Cut external phone line need advice

[davo32]

So over a week ago a tree came down and brought down my phone line with it. I use internet (adsl) for work so it's important I have it. BT have just delayed an enginner coming out (again!) so it's time to try and fix this myself. If I need to I will remove this before the BT man comes but I'm fed up of waiting so...

The cable snapped leaving about 0.5m on the pole and then a long length to my house. When I strip the cable back this is what I see:

One orange and 4 whites. One white seems to be in a plastic cover with the orange and the other 3 whites are just loose. I have googled around but I'm still confused about which wires need to be reconnected and why they aren't colour coded.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Firstly, be careful climbing poles. There's usually live 240V up there.

If you have a multimeter (and your line isn't naked DSL), find two wires which have ~50V AC between them. That's your phone cable, polarity doesn't matter. Most likely the ones in the sheath, twisted. Join it using Skotchloks if you can, or just twist them up and tape it.

 

[allennnn]

It's Usually Orange and White so connect the Orange and start testing White.

orange and white and green and black (Gray on yours?). It also has 3 steel tension wires which gives the cable support to stop it sagging.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Interesting - somewhat different to the cabling here in NZ. Overhead lead-ins are usually over a two-pair cable with a steel catenary on the outside of the jacket. Can't remember the colour-code; have to look tomorrow.

 

[davo32]

Thanks for the advice. In the end I decided to wait for BT as they called just after I posted this but guess what... They just delayed AGAIN until 7th March.

I've noticed some of the wire looks a bit dodgy so I'm going to have to buy more. What type of wire would I be looking for? Could I just use some wire lying around for a short-term botch job?

From what you've said I guess it will be the orange and white that are in a plastic cover that need to be connected and I can ignore the other 3 whites.

Thanks

 

[bill001g]

You might be able to use ethernet cable. Phone wire into the house is a bit thicker but it should not make a huge difference. I am going to bet the pair you are looking at is your best bet. If this is not just a DSL only like you could take a phone out by the pole and try all the combination until you get a dial tone.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Yeah, if there's POTS service on the line then it's just a matter of which cores have either 50VAC or a dial tone. If not, see which cores are copper or drag your modem out to the pole and just connect each possible pair in sequence until you get a sync.

Blue/Blue+white pair of an ethernet cable is standard practice for internal wiring. Not the best for outdoors (because it's not waterproof), but that's not an issue short term.

 

[davo32]

Thanks so much everyone for your help - it's working! The phone doesn't work but I don't really care about that. I managed to find a bit of old phone cable and after taking a closer look only one of the white cables was copper. I connected white to white and orange to orange and somehow it worked.