sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Is this normal in the industry ?

Hi,

As I was doing some cleaning I found two biscuit phone jacks sharing the same cable that I removed a while ago during the cleanup job I was doing at my previous place of employment. To my surprise the second line on both jacks was chopped off, but other 2 pairs were wrapped back on ATT's cat3 cable. This arose the question whether this is a common practice in the industry or if this behavior might be related to a union installed job?

Any of a insight on this ??

Here is the picture:

That would be a common setup to give line one to the left jack and line two to the right. The polarity of line two is reversed but would still work. I would not cutoff the unused leads but thats a personal choice.

Don't know what the union would have to do with it. I have seen that practice many times here in NY too so it's not a local thing. I don't know the rational behind it, maybe Arthur, Ed or Bill might have some insight.

-Hal

No rational I can think of. Don't know why anyone would cut off pairs instead of dressing them back.

Just wondering, why would you think it had something to do with a union?

The pairs were not needed. Might have something to do with A-Lead or old lamp transformer.

I've heard some interesting stories about unions labor, I've also seen it person in Chicago how union guys acted.

Also, though that if there be an issue, they'd replace the jack and charge the customer again for it and still look like the good guys, because they did not needed to rerun the cable which would cost more.

Any body else notice they didn't even put the red and green wire back to the correct terminals.

Just looks like someone who didn't really know what they were doing in my view of it

Could the incorrect terminal selection be a result of wanting to keep the conductors as short as possible?

With each jack supporting only 1 pair of wires, the terminals selected for termination isn't overly critical so long as the correct leads to the 6p4c jack are selected and proper continuity is observed.