UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Telephone provision in high rise blocks of flats.

G6Tanuki · 16th Feb 2019, 8:35 pm

I guess ~~it depends~~ in times-past I had to provision voice/data to a 6-storey apartment-block in London's "Museum district" that had been bought by a QUANGO: they wanted a couple of RS232 outlets along with a Thinwire Ethernet outlet and a couple of phone-sockets in each office/room.

The premises had been built in the 1840s and were Grade-1 Listed - meaning we couldn't do anything that would disrupt the oak-panelling in the rooms or the marble floors/staircases in the lobby. We managed it, but it was not easy; fortunately there were plenty of "Servants' staircases" and behind-the-scenes accesses we could use. Along with a few forgotten paths that contained ancient and now redundant small-bore lead gas-pipes that once fed 'batswing' light-fittings which could be drawn-out to provide cable routes. But it still cost an order-of-magnitude more than what a new-build would have cost.

I gather that a couple of decades later the routes we identified were stripped-out and refitted with Cat5 cable for modern power-over-Ethernet VoIP-phones.

16th Feb 2019, 8:35 pm	#20
G6Tanuki Dekatron Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Wiltshire, UK. Posts: 13,996	Re: Telephone provision in high rise blocks of flats. I guess ~~it depends~~ in times-past I had to provision voice/data to a 6-storey apartment-block in London's "Museum district" that had been bought by a QUANGO: they wanted a couple of RS232 outlets along with a Thinwire Ethernet outlet and a couple of phone-sockets in each office/room. The premises had been built in the 1840s and were Grade-1 Listed - meaning we couldn't do anything that would disrupt the oak-panelling in the rooms or the marble floors/staircases in the lobby. We managed it, but it was not easy; fortunately there were plenty of "Servants' staircases" and behind-the-scenes accesses we could use. Along with a few forgotten paths that contained ancient and now redundant small-bore lead gas-pipes that once fed 'batswing' light-fittings which could be drawn-out to provide cable routes. But it still cost an order-of-magnitude more than what a new-build would have cost. I gather that a couple of decades later the routes we identified were stripped-out and refitted with Cat5 cable for modern power-over-Ethernet VoIP-phones.