Sooner or later you will either have to fix the damage yourself or call on a technician to do so.

Additionally, it is not just your dial tone type talk lines that can be affected by this damage to your wiring. Any type of service utilizing telephone wire will also have problems. This includes alarm circuits, DSL lines, various types of monitoring circuits as well as the usual dial up data and fax lines.

So if you're interested in seeing the kinds of havoc UV light can wreak on your telephone wiring, here are some pictues.

Most telephone wire is Category 3 wire which is the industry standard telephone wire. In the above picture we see the damage done to Category 5 wire. Cat 5 wire has more twist per inch than does Cat 3. It also has a more durable outer jacket which makes this wire more expensive than the Cat 3 wire. Even though we have a more expensive and durable wire, it also succumbs in time to the ravages of UV light as this picture shows.

Just for your information, Cat 3 wire is suitable for not only telephone and special service circuits such as alarms and various other types of circuits, but, also for DSL service. Unless your going to build your own computer network, forget Cat 5 wiring. It's mostly a waste of money. Under some circumstances you can even use Cat 3 wire for T1 service (DS1 - 1.544 MB upstream and downstream). In fact, we used to routinely put T1s into Cat 3 building cable.

The heavy black cable below the damaged IW in the above picture is the telephone drop wire from the telephone pole. Black as an insulation color resists the effects of UV light much better than the colors used in the jackets of IW. But even this will also fall victim to UV deterioration though it will take many years more. In the second last photo above, the remains of a black Ty-Rap can be seen. This device was used to secure the IW to the electrical service mast, but, has broken because it also became brittle under the effects of UV.

So do yourself a favor and take a look at your phone wiring once in a while. You may save yourself a lot of aggravation.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me using the information in the sidebar on the left of this page.