Armor for exterior Telephone Junction box?

[ChuckSchick]

Hello all! Pardon my first post being a question rather than an answer, but I'm but a babe in the woods with regard to security.

What I'm looking for is some sort of enclosure that will protect exterior telephone wires and/or a telephone junction box. This, of course, is to diminish the risk of phone lines being cut. I've found patents describing such a device but I've not been able to find anything for sale.

Does such a thing exist?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[rfdesq]

Even if such a product exists I'm not sure how much protection it is going to afford you. Are your telco wires off a pole or are they underground? It's not hard to throw a rope over the wire and rip it from the pole. You could tamper switch protect the box. Also, you could do a cellular backup. There are some good threads here on the backup.

 

[mustangcoupe]

Welcome to Cocoontech!

I agree with rfdesq My wires are off a pole and at the house I can almost touch them! The only think you can do in this case is 1 cellular backup, 2 use another technology ex. voip phone or ethernet to communicate with the alarm co. But be aware IMHO there is always a way to disable it all, if they really want to get in. But if they dont know which way you communicate chances are they might miss it.

 

[ChuckSchick]

I'm tending to agree with you guys about using a wireless based line backup.

The actual telephone line is underground up to the house. It rises in a pvc pipe up to the junction box and then there is about 2' of bare CAT5 wire from the jx box to the penetration thru the bricks. It would take about 4 seconds for someone with a tool to sever the line and about 10 seconds without a tool to pull the connections free. I would be happy if I could slow it down to about 40 seconds with a tool and indefinitely without one.

I will be putting a loop in the unused conductor pairs and using it as a "zone" for the security panel, and it looks like I'll be looking further into wireless options. Still if I could get some sort of armored conduit at least over the bare wires It would be a good thing.

 

[rfdesq]

Still if I could get some sort of armored conduit at least over the bare wires It would be a good thing.

What about running it in EMT?

 

[wuench]

Security is only as good as it's weakest link. My line is underground as well. Protecting the line at the house won't help you unless you can also lock down the other end in the transformer? box. And if it is like my line it is not buried very deep. A foot at most and closer to the surface at each end. Also, the line needs to be accesible to the phone company up to the their dmarc.

I think the best approach is a backup strategy. The next best option might be a tamper approach so you can get a signal out before the line gets cut.

Anything else would proabably be a waste of time. And what would slowing them down do for you by a few seconds, unless you are using those seconds to send out a signal.

Or maybe put an AC line in that conduit, then you'll need to decide if you want to trigger a burglar alarm if the line gets cut or a medical...