What to do with old existing in the wall telephone wiring in your home?

[LFMc]

So, like some of you I have an older home (circa 1990) and when I moved in 7 years ago I discovered that it has a ton of POTS (plain old telephone set) wiring. I have phone jacks in almost every room in the house and multiple jacks in some. I even have a jack in the toilet area, garage and on the patio. We do not have a "land line" going to our home so we have no POTS phones. We use our cell phones and my home office has a business phone running over VoIP. 

So, as an engineer that hates to see a wasted piece of copper, I started wondering, what could I do with them? Of course the old 6 wire, 22g telephone wiring (referred to as CAT 1) makes CAT 3 look amazingly fast. Plus I am kinda of tired of tripping over them in the attic if they aren't being used for something. So here are some random thoughts on possible ways to re-purpose all this hidden wiring and the outlets to access it without buying a bunch of antique phones to hook up to them. 

0. Most useless idea so it ranks as a zero. Pull them out of the walls and ceilings and sell them for scrap copper.

1.  Hook up an ELF radio/transmitter to them and use them as an antenna to talk to submarines under water. That frequency only takes 10k kilometers of wire to transmit and receive. I think I am close to that in my house.

2. Use them as pull strings to pull CAT 6 back up the wall and to a patch panel somewhere else. 

3. Find a way to pass Insteon power line signals to different parts of the house to avoid AC electrical interference. 

4. Hook them all up to a 5VDC regulated power supply and use them as USB chargers for all the devices that need them. 

Any other suggestions, tongue in cheek or not? 

[asbril]

1 hour ago, LFMc said:

So, like some of you I have an older home (circa 1990) and when I moved in 7 years ago I discovered that it has a ton of POTS (plain old telephone set) wiring. I have phone jacks in almost every room in the house and multiple jacks in some. I even have a jack in the toilet area, garage and on the patio. We do not have a "land line" going to our home so we have no POTS phones. We use our cell phones and my home office has a business phone running over VoIP. 

So, as an engineer that hates to see a wasted piece of copper, I started wondering, what could I do with them? Of course the old 6 wire, 22g telephone wiring (referred to as CAT 1) makes CAT 3 look amazingly fast. Plus I am kinda of tired of tripping over them in the attic if they aren't being used for something. So here are some random thoughts on possible ways to re-purpose all this hidden wiring and the outlets to access it without buying a bunch of antique phones to hook up to them. 

0. Most useless idea so it ranks as a zero. Pull them out of the walls and ceilings and sell them for scrap copper.

1.  Hook up an ELF radio/transmitter to them and use them as an antenna to talk to submarines under water. That frequency only takes 10k kilometers of wire to transmit and receive. I think I am close to that in my house.

2. Use them as pull strings to pull CAT 6 back up the wall and to a patch panel somewhere else. 

3. Find a way to pass Insteon power line signals to different parts of the house to avoid AC electrical interference. 

4. Hook them all up to a 5VDC regulated power supply and use them as USB chargers for all the devices that need them. 

Any other suggestions, tongue in cheek or not? 

I have been thinking about this for a long time. In my condo there are wires for two separate POTS lines, and I was wondering to use these cables to turn them into ethernet Cat 5 or 6 ?

[elvisimprsntr]

I dont have a land line either, but connect it up to a Panasonic DECT 6.0 Link2Cell system, which I think allows one to answer cell phone calls using a POTS phone.

 

https://www.costco.com/Panasonic-KX-TG885-DECT-6.0-Bluetooth-5-Handset-Phone-Bundle.product.100424410.html

 

 

 

[kohai]

Wire up as 10/100 mb ethernet?  That only needs 4 conductors.  I'm sure it wouldn't be a great experience but it might work... maybe.... on a short run?  If the weather is good?  If the wind is at your back?

[mwester]

Take apart one of those electronic bug zappers, and wire it to a pair of conductors in the phone wiring, thus surprising any mice you might happen to have in the walls or attic.

[paulbates]

4 hours ago, LFMc said:

2. Use them as pull strings to pull CAT 6 back up the wall and to a patch panel somewhere else.  Did this with CAT 5 when I bought my current house in 2000 before wireless was practical

4. Hook them all up to a 5VDC regulated power supply and use them as USB chargers for all the devices that need them. Used old intercom wire to provide 24VAC to low power HVAC temp sensors. I'd twist a few UTPs together and to the same if wire run and sensor location lined up

 

Paul

 

[paulbates]

28 minutes ago, kohai said:

Wire up as 10/100 mb ethernet?  That only needs 4 conductors.  I'm sure it wouldn't be a great experience but it might work... maybe.... on a short run?  If the weather is good?  If the wind is at your back?

Can't say I tried it, but its UTP and was replaced by the CATx family for a reason. I've used it to pull cat 5 through and run a phone over a couple and/or split one cat 5 in two jacks of ~100mbs each

[LFMc]

43 minutes ago, kohai said:

Wire up as 10/100 mb ethernet?  That only needs 4 conductors.  I'm sure it wouldn't be a great experience but it might work... maybe.... on a short run?  If the weather is good?  If the wind is at your back?

Unfortunately CAT1 is only good to about 60Khz and CAT3 (10BaseT) is 16Mhz. So if you could slow it down enough to use them as data lines, you would be running around the speed of a 56k modem. (-:  

[kohai]

5 minutes ago, LFMc said:

Unfortunately CAT1 is only good to about 60Khz and CAT3 (10BaseT) is 16Mhz. So if you could slow it down enough to use them as data lines, you would be running around the speed of a 56k modem. (-:  

My great idea has been ruined by science.