Plates on our walls...

[DigiTan]

One of the student orgs on campus is looking for a phone connection for the office. Without going into unnecessary details, we already have a phone line with a RJ-11 connector and everything, now we need a second line to use exclusively for fax.

The pencil pushers at the physical plant say there's no second line in the room. However a staff advisor says a second line was once used in the past. We found this plate high up on the wall and want to know if it's related to the phone line at all. If not, we need to rearrange the room a little.

What's behind this plate? These things are all over our building.

**broken link removed**

 

[Sceadwian]

You're asking us what's behind a completly anonymous looking cover panel in a random room somewhere in the US? How about opening up the panel and looking in? Asking a question like that is like writing down every possible answer on a piece of paper and throwing darts at it.

 

[DigiTan]

An educated guess would be nice. If I were in a position to open it myself, I wouldn't go through the trouble of asking now would I? I'd wager we'd find mains, phone, ethernet, or fire alarm works. But I was hoping an industry expert could say what's most likely.

 

[kjennejohn]

Hi.
You say there is already an RJ11 for the phone. Is this a patchblock by some chance? You know, the small block on the wall you plug the phone into. I'll bet if you remove the cover you'll discover four wires to the connections within. A standard house phone only needs two wires to function. Two more wires means another wire pair for a second phone. However, if this a system using a commercial phone switcher elsewhere in the building/campus, all bets are off. If it's a second pair, you only need one of those RJ11 adapters that provides two jacks out (line 1/line 2), commonly found at Radio Shack, and a technician to get the central office to activate the pair.

As for the plate: who knows. I see what appears to be a fire alarm or something at the picture's bottom. This might be covering a tie-point for this alarm.

Good luck on your quest!
kenjj

 

[Papabravo]

An educated guess would be nice. If I were in a position to open it myself, I wouldn't go through the trouble of asking now would I? I'd wager we'd find mains, phone, ethernet, or fire alarm works. But I was hoping an industry expert could say what's most likely.

Aint no steenkin industry experts trolling these forums. We're all just hobbyists here. I'm with Sceadwain on this one.

 

[Leftyretro]

One of the student orgs on campus is looking for a phone connection for the office. Without going into unnecessary details, we already have a phone line with a RJ-11 connector and everything, now we need a second line to use exclusively for fax.

The pencil pushers at the physical plant say there's no second line in the room. However a staff advisor says a second line was once used in the past. We found this plate high up on the wall and want to know if it's related to the phone line at all. If not, we need to rearrange the room a little.

What's behind this plate? These things are all over our building.

**broken link removed**

Well if I had to guess I would say it was power and or control for a wall clock at one time or possible power for a rechargable light during power failures. Not likely anyone ever had a telephone outlet placed high up there

You said you already have an RJ-11 connection and it's active as a phone line. As someone already posted an RJ-11 can contain more then one pair of telco lines. Pull the RJ-11 connector at the wall and see how many wires are looping through it, you may have all the wiring you need and only have to have a 2nd line wired at the service panel for your RJ-11 outlet.

Lefty

 

[gootee]

Maybe just get one of those automatic fax/phone switches. They answer the phone and listen for a fax, routing the call to the fax machine if the incoming call is a fax. If there's no fax, they start ringing your phones. And when the fax is in use, picking up a phone won't disrupt it.

 

[mneary]

I would go with wall clock.

 

[DigiTan]

Okay yeah, "tie-in point" was the phrase I was looking for.

I got a chance to revisit this location. The wall plate itself is in fact very high up on the wall and even the red speaker/strobe fixture is out of reach. From the sound of the posts so far, I figured I'm better off concentrating on the existing RJ-11 plates.

I unplugged the phone and took out the RJ-11 plate. Looking behind it, I found a blue UTP cable providing the phone connection (the same kind they specify for ethernet, with 8 conductors and the brown, green, blue, gray color scheme). All but 2 wires were "dead" so I guess it's up to the physical plant to add this new connection now.