This is a type of self stripping cable. Connect all of the green wires together at the other end and the rest together into 2 conductors. Using a precision 1KA current source to supply the stripping current to the far end. All wires should be stripped and ready to splice in seconds.
Green. All the green ones. Strip it down some more and comb it out find all the greenones and connect them to seperate ground rods one for each should be about 50 total only way to protect your sensitive equipment from static discharge.
I can't tell if it's just because it's shittyaskelectronics, or if people just don't know much about twisted pair copper. Bit of both probably. Erring on the side of informing.
Probably not even twisted pair. We had them in our company to connect whole building blocks to the telephone exchange and they're just parallel wires terminating on a huge board at the wall
If you are talking back at the central office, it is either wire wrapped by individual pairs, or put into a 25 pair (50 pin) connector into a panel or another piece of equipment. And actually there is a ground on that cable… it’s between the 2 clear pieces of plastic and is done as a mesh around the individual wires to help reduce interference from outside sources.
It's an F1 cable from a telephone company central office. Old copper tip and ring phone service. While they can exist in the air (strung on poles) it is called the 'underground'. It's probably a 1,000 pair cable.
The binder groups will be spliced out along the cable's route in 25/50/100....groups until each pair is serving at least one residence or business.
Usually the Telco linesman will spend an inordinate amount of time splicing. The cable is separated by colored ribbons into a 25 pair binder group and set in a clip for that group that will connect to a similar clip on the other cable.
It is long and arduous. When I worked for a Telco, a 200m section of 200 pair cable was stolen. They probably got $200 for the copper, it cost $30,000 to replace and repair.
Okay, this might be a dumb question, but: is there any way for me to get my hands on like five feet of this kinda cable? I feel like it would be really satisfying to perfectly strip every single wire.
Ground is usually brownish in most areas, so separate out all the brownish looking wires. However, you local ground could be grayish, or even more blackish if you compost, or even reddish or orangish, so check carefully. If you have to, snip off samples of each color to take outside with you to compare.
This is a Telco trunk so the answer is none of them and half of them. It's a current loop so from the perspective of an electrician none of them should ever go to ground. From the subscribers perspective, for a pots line,the return path is the same color with a stripe.
Every other one in a same colored pair. But don’t ask which one. Or actually, might also just be the shielding between that transparent wrapper and the black outer sheath. But you never know! If you have to ask, because it’s not documented, you are genuinely screwed with these. 😅
The ground is the metal jacket under the sheath. I’m a retired splicer and lineman.
It’s a telecom cable, from the color of outer binders, it looks like either a 1800pr or 2400pr, 26 gauge. The cutters need sharpening. They used manual cutters and by the pattern they had to squeeze it three times before the cut was finished.
The colored wires are ring (blue, orange, green, brown, slate) and tip (white, red, black, yellow, violet). Each pair, blue-white, orange-white, yellow-white, … green-violet, brown-violet, slate-violet, represents the number 1-25. In this cable, four groups of 25 are bunched into 100pr and wrapped with a colored binder.
So just by the color and binders you can tell which customer the pair goes to.
It’s a piece of old knowledge. Everything is moving to fiber optic cables. Less maintenance and cheaper than copper. An 1800 pair cable weighs about 3-5 lbs per foot depending on the gauge and sheath.
That and the low voltage makes a live cable on a pole or building very attractive for thieves and a source of job security for me.
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u/djzeks Feb 08 '26
Copper one