Self-Install - Backfeed to existing phone circuit?

As far as I know, self-installs using a 3600HGV are for Internet only.  If you also want VOIP (U-Voice), that has to be a technician install and uses a 3800HGV-B.

Thanks for response. I've had both the website and CS say that the Internet+UVoice is now available as a self-install so it might be a new thing which is why I'm having difficulty finding an answer and I'm not always sure I can trust the CS reps on this.  Looking for anyone who has done this....

The 3600HGV does have VOIP capability, but they have not used that in the past.  If they're now allowing self-installs for VOIP, that indeed is new.

Is there any reason to believe the Voice interface on the 3600 is any different than the 3800?  I'm not real clear on it, but I thought they both convert VOIP to be compatible with a typical analog phone network and I would assume both would successfully connect to the entire circuit through one jack as long as the phone circuit was disconnected at the NID.  But, that's just a guess at this point.

They do have a self install kit for VOIP service http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp?sid=KB408591.

I have a 3800 series RG and my service was installed by a tech a year and a half ago and is backfed through the house, I can't see the 3600 series being any different. I have a line running from Phone1 on the back of the RG to one of the phone wall plates which then backfeeds through the house, works fine. Since mine was not a self install, I can't comment on what needs to be done at the NID, but I'm guessing it might just involve disconnecting a couple of wires.

Thanks for the info. I'm handy with the wiring and I've already wired a homerun Cat5e cable from the NID to the spot I have set aside for the RG.  I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't something unique about the 3600 RG that made it difficult to reconnect the phone circuit.  The instructions were sort of a head scratcher but your comment about the assumption made for those instructions makes sense.  Should be no problem connecting this if I ever get it.  My first attempt at ordering the self-install kit online was a comedy of errors from AT&T and I ended up cancelling the order because they couldn't get it right.  

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@Computer-Joe wrote:

The instructions from the OP just assumes you have some flavor of Uverse already and the original installer fed the RG with coax from the NID/NIB, which is a ridiculous assumption to make on AT&T's part. Any other type of Uverse installation, or no existing Uverse at all, would definitely make these a much more complicated self-install, and not suited for the average subscriber. That being said I'll try to give some instructions for this.

 

Note: You will need to do a little manual work using basic hand tools (screwdrivers, wire cutters/strippers). You will also need a phone line splitter like this (around $5.00)http://www.kmart.com/shc/s/p_10151_10104_00324828000P. You should be able to find this at local hardware and home improvement stores as well.

 

Your basic phone wiring in your house normally consists of a cable with 4 seperate wires inside it. These will more than likely be red, green, yellow, and black. Your wiring may differ (different colors or more wires in side the cable) but don't panic. Basic POTS phone and ADSL/VDSL only require 2 of those wires (normally the red and green). To determine this you will need to open the NID/NIB and check which 2 wires are used and you should open up the wall jack as well to verify that it is the same wiring inside the house (also make sure that the yellow and black wires are connected to the wall jack you intend to use for the RG). If your wiring is just the 4 conducter like I described (red and green being used) just swap the red and green wires connected in the NID/NIB with the yellow and black wires and close it up. Then, inside you would plug the line splitter into the wall jack. Next, plug a phone cord into the L2 socket on the splitter and into the "DATA" port on the RG. Next, plug a phone cord into the L1 socket on the splitter and into the "PHONE1" port on the RG. Next plug your phones into any wall jack in the house and you should be good to go.

 

 

FWIW: ATT did my entire install for my U-verse, in the room with the "RG" due to the computer being on the opposite end of the room as the jack, we now have a white cat 5 type cable running across our carpet since the tech would not go into our attic and drop another phone line on the correct wall.  I have an apt with our electrical to come out and make this drop for us but was considering doing the dop my self until I look at the phone jack which now has a white hood like cover on the wall plate and looks to be two outlets; one for the phone and one for the internet? I assume the wiring inside the phone jack can't be that complicated? 

