Category 3 cable

Category 3 cable, commonly known as Cat 3 or station wire, and less commonly known as VG or voice-grade[1] (as, for example, in 100BaseVG), is an unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable used in telephone wiring.

It is part of a family of standards defined jointly by the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and published in TIA/EIA-568-B.

[2][3] Although designed to reliably carry data up to 10 Mbit/s,[4] modern data networks run at much higher speeds, and Cat 5e or better cable is generally used for new installations.

The original Power over Ethernet 802.3af specification supports the use of Cat 3 cable, but the later 802.3at Type 2 high-power variation does not.

Such use cases include hobbyist retrofitting short home telephone Cat 3 networks for Ethernet.