Removing telephone wire

[Rburt5]

I haven’t had a land line for several years and want to remove the telephone connection box from a bedroom. Can I simply cut the wires and stuff them into the wall, or will there still be electricity going through the wires?

 

[Jadnashua]

Newer homes have an external service disconnect...if yours does, unplug the connection and the internal wiring would certainly be disconnected.

The line probably does not have any power on it, but it's not that hard to test if you have a multimeter. But, in case the house is ever sold, if I cut it, I'd want to ensure that the wires weren't shorted to each other which would make re-establishing service much harder to do without lots of diagnostics. FWIW, the voltage isn't all that high unless there's a ring voltage occuring. That, if you contact it, will get your attention.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[WorthFlorida]

It's 99.9% chance that they are dead. POTS (plain old telephone systems) used low voltage -48v DC. There should be an interface on the outside of the home, open the cover and you'll see one or two RJ11 connectors. Just unplug them. What I have done is leave the hole open and cover it with a blank switch plate cover, therefore, for a future owner there would be access to them.

 

[Rburt5]

Thanks for the responses. I opened up my interface box and didn’t see any RJ11 connectors. I attached a photo to see. There’s another part of the interface box that says it’s for the telephone line provider and it looks like I need a special tool to unscrew the fastener.

 

[WorthFlorida]

Looks like there the telco didn't have modules so they are wired on the right side. The white cable and the gray one on the bottom probably come from the house. The black cable below should be the telephone wire feeding the interface. You can cut the colors wires. and the gray one. Just leave some slack so they can always be spliced in the future.

BEFORE cutting, how are you getting internet service? If it's from the TV cable company then these are not used.