Most people do not really care how their phone line and broadband line gets to them, as long as it’s working then all’s well.
I’m not really interested in how my water supply, gas and electric are supplied but when my tap water is brown in colour then I wonder why and how it happened and how long it will take to be back to normal.

So we thought for those interested in the ins and outs of how the telephone line is supplied to your property, and for an insight of how faults occur and how they are fixed, and fault preventative advice, we will have a series of posts on the subject.

The first being:- 
The Telephone Network Explained

The Telephone network also known as the “Local Network” or “Access Network” are the cables supplying you (the consumer) from your local telephone exchange to your NTE (Network Termination Equipment) at your property.

Well that’s all very well and good, but how does it all work? And what can go wrong?
OK first things first we will be talking about a basic residential phone line, supplied via copper cable and not the fiber network that such as Virgin provide.

Your phone line is supplied from the MDF (Main Distribution Frame) at your local telephone exchange to your NTE the first socket in your property via 2 wires (a pair) mostly copper cable of 0.5mm in thickness but can be as small
 as 0.3mm and up to 0.9mm in diameter,  1 of the wires in a pair is called the “A leg” which carries a voltage of 50 volts DC and the other is called the “B leg” this being the earth leg of the circuit, with a phone connected makes and break the telephone circuit when the receiver is lifted or now-a-days answer button pressed. 

 The telephone network is divided into 2 sections called the ”E Side” and the “D side” joined at a box usually found at the side of the road that you my have seen engineers sitting at called a PCP or Cabinet. E sides cables carry a thousand wires + (that’s 500 or sometimes more phone lines) in one large cable from the telephone exchange to the cabinet, and then linked (jumpered) in the cabinet to the D side cables which then work their way mostly underground to your property in varying sizes of cables 100 pairs, 50 pairs, 20 pairs, 10 pairs, 5 pairs and 2 pair reducing in size the closer they get to your property.
Your phone line will be either underground fed coming up inside your property or behind some gray capping on an outside wall or overhead fed via a suspended cable supplied from a pole located near your property, then entering your property and finally terminating on the back of an NTE Master socket.
If you have a house built fairly recently the NTE or NTP (network termination Point) will be on an outside wall in a gray coloured box, this is the point where the network ends and your internal wiring starts.
Remembering any faults that occur on the outside local network before the NTE or NTP is the responsibility of Openreach to repair, and faults on your internal wiring or equipment after the NTE or NTP are your responsibility to repair, by you, or a qualified telephone engineer  more to come on this topic later.
Without boring you too much but insulting the whiz kids out there, this is the very basics of your phone line.
All comments and questions welcome

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 Coming next

Telephone Line Faults

Posted by MD TELEXT Ltd
http://www.tel-ext.co.uk/telecoms