MicroTech Systems

This happens when a transmitter tower or antenna is in close proximity to the telephone cabling outside - and/or when your cable/pair is unbalanced or has a ground on it... an unbalanced pair acts like an antenna and picks up inductive troubles.

Call your local phone service provider to come out to make the repairs or buy and install an RF filter onto your phone line (not the same thing as a DSL filter.)

In a typical home, the telephone cables connecting your phones within you home contain four wires... red, green, yellow and black.  They are used in pairs for each phone line you have.  Repairmen in fact refer to the wires in terms of "pairs", so technically a standard four wire telephone line has two pairs.

LINE 1 uses the red-green pair.  Line 2 uses the yellow-black pair. The cable is very small, as are the wires inside, and should not be confused with electrical wires, which are much larger. The wires themselves are almost hair-like, as opposed to electrical wires, which are fairly heavy and difficult to bend.

FYI, if purchase multi-wire cable with 4 pair (8 colored wires) for four lines, the wiring convention is the same as above, with LINE 3 using BLUE + WHITE and LINE 4 using ORANGE + BROWN.

All telephones, residential telephone cable, jacks, connectors, etc., that you can buy today follow this wiring convention.

That, of course, does not mean that this is the situation you have in your home's wiring!  If a homeowner has messed with the wires, you may find things a little jumbled up. I frequently find disconnected wires at phone jacks, whole runs of wire to telephone jacks disabled at the junction block, and reversed wiring.

In some multifamily dwellings and in older homes, the wiring may not follow the color conventions for modern jacks and telephony appliances. This is especially true in some condominiums, where large bundles of wires servicing more than one customer may pass through your unit!  It makes sense, really. You can't have twenty wires serving ten units using four colors.

You can determine the proper colors for your particular situation by simply observing what-goes-to-where. If you open up a telephone wall jack, and see that RED is connected to the BLUE-WHITE multicolored wire, make a written note of it so you will not get confused when reconnecting the new whatever later!

If you are unable to figure out your wiring or make them work properly, call MicroTech Systems at (559) 438-7580 to quickly and affordable solve the problem for you.