Telephone Plug - List of Connections

List of Connections

On a conventional wired telephone, there are 4 connections, each of which may be hardwired, but more often uses a plug and socket:

telephone line to phone cable

The wall jack. This connection is the most standardized, and often regulated as the boundary between an individual's telephone and the phone network. (In many homes, though, the boundary between utility-owned and household-owned cable is a jack on an outer wall; all wall jacks in the home are part of the household's internal wiring.)

phone cable to phone base

This and further connections are generally not regulated, but instead have de facto standards. It is often 6P4C, which is often RJ11, but may be proprietary or hardwired.

phone base to handset cable

handset cable to handset

The last two (the handset cable) has a de facto standard of a 4P4C connector with straight through cable.

Some of these may be absent:

• Wired telephones may not have a separate base and handset,
• the defining characteristic of wireless telephones is that they do not have a handset cable, and
• the defining characteristic of mobile telephones is that they do not have a phone cable.