I should probably report back on this just in case it helps anyone in the future.  I've reported on my trials on the self-install in the Internet section, but regarding backfeeding the Uverse Voice ouput from the RG into a phone jack and having it active on all house phone jacks, I can report that it does work as was suggested earlier in the thread.  Only caveat is how you run the incoming Uverse signal to the RG. In my case, i ran a Cat5e cable directly to the RG location from the NID and used that to hook up to the wire pair carrying the Uverse input.  Then I disconnected my outside DSL filter to isolate the orignal landline circuit from the new Uverse circuit.  When I backfed the Uverse voice output to a jack on the old landline circuit, I had phone service throughout the house.  Main point is that you need to run the Uverse input in on a different pair somehow from your existing phone pair.

I've been going through an instll like this recently and thought I might add a few comments to help users out as well...  If your hous already has a standard Cat3 (4 conductor phone wire) you can use that to easily feed your VDSL signal into your house and backfeed the rest of the house from there.  When you connect the VDSL pair in the NID use the "second line" pair in your original house wiring, disconnecting the "first line" pair at the NID.  For my house the first line pair was "blue" and the second line was "orange".  If there was only 1 pair of each color at the NID then the house lines were in series.  If there are more pairs, you have to do alittle more work at the NID to connect all the pairs from the first line, and know which pair goes to the jack you want for the RG on the second line wires.  Go to the outlet that you want to connect your RG at and use a simple 2 line splitter, feeding line 2 to the RG in, and line 1 from the Phone 1 out on the back of the RG.  If your house phones are in series, then the RG will easily feed signal to all of them,  and if they are in parallel, then the connections you made at the NID still allow you to back feed into the house.

I had 2 different techs out to my house during my "self install" process, and they both agree that AT&T probably shouldn't offer the self-install option.  The second tech was the one who suggested using the splitter idea.  He was also the one who suggested (and wired) the connection of the 5 pairs that were fed into my NID (all 5 phone jacks were in parallel).  I had a home run Cat5e cable from my NID to a punchdown in my basement, so I just used one of those pairs to run to one of the 2 telephone ports on the new wall plate I mounted near where my RG is located.  The second port on that wall plate took the Phone 1 out of the RG and punched it down to a pair that ran back to the old "Line 1" setup in the NID.  This back fed a clean run from the RG to the NID where it then fed directly to each of the other 5 wall ports in my house.

Now, I make it sound easy, and in reality for someone who has experience with wiring phone & networks, it was, but I had so many othe rissues with my install process that I would strongly recommend that you pay for a technician install rather than trying to save a few bucks.  My install was scheduled to be complete at 8:00pm two days ago, and as of now I don't expect everything to be complete until a week after the original date.  They had problems porting my AT&T POTS voice line to U-Verse voice, and ended-up having to put in a second order for that which is why there is the additional week delay.  As of now, my internet works great, I can make calls, I can receive voice mail, but I can't receive any calls on my VOIP line as the porting is still "in progress".  The voice line issues impacted my internet activation so I was unable to get that activated and going until 36 hours after my initial scheduled date/time.  As I said, my voice service is an issue, but it has been coming along slowly since this morning.  The bigger problem was that they disconnected the POTS service as of the initial U-Verse installation date, so I was without home phone service for those 36 hours as well.  Like I said elsewhere, my install was a very complex install, so I'm not too surprised that it had problems, but they came at a bad time for me for many personal reasons...

Currently, we have AT&T High Speed DSL (ADSL) and AT&T POTS (analog) telephone in our house.  I recently placed an order for UVerse Internet Max (VDSL).  I expect no issues with the self-installation of the Residential Gateway (RG).  My concern rests with later switching our telephone service from AT&T POTS to UVerse Voice (digital/VOIP).  Before doing so, I’d like to completely understand what needs to be done in order to backfeed the VOIP telephone signal to the other telephone wall jacks in our house.  I have no telephone wiring experience, but I think reading the excellent prior posts on this thread and some other internet sites has brought me up to speed.  Please let me know if my thinking (see below) is correct or not.

