Telephone line wire colors?

Question

What does each color of a telephone line do? what does green, red, black and yellow each do?

Answer 1

colors inside of a jack:
red and green are line 1
yellow black are line 2

colors of cat 3 and cat 4 cable
blue, blue/white line 1
orange, orange white line 2
green, green white line 3
brown, brown/white line 4
slate, slate white line 5 (gray)
red/blue line 6

this is the phrase they tought me back in the day to remember the color code :
"Bring Our Guys Back Safe"

polarity normallay dosent mean much now adays, but the white side of a pair is the tip + and the solid color of a pair is the ring -
Normallay when connecting tip/ring side to side the tip is left and the ring is right.. when connecting tip/ring top to bottom, tip is usuallay top... when I was learning I just remembered "Tip-Top" and "Ring Right"

Answer 2

Don't know what country Mark is from, but he is dead wrong in the US. Red was tip and Green was ring back when polarity was an issue. The red/green pair is used for line 1 and the black/yellow pair for a second line or just not used.

Answer 3

For what it's worth, the old 'red-green' ring/tip is not necessarily the rule any longer. Usually, you have 4 wires to each phone location. However, if there is a problem on one of the 'red-green' pairs, we are apt to pick ANY pair that works, since polarity is no longer an issue. I remember way back when touch-tone first came out, polarity WAS an issue. Now all the touch-tone phones are made to accept either polarity on each pair. (A diode 'bridge' fixed that problem.)

Answer 4

Usually Red and Black are the main pair - these alone will usually get you dial tone and except in the UK (which use a third wire for ringing) the other two are rarely used.

Sometimes you will find earth on on e of the other colours - this is used for things like meter pulsing and some old style payphones.

In short though - Red & Black are the pair you NEED to make the thing work :)

Answer 5

Usually red green are used for your dial tone, the yellow black are used for a second line or as a spare pair if you have only one line. Check the site below for more helpful information about phonelines.
http://www.fix-your-phone-line.com

Answer 6

It depends on each country's telcos standards. In some countries like US, red and green wires are used as tip and ring leads. In other countries like UAE, yellow and black wires are used as tip and ring leads for analog phones. Red and green wires are used as tip and ring leads for two-wire digital phones of PABX or key system.