Telephone Uk/France

We’re coming over to our house in 3 weeks and have internet/phone line installed can anybody tell me as I have lots of Uk telephones if the little plastic bit that fits in the socket is the same in France

image The French phone sockets are different to the British ones but you can buy an adapter or change the phone cord.

You may find your phone socket is an RJ11 type socket on the back of your router.

Thankyou perhaps I will buy a phone in France then :joy:

Look through this resource about RJ11


It probably will work but French phones from the supermarkets are so cheap these days, its probably not worth the fiddling about.

Assuming your telephones connect to standard UK landline wall sockets and you want to connect to standard French T shaped sockets -
Someone ought to make an adapter, but a quick Google didn’t find one. Maybe insufficient demand?
Rewiring with a French plug is a simple job if you know what you are doing, but not advisable for the non-technical.
A basic landline phone is not expensive.
Do you have a mobile phone? You could get a French SIM card. Could be the cheapest option (depending on usage.) Google for all the offers. Giffgaff comes up first, but there are plenty of others.

If I remember correctly our Livebox was connected by the large a French plug and our VOIP telephone was connected by a smaller plug. Why not bring one of your UK phones over to see if it works. If it doesn’t suitable phones are available from any supermarket

Thank you will do

Good point, thanks

The phone will have a socket which is as close to always RJ11 as makes no difference (that way the same phone can be shipped in multiple countries with just a different cable to plug it into the wall).

You can get “T” to RJ11 adapters pretty easily eg this one or this one - then (if the first style) an RJ11 to RJ11 cable is all that you need.

The only thing to watch out for is that while most phones use the centre two connections out of the four in an RJ11, some use the outer 2.

I have rewired a French prise gigogne on a couple of occasions in the past (before even French telephones were fitted with the modern plugs), but the connections were always a bit flaky after a while, especially if you had to keep removing the plugs due to T-storms. It is possible to actually buy a prise gigogne with an RJ10 socket exit to plug the phone into the wall socket, although if you buy a French phone handset they often come already hard-wired with a free RJ10 plug terminal to plug into the phone handset base / router / box.

EDIT : I remember at the time, there being no internet descriptive PDFs telling you how to connect up the various wires to the terminals in the prise gigogne, so there was a fair bit of trial and error involved !

I have been away quite a while and was remembering old phones with hard wired BS 6312 plugs. Of course you are quite right in saying that adapters for RJ11 plugs are cheap and readily available.

Any property that has been recently re-wired (within about six years) will have RJ45 sockets in most, if not all rooms. If the RJ cabling has been done correctly, they will all return to the “comms box” and offer Internet, TV (subject to cable quality) and telephone at all sockets. A RJ10/RJ11 plug will, and is designed so, to fit a RJ45 socket.

i’ve seen adaptors, but can’t remember where. big brico’s probably best bet. i agree with bringing over your phone, because the sockets on the back of the router are uk type(rj11) . if you do buy a french phone, instructions for ours were available on line in english !

Hi Have just seen your post. I need to run a new cable from the box where the phone line comes into the house as the old cable is damaged. I’m pretty sure that I’ve wired up the new T socket box ok (with just 3 of the many wires in the new phone cable I bought) but it seems that all of the wires in the damaged cable have been connected in the box so I haven’t a clue how to connect my new cable to the box! Did you succeed purely by trial and error or is there a diagram somewhere that I can refer to? Hoping you can help

I haven’t done this in a very long time now, and have forgotten the details, unfortunately.
The very first time was trial and error, I’d taken an old phone apart back in the days before ISDN was even a thing, in which the cabling was hard wired into the phone itself, and then had forgotten which wire went where.
The second and third times, I managed to find a diagram on the internet to help me. If you do a Google image search for “cablage prise gigogne”, it will bring up some relevant answers, depending on whether you’re just connecting an old style telephone (do they even exist any more), or whether you’re connecting a RJ11 socket (which requires all / nearly all of the coloured wires to be connected).

Many thanks for the advise. I’ll Google for some images as you suggest

Phil

Phil just to warn you, this is an open forum. Your phone number can be seen by anyone in the world who comes across SF. Is this what you really intend?

Thanks. Have made an edit. As I used the emailed reply option it picked up my signature with phone number

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