"John Carlyle-Clarke" wrote ...
I need to remake my internal phone wiring - the wiring I have is old
and damaged, and also very byzantine with redundant junction boxen and
sockets (I think there used to be two or more lines incoming) and
extension cables running over almost every architrave in the house.

What I want to do in this age of ADSL and DECT is simplify to a single
master socket by the PC with the phone base station & ADSL modem/router
plugged in.

I understand the connections well enough - I'm going to tear everything
out from the initial junction box onwards and start again. My question
is this: is there any reason I shouldn't use Cat5e cable for this?

I'm not going for structured cabling (tempting but I can't really
justify the effort and cost of retrofitting it), but I just happen to
have a lot of Cat5e cable. AFAIK it's far superior to bell wire, but
is there any problem I haven't thought of?

No problems apart from it being slightly thicker over all than 'phone wire,
and a bit lumpier in appearance - if it's going to be out of sight, no
problem. I think the purple LSF variant's quite pretty, too... for fixed
wiring, make sure it's solid core, IDCs don't take stranded reliably.

Dave H.
(The engineer formerly known as Homeless)