Exterior wiring for speakers and telephone - keep them for any reason?

July 26, 2022 1:16 PM

Doing some house repainting. Is there any good reason to keep unused telephone and speaker wires that are mounted to the exterior of the house?

I have various exterior mounted wiring for speakers in our lounge, and for telephone jacks in different locations upstairs (all addon's from prior owners to the original house hence why not in the wall). All of the wiring is old and ugly after multiple repaints and storms, and I am thinking of removing it during repainting (and then covering the wall penetrations with plates so the penetrations can be found and used again if really needed). Couldn't think of any reason not to remove them but querying the hivemind in case there is a use case I'm not thinking of. Also I'm not talking about the demarcation telephone wiring from the telco - I know we have to keep that - this is for phone extensions.

For the telephone wire we don't use it for our house alarm (that's on its own 4G connection), we don't own a landline, and I'm 99.9% sure our Comcast internet connection comes in a separate cable (to confirm). We'd keep the telephone jacks on the ground floor that have in wall wiring.

For the speaker wire, the only reason I can think of is that wired speakers don't need separate power (the locations the external wires go to are up high with no close power sockets). But we literally don't use external speakers and have no home theatre ambitions / would probably use wireless speakers if we did, or could rerun cabling if really needed (super unlikely).

This is all ins standalone house - so no impact to other neighbors etc.

posted by inflatablekiwi to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

Best answer: I personally think that my outdoor speakers sound system is one of the best upgrades made to my house (speakers were free, had to pay for the wire) but if they are in a position where you would never put speakers and not use them, then get rid of them. I think the spool I bought was 100 ft for $20, so the outlay for wire you are throwing away, if you replace it later, is not much money.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:34 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: As for telephone wire - it's worthless IMO. I wouldn't run indoor wiring outside the home -that is bad practice.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:35 PM on July 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I mean, I would remove them from the house but would save the wire itself. I use short ends of wire all the time.
posted by Dr. Wu at 2:24 PM on July 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks all. I just realized there is some Coax cable as well (for TV antenna / signal splitting). That will be going as well given all our TV is digital over a wireless mesh. And yes, I'll keep the wire - always handy to have a few rolls for projects or even as ties for the garden.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 2:37 PM on July 26, 2022

Best answer: Nope, all useless.
posted by Oyéah at 2:47 PM on July 26, 2022

Best answer: Coax can be handy to keep around if you want to use moca for wired networking, which is much faster and more reliable than most wireless (and far better than powerline, nearly as good as real ethernet). Personally I'd be hesitant to pull out coax unless I had ethernet in its place, but I am a noted wifi hater.
posted by primethyme at 2:56 PM on July 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I should add (not to abuse the edit window) I also strongly agree with The_Vegetables that wired outdoor speakers are awesome, and much nicer than wireless in most cases. And I was really happy when I bought a house that was already wired for it. But if you truly never use it, then I guess no reason to keep it.
posted by primethyme at 3:01 PM on July 26, 2022

Best answer: i like outdoor/wired multrioom audio too, but on the other hand most people who want that would already know they want it.

I've had mixed results with MoCA and/or HPNA, but that's what came to mind here too on the coax.

You can run ethernet over phone line for short distances at lower speeds (or tunnel it at higher speeds using various proprietary schemes).

But all of that would be to avoid pulling cable later, so if you're willing to do that if you ever need it than yank it all out.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:03 PM on July 26, 2022

Best answer: I asked my neighbours this question and several said that cutting seemingly dead phone wires took out their internet.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 4:33 PM on July 26, 2022

Best answer: Nouvelle-personne, phone sockets are run in serial, with the same wire to all sockets. If they had a DSL internet connection and managed to make a short where they cut the wire, that would probably do it, even if it's not between the box and the modem. (OP, this might be useful to know, and in any case it's good practice to disconnect wires before removing them.)
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 5:27 PM on July 26, 2022

Response by poster: Thanks all. Yeah I went and looked and my Comcast cable is on a different physical line (even comes in from the other side of the house from the telco demarc). I can imagine if I had DSL I'd be wary of taking the phone line out (or at least being prepared to have to get the phone company in potentially if cutting an extension line causes a signal issue). If I ever replace Comcast - my only other high speed local option is a 5G wireless provider anyway, so think I'm good - it would be highly unlikely we'd ever use DSL(and I'll keep the ground floor jacks wired to the teleco demarc point anyway so that would still be possible)

To be clear the external speaker wiring was for internal mounted speakers at the back of our lounge (just via the cable being outside), though I suppose I could mount external speakers. If I did the primary use case for them would be to broadcast to my kids to stop fighting with each other without having to get off the couch on a hot summer's day I suspect......which may still be a valid use case........
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:14 AM on July 27, 2022 [1 favorite]