phone / TV cable

gallantman

I live in a 2 story timber frame house and have my PC setup in one of the downstairs rooms but as I only have a TV point in this room I have the phone line running in from the phone point in the hall. (Broadband is not an option so I cannot go with wireless etc so I’m stuck with SLOW dialup).

I need a phone line or network point in that room so I was going to attached a CAT 5 cable to the TV cable in the room and pull back up the TV cable from the attic and hopefully end up with a network point in the room i.e. connect CAT 5 to phone line in the attic.

I don’t know what route the TV cable might have taken in the walls so would this succeed or would I end with a TV cable stuck somewhere along the way !!

or are there any other options ?

GM

JohnDigital

You would have to be extremely lucky to manage to get the TV cable to pull through cleanly all the way to the attic. Unless there is a good conduit with no sharp bends I can’t imagine it coming through properly. If the TV cable does appear to be free enough then I would plat the CAT5 and Coax cable together and tape them up as neatly as you can trying not to make the join any wider than the width of the cables.

Other route may be to try to run a new phone cable from the junction box in the hall to the new room. You may be able to hide most of it under carpet, or behind the skirting boards etc.

Mike2006

Gallantman,

I was in the exact same predicament a few years ago. I had a TV point in the room but I needed a phone point for internet connection. This is what I did.

TV cable has 2 cores - Central solid core and outer screen (shield).
Phone point requires 2 cores.

I just used the TV cable as a phone point. Connect the TV cable at the room end to a short (1 ft) piece of phone cable and terminate into a phone point box. At the incoming end I just attached a phone cable (1 ft) to the TV cable and used 2 cable splices to join at the incoming phone line side.

This works perfectly with the phone line and also as my internet connection for the PC.
Where signal quality is not so important and you have a short run (10 to 15 metres) it should work fine. Not sure if you need a twisted pair for your network though.

Mike.

gallantman

Thanks folks, didn't think my suggestion would work.

Using the TV line for phone sounds good - can I set this up so that I can still use for a TV sugnal if required ?

GallantMan