Connecting from the phone socket to the exchange

diagram showing flow from phone master socket to local loop to local exchange

  • Your router connects to the phone socket which then provides direct access to the Local loop.
  • The local loop is a pair of copper wires that run from the customer's site to the local telephone exchange.
  • When the copper wires reach the local exchange, the digital (ADSL broadband) and voice parts of the signal are separated using a system that is the reverse of the micro-filter you plug into the phone socket in the office. The voice signal is transferred to the PSTN network and the digital broadband signal is connected to a Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM).

This allows telephone lines to make faster connections to the Internet, by creating permanent virtual connections for each ISP using the system.

a cable