Phones seem to have proliferated from when I grew up and we had one (rented
from the phone company) in the hallway.  How many phone lines do you have now,
how many phones, and where do you keep them?  What else do you have plugged
into a phone line or hooked up to phone service?  What color(s)?

47 responses total.

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I have two phones, one cellular and one conventional.  The conventional line
has an ADSL modem, a POTS modem, an answering machine, and two phones
plugged into it.  One phone is a modern one with memories and speed-dial,
the other is an old bakelite rotary-dial phone, the kind that's heavy enough
to be used as a weapon.  The old phone's receiver is much more comfortable
to hold and talk on for long periods of time.

At work we have a total of thirty-four phone numbers, but only 13 phone
lines.  (No wonder area code splits are so common these days.)

You and Jim use pigeons and a heliograph, right?

jmsaul, would you please stop making idiotic remarks like #3?
Would a vegan enslave a fellow creature like that?
We have three phone lines and lots of modems and fax machines and answering
machines plugged into them, at three locations.  And a fax-phone switch.
Also a collection of cordless phones that we don't ever use, plus one on the
porch that is in use.  A phone in Jim's garage and now one in his basement.
One in each bathroom.  No cell phones.

Wow.  I sometimes forget you have a sense of humor.  ;-)

In my house we have 5 POTS lines (three voice, 1 computer, 1 fax), with 8 desk
phones and three cordless phones, mostly white, with a couple black ones and
a silver one.  Also there are 4 cell phones in the house, 1 Cingular, 1
Verizon, and 2 Nextel.  Those are all black except mine which is silver.

Re#3: Heh.

I have one phone line. I have three phones. I have a cordless phone and 
desk phone both plugged into an outlet in the kitchen. This is because 
the desk phone has the caller id and also because my roommate has a bad 
habit of taking the cordless phone up into her room where I cant find 
it. Having the desktop phone in the kitchen at least means I can answer 
the phone when I need to. My roommate has her PC and another phone 
plugged into the jack upstairs. 

I have another broken cordless phone in my bedroom but even if it 
worked, the jack doesnt work. When happyboy lived with me, he had his 
own phone line in there so that jack is for a second phone line that 
has been disconnected. I dont know how to change it back and havent 
been motived enough to do it. 

I also need a phone jack in my basement for my PC. I have a friend who 
has offered to help me with my phone jack wiring issues but I havent 
bought the stuff needed yet. I suppose I should make a trip to radio 
shack or something. 

I dont have a second line because I dont feel I need one. I let my 
roommate share my phone without paying me anything but she understands 
that means I get to kick her off whenever I need to use the phone or am 
expecting a call. That doesnt happen very often so she has not decided 
to get a second line turned on. 

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We have 2 phones hardwired in, i.e. not modular, 1 in the lower hall and 1
in the upper hall.  The lower hall is a deskphone with a LONG cord.  The upper
hall is a wall phone.  STeve put a splitter on the upper hall phone which
usually has an answering machine plugged into it.  Staci has a modular phone
which she would switch off with the answering machine until the kitties
decided to chew on the cord. 

We are seriously considering getting a second line for the popular teenager
that Staci has become :-)

At some point in the ongoing renovations more jacks will be put in so that
I can have a phone and the answering machine with caller ID on my desk.  The
current deskphone will reach my desk but at the risk of people, especially
STeve (with only 1 working eye) tripping over the cord.

One working eye?  I have to ask for details on this as I am a cyclops, too.

Man, when I was a teenager it would have solved a lot of problems if my 
folks had been willing to put in a second line. 

He had a stroke in September which left him with double vision.  He wears an
eye patch on the eye that won't track correctly.  Otherwise he gets dizzy and
very nauseated.  He will be getting glasses with a prism soon.  But the lack
of depth perception causes all kinds of trouble tripping over things like
cords and cats.

We have three phones on one line. We had a fourth, but the jack is in the room
we don't use anymore.
 
We have a second phone line used for a modem.

We have two phone lines in the house, one is a business line.

Ignoring the busines line... phones are connected to our home line in the
office, the baby room, the master bedroom, the kitchen, and the bonus room.

Of those 5 phones, 4 of them are cordless.

One phone jack upstairