Will plugging a digital phone into a CAT5 connection work?

[Rishi]

We currently have about 90 Intertel digital phones as part of our Mitel 5000 setup (and about 50 IP phones). We are considering moving to a new office that only has CAT-5 cable runs back to the phone closet as they had all IP phones. Would we be able to use those CAT-5 connections for our Intertel phones? Would anything additional be required?

I plan to test this in our current office to confirm, but I figured I'd ask first to make sure it should work, and whether there is any caveats I should be careful of.

Thanks.

[BlackSunshine]

Yes have to do it a lot ....Easiest way is to cable out your 16 port cables that connect to the inter-tel to a Cat 5 patch panels.  Punch down each pair to the blue/blue white of each cat 5 patch panel port...or you could make patch cables that have mod on one end and other side able to punch down on 66 block

[pexecutone]

If these are old Intertel digital phones(8520/8560's), they need to be punched on the white green/green on the CAT 5 panel, because the phones do not run on the middle pair.

[DND ON]

I did something similar just yesterday; needed to put a digital phone into an area with no voice jack, but had four vacant data jacks. I mounted a CAT 5 biscuit jack near the patch panel and cross-connected it onto the 66 block, then patched it into the patch panel.

Really hate to cobble stuff together like that, but that particular closet is less than fun to work in.

[NTEDave]

Remember the old Inter-Tel digitals are polarity sensitive aswell!

[acejavelin]

I think the point here is telephony cable is telephony cable, and the reality is 4-pair network cable is telephony cable... The phones will work on CAT-3, CAT-5, CAT-6, 25-pair 1A2 station cabling, red/white paper pulp cable with lead casing, or whatever else they come up with provided the cable is physically sound, you just might need to do some creative connecting at the MDF.