atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Is a new apartment building legally required to have phone wiring?

I think at a minimum you at least pull in the extra wire and leave it unterminated behind the woa. The reality is you need to be a sells person here, why, because it really doesn't matter if the wire is pulled in now or stapled in latter. The bottom line is his pocket and you need to learn how to pick it; honestly.

Exactly. What if the owner decides to sell the property to someone that wants to turn the complex into a Senior Citizen's complex years from now?

I would imagine it could be a deal breaker if there were no telephone outlets.

We discussed it, but the distances to each apartment from the wiring closets are short enough to be well within Ethernet range. So the plan is for a fiber feed to the building with Ethernet direct to the rooms. The ISP supplying the fiber also supplies the switching equipment for the building and can cap individual connections. The base connection, which is free for tenants, is 3 Mbit. Residents can then pay for upgrades up to 20 Mbit.

Also the ISP is also paying for the Ethernet wiring and the CATV provider is paying for the coax wiring. That's how the discussion of phone wiring got started.

Best answer so far! I have no idea why "contractors" try to save a few bucks by not installing proper ammounts of copper wire.

I realize that this is an old post but, I was reading over the NEC 2008 code, that will go into effect 1/2009 for many AHJs. There is a new section in article 800 that addresses your application.

800.156 Dwelling Unit Communications Outlet. For new construction, a minimum of one communications outlet shall be installed within the dwelling and cabled to the service provider demarcation point.

We install catv/data/phone wiring for a local college. They very seldom use the voice wiring we install because the students have cell phones. They had two providers install equipment to boost the cell signal in all the dorms. They tell us to keep installing the voice wiring for liability issues. If something would happen and all the student had was a cell phone that went dead. The college has the wiring for a land line had the student wanted it when they moved in.

Our campus still installs cat 3 everywhere for phones including residence halls. Hardly anyone uses their room phones but the connections are still there.

I am installing a voip emergency phone system at a college here in newport news. One phone for every classroom (+1 wireless line per class) and in all hallways.In their new droms there is cat5e for voice cabling and 2 cat6 cables for voip and data. This gives the student the option.

Edit: This post assumes your talking about a higher education owned dorm, not a unaffiliated 3rd party landlord that caters to students.

Someone might argue that TDD over IP, such as https://www.ip-relay.com/myiprelay.html makes landline relay services obsolete. The US government actually pays for these IP relay services.

I can't say whether IP relay can be a substitute for landline relay service under ADA. IANAL but I'll provide what I see as some relevant quotes.

https://www.access-board.gov/adaag/html/adaag.htm#9.3.2
this is in the residential section of the ADA standards, sounds like you can get away with giving someone VOIP for TDD or telling them to use IP relay or not giving phone service of any kind at all (left to AHJ to mandate it if they want to) or ATA VOIP+ TTY at your own risk. If you think about an all IP/eth building and convergence, it makes no sense to have a landline anywhere. Might be an monopoly service contract banning the ILEC on the property. Converged buildings are starting to be the norm anyways. VOIP and an ATA are the right way to go for the owner to deliver phone serivce if he must (assuming no AHJ requirement). Since this is a dorm and there might be no legal tenent/landlord relationship, or more of a "In loco parentis" relationship between university and student regardless of age depending on state laws. There seem to be no requirements for ILEC POTS reliability in ADA, or a requirement for a phone of any kind, looks to me like "if it exists, its regulated", but IANAL. If a phone isn't accessible to non-disabled, why does it need to be accessible to the disabled? The spirit of the ADA is to let the disabled experiance everything that a non-disabled can, not to go above and beyond what is available to the non-disabled.

There is a more detailed section for equivelent technologies for TTYs here .

IP Relay is probably not equivelent, but an ATA is link .

Remember municipal AND state educational commissions AHJs can be involved in a higher education dorm. Architect should be complying. Also municipal treatment of dorms vs MDUs might be very different, and dorms may have very relaxed or tightened regulations compared to MDUs. Dorms might follow SRO hotel, monastic life, boarding house, industrial space or commercial space regulations, not residential.

off topic/not phone related/ranting (mods please remove if not acceptable):
Please speak to the HVAC people. I've seen a circa-2002 glass box dorm from hell in a jurisdiction applying a code that was written for 19th century monasteries and poorhouses being used for dorms . Bathrooms are 3 doors from nearest openable window, no mechanical ventilation anywhere in the suite. A freshman thought nothing of cleaning the bathroom with bleach the first time he was given the chore. For 2 months the people in that suite had to use their neighbor's suite's bathroom and the public bathroom on 1st floor, it felt like tear gas in seconds of me stepping in that bleached bathroom by accident. Temperature control is horrible. The building uses forced air liquid radiators (no local heat pumps) piped in series from room to room. Whole building is a single mode (heat/cool). Only control students have is by hoping the fan control pad will respond to them at the moment. All radiators are individually addressable by a central controller. It can do any permutation of allowing user control, setting min/max temp range, read current room temp on unit, force fan on or off locking out all user control, and manipulate zone valves. I guess this is in a futile "habitable space" or temperature enforcement or energy savings, central controller's behavior seems absolutely arbitrary to me, and it feels like big brother when the keypad is locked out. The radiator's air intake recycles air from that room, no ventilation function. Only mechanical ventilation in the building is the 2 grilles per floor in the hallway for the emergency smoke exhaust system and the clothes driers in the basement Building overheats in winter (80F), underheated in fall (55 F), undercooled in spring (77F), overcooled in summer (60F). School has a no electric space heater policy enforced by RAs. AHJ requires 1 "operable" window per bed containing room, but no minimum size. For anti-vandalism reasons (hanging banners from windows down the side of the building), the school chose casement windows that only open 2 inches until they hit the non-removable bug screen mounted over the openable window. The would not be compliant at all in a normal MDU in the municipality. The dorms are so empty (almost no 3rd/4th years or masters students), some floors are rented to other universities in the area. I wonder why