Building a New Home: Setting Up Your Home Phone

When you decide to build a new home you quickly get caught up in the excitement of designing the layout, choosing the tiles and imagining the position of your new furniture. However, you won’t get far in your new home without one important lifestyle essential – your phone line. Your phone line is one of the most important aspects of your new home – yes, more important than your heated flooring and outdoor kitchen. It is your connection to the outside world, your online shopping partner, your lifeline to your friends and family and your tether to the office.

Therefore, before you blindly hand over the task of setting up your home phone, or naively assume it will be sorted out correctly in the building process, take a little time to understand what really goes into setting up your home phone connection.

Trenching

If you are building a new home on brand new site where there has never been a property before – that is, you didn’t knock down an old house to build your new one – then a trench will need to be dug for the lead in cabling. Underground lead in cables are preferred in most cases, unless your particular site prohibits underground cabling.

Trenching work can only be done by the owner of the block, or with the permission of the owner. To install an underground lead in cable you will need to dig and backfill a trench. If you are using aerial cabling you will need to erect a pole. You can dig and backfill the trench yourself, you can hire your own contractor, or you can have your telecommunications company do the work. If you choose to DIY you can obtain all the information you need about the required specification from your phone company. If you are digging yourself also make sure you call Dial Before you Dig on 1100 to check the location of any underground pipes and cables.

The trench needs to extend from the boundary of the property to where the house is or will be. You can use the same trench for other utilities such as electricity, gas and water. It is a good idea to dig the trench early in the construction process so that you don’t disrupt any landscaping, paving or driveway.

While you can dig the trench yourself, only an authorised contractor from your phone company can install the telephone cabling into the pipe of an open trench. Any trenching costs are not usually included in the connection fee from your phone company.

Cabling

Connecting your new home to the telephone networks can be done in one of two ways:

1. Lead in cabling. Installing a lead in cable and pipe in your trench must be done by an authorised contractor from your phone company. The trench can then be backfilled.
2. Aerial lead in cable. An authorised contractor from your phone company will need to determine the requirements for a lead in cable to your property, and will be responsible for organising the lead in before the date of your service connection. The contractor will provide the poles and cables needed for your property but the costs of clearing, digging and reinstating the land to erect the poles will be at your cost.

If the existing network is more than 500 metres from the boundary of your property you may have to pay an additional network extension charge.

Wiring

Wiring the phone points and sockets is usually done during the construction stage, before the sheeting for the internal walls has been installed. You will need phone points and sockets fitted before your services can be connected. In most cases you will receive one socket installed for free as part of your connection fee and additional phone points or sockets can be done by your phone company or another licensed cabling provider such as an electrician. If you are building a large home with multiple telephone connection you may require a distributor.

In some cases you can also do the wiring yourself by simply buying the wire and modular jacks you need and running the wiring out of your home and plugging it into the network interface already installed by your phone company at your boundary.

Getting Help from Industry Professionals

When you are building a new home there are a lot of contractors to work with and a lot of regulations and safety requirements to follow to ensure the work is done correctly and will stand the test of time. Therefore, you may prefer to simply employ the help of professional contractors when setting up your home phone. If you are hiring a contractor to professionally install your phone line on your new property you will need to provide them with the following information so they can do a quick and effective job:

• The approximate number of metres from your property boundary to the front of your house.
• Your street number. You may need to contact your local council to obtain your street number if you currently only have a lot number.
• The stage of construction your new home is currently at, for example, has the slab just been laid, is the frame up, is the roof on?
• The approximate start and completion dates for your new home, as well as keeping them informed of any changes to the construction timeline.
• When you expect to move in and the date you would like your telephone service connected.
• The number of lines you want installed and connected in your home. Think about if you need a separate line for your internet and fax, and in how many rooms you want a phone point.
• The number of extra sockets you need.
• The trenching arrangements and whether an underground or aerial lead in cable is needed.

DIY Home Phone Set Up

If you have some skills with a screwdriver and drill you may be able to install the phone lines in your new home. You will need to keep in mind that phone lines carry a low voltage of electricity, but that simply means you don’t do this wiring work barefoot, or on a wet floor, and you don’t want to be touching the wires when a phone call comes in as you can receive a jolt.

Most residential phone wiring contains four individual wires – green, red, black and yellow. However in modern homes a new type of wiring is used called Cat 5 with wires which are white with blue stripes, blue with white stripes, white with orange stripes and orange with white stripes. Across the two types of wiring:

• Green = white with blue stripes.
• Red = blue with white stripes.
• Black = white with orange stripes.
• Yellow = orange with white stripes.

Regardless of the type of wiring you have in your new home, you will only need two of the strands to set up your phone line. The other two can be used later if you want to install a new phone line with its own phone number, and you won’t have to run new wiring throughout your home.

To start setting up your phone line, you need to go to the network interface device. The green and red wires are the ones which are the ones you want for your first phone line, and if you have a Cat 5 cable you need to make the necessary colour conversion. The black and yellow wires will make connections for a second line where the black wire goes to the screen screw and the yellow wire to the red screw.

The tools and equipment you will need to set up the phone lines in your new home include:

• Modular jacks. You should buy the modular jacks with four contacts inside the jack, not the one with six contacts as ordinary residential wiring will usually only need four. If you are installing a totally new jack you will need one with a wiring block which is the heavy plastic piece which mounts to the wall, and has screws to attach to the wires.
• Wire. For all new wiring projects make sure you buy Cat 5 wire as the old four colour type allows for more cross talk between the wires which can be annoying for phone lines and is a big problem if you are hooking up modems or DSL lines.
• Troubleshooting. If you’ve made the connections and you still don’t have a dial tone, you’ll need to check your wiring carefully, because if there is a problem with your work and you call the phone company they will usually charge you to work out what the problem is, and again if you ask them to fit it, however, if the problem is their fault, they will fix it at no charge. This is where you may need a two line tester which helps you to check that the polarity (red-green, yellow-black) isn’t reversed anywhere. You can also use the device to check your connections at the network interface device as it could be the phone company who has the polarity reversed. This is important to check as it can damage some types of phone equipment.

Connection

The costs for connection for the phone line to your new home will depend on the phone company you choose. Some companies will offer bundled deals if you sign up for other services at the same time such as internet or satellite television. In some cases the first connection will be free but additional charges can apply for cabling past the first socket, trenching or more difficult installations.

To connect your new home to your telephone company:

• Switch your service. If your old home is with a different phone company you can change your account at your new home to a new company by completing a switch form usually downloadable from their website. As a new customer you will need to provide your driver’s license details, credit card details and you can complete the transaction over the phone.
• Move your service. If you are staying with the same phone company from your old home to your new home you will need to provide your driver’s license details, your new home address and the date you’d like the phone connected at your new home. You can usually nominate to have your service connected on a Saturday or a Sunday, but not a public holiday. This may also be a good time to change the phone plan you are on, if you need to add more internet allowance or want to secure better call rates for the times you use your phone the most.
• Connection time. If you are building your new home on a property where a phone line has been previously connected, you can arrange for a new connection within 24 hours in most cases. However, if there has not been a phone line connected to your property before, your phone company may need to send out a technician to assess your connection needs, and it can take up to 10 working days for your connection to be activated. If a technician needs to visit your property you may need to be there to meet them, and if you’re not there and the appointment needs to be rescheduled it can delay the installation of your services.
• Phone. You don’t need to have your own phone to plug into the connection in your new home as your phone company can organise the rental of a phone and handset.