Hi,

Here's my issue. I just moved to this apartment and got my phone connected (and dsl). I have three phone jacks in the livingroom that work perfectly, normal dial tone and the dsl modem is on them too. But I want to use the phone jack in my room since it's my private phone and dsl. There is a phone jack in my room that didn't have a dial tone at first, I opened it and saw that no wires are connected to the jack, and the colors are not the blue/red/yellow/black that I expected from reading about it, they're pairs of blue/red and red/blue, orange/white and white/orange, and two other pairs like that.

I tried all possible combinations and the only time I hear anything on the line is when I connect the red/blue and blue/red, but it's not a normal dial tone, it's a loud buzz. So I read about that and people say it may mean there's a short somewhere. The wires look like they're 100 years old.

This morning I checked the phone box outside and saw that in the box there's a 2nd line for apt 7 too, probably previous tenants had it.

So my question is, could it be that the bedroom jack doesn't have the same wires coming into it? Because while there's a buzzing sound here, other phone jacks have a normal dial tone, it I had shorted it shouldn't it have affected other ones too?

And why is there so many wires in this jack, there is a big loop of wires that are different colors than the ones that I've tried. I just can't figure out what are the possible reasons for this not to work, and I don't want to have to run the line from living room when I have a jack in my room!

My house is 100 years old... I have the same type of wires in some places. But, it doesn't mean they are old... just a different style.

Sounds like a short... do those wires come out in the box outside? If not, can you get in the basement?

You need to find where the other end is... make sure they are hooked up. O

The CAT 5 wires is the norm today. 4 pairs. A normal telco jack can support 3 lines. One, just like an Ethernet jack can support 4 lines.

The blu/wht and wht/blu pairs are usually line #1. It's the line that's connected when a standard telephone is connected. Line 2 can be for 2 line phones etc. Line 3 could be a fax. Just ideas here.

The buzzing line could be a bad line that was disconnected. Or possibly the DSL chatter.

The phone company could have misconnected the line. You don't know what pair it is on. You should be able to take a phone and test a line outside and get a dial tone.

You should then be able to call that number or your number from say a cell phone to test.

You need dialtone outside at the test jack that responds to your phone number.

The telco company should be able to tell you the pair that's connected at the pole.

You really have two choices here:

Connect the blu/wht wht/blu pairs to the incomining cable.
Or
Connect the live telco pairs and continue them to your jack.
You will connect a pair to the GEEN and RED terminals.

See:

Doing your own telephone wiring (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/phone_wiring.html)

Noise like your describing may be a faulty protector on the phone companies side if the line is live.

Moral: Get dialtone outside and determine if it's the proper number, otherwise forget doing the inside stuff.

YESS!
It worked! I hadn't even tried the white/blue and blue/white, because I was confused about the loop, I just realized that the loop of wires is all they bring to each jack, in my case some happened to be cut, which made me think that only the ones that are cut can be connected, not the ones that are in the loop.

The two loops, white/blue and blue/white were missing part of their sleeves too, but I thought it was just an accident since there was paint all over the wires too!

I'm so glad I didn't run the wire all over my apartment!

Thanks for your help!

For good DSL performance the twisting density must be unifor to the connection and the sheaths stripped as little as possible. The twisting has the bigger effect.

Glad you got it working.
Sounds like you have twisted pairs(UTP)
The first 4 pairs are used for Network(White/blue,white/orange, white/green, and white/brown pair)next is white/slate(gray). Then the "Red group"(red/blue, red/orange, red/green, red/brown, then red/slate.
Also White/blue is usually first line, orange pair is second line, and so on if for TELCO.