Our telephone service comes into a Keptel 4600 SNI network interface box (NIB) located on the outside of the house.  All telephone line wiring is standard 4 connector i.e.., 2 untwisted pairs.  The wires from the NIB are blue/blue white and orange/orange white but I’ll refer to all wiring in terms of green/red and yellow/black pairs.  The green/red pair from the NIB is connected to a wiring block in the basement.  Connected to the wiring block are the green/red pairs from each of 4 telephone lines that go out to various locations in our house.  We have a total of 5 telephone wall jacks, one of which is located near the RG (the RG wall jack).  Our existing telephone circuit appears to be a modified star topology with 4 parallel lines coming out of the wiring block plus 1 or more (likely only 1) lines “in series” branching off of parallel lines at points behind the walls.  I have yet to check everything, but let’s assume the green/red and yellow/black pairs are properly connected to the screw terminals on each of the 5 wall plates and there are no problems with any of the wires (green/red/yellow/black) in the lines.

Here’s what I think I need to do.  First, at the NIB I disconnect the green/red pair and connect the yellow/black pair.  Then, I determine the parallel line that runs to the RG wall jack.  I do this by a process of elimination, each time disconnecting all but one of the outgoing green/red pairs from the wiring block and testing for a telephone signal at the RG wall jack.  Once I know which line it is, I connect the outgoing yellow/black pair for that line, leaving the green/red pair connected.  Next I plug a two-line splitter into the RG wall jack.  (On the two-line splitter, Line 2 is for the yellow/black pair while Line 1 is for the green/red pair.)  After that I run a telephone line from the two-line splitter Line 2 into Connection #5 (Phone Line – VDSL connector) on the RG.  Next I run a telephone line from Connection #6 (Phone Lines 1 & 2 port) on the RG into one of the jacks on a single-line splitter (also referred to as a same-line splitter or a duplex adapter).  Finally, I run a telephone line from the other jack on the single-line splitter into Line 1 of the two-line splitter which as stated earlier is plugged into the RG wall jack.

If no lines split off “in series” from the parallel line that runs to the RG wall jack, the VOIP telephone service should backfeed just fine without the need for any splitters or DSL filters.  (The DSL filters will already have been removed.)  The interference issue, combined VDSL and VOIP signals, associated with any lines branching off from the parallel line that runs to the RG can be solved by plugging a two-line splitter into that wall jack and running the telephone line to the phone from Line 1 of the splitter.

Again, please let me know if there are any errors in my understanding.  Thanks.

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@aviewer wrote:
wrwtaxes - Here is a basic description of what it seems you have correctly stated. Maybe it is oversimplified or maybe it can put things in perspective.

I think the bunching block makes things easier. Since you already have DSL, doesn't it split the incoming line with a filter - one to the dsl modem and one to the bunching block to feed the phones.

With U-verse DSL/ POTS this would stay the same. Just a different modem.

To transition from POTS to U-voice - the dial tone source moves from the incoming line to the output of the modem. So, you remove the filter & directly connect the incoming line to the modem wire(R/G). Then use (Y/B) pair to bring the dial tone back to the bunching block. Probably connect to the (R/G) pair because that is what the phones are connected to.

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Since you've got basically a star topology from near the NID to all your phones, then yes, you can run the VDSL signal into the RG on R/G, feed the dialtone back on Y/Bk then connect R/G of your PHONE runs to the Y/Bk backfeed.  Just be sure that the R/G coming into the house never touches these connections at all.

Most houses have one single cable starting at the NID and running throughout the house from jack to jack.  Since many rooms have phones and you don't want to have to change all those jacks, usually what is done is that you feed the VDSL signal through the house on an outer pair (i.e. not R/G) then backfeed the dialtone to all the "extensions" on the "R/G" or center pair.  That means you have a split jack at the RG's connection point, feeding the RG from the outside pair, and sending the dialtone back on the center pair.  Again making sure that this center pair is only hot from the RG, and NOT from the NID end.