Cables – Using Existing Telephone Wire to Pull New Cables

cablestelephone

I am moving into a new home shortly, built in the 1990s, and it has telephone jacks with POTS wiring that I do not plan on using. Ideally, I would love to run twisted pair cabling where the telephone wire is now, and just change the faceplate and jacks.

Can I use the telephone wire to pull some new pull wire or even the Ethernet cable itself? I have heard that telephone wire might be stapled to the frame behind the wall, and wondered if anyone has experience with this.

Best Answer

It depends. If it was installed originally, it should be stapled, in which case you can't use it. If it was fished through the wall after the fact then yes you should be able to pull using it.

I would recommend pulling polyline first and then pulling the new cable through, along with another piece of polyline.

The cable will stretch and break if you pull to hard, and if it goes around hard bends it will very next to impossible to pull all the way through, so you might still end up needing to cut some access holes to use as pull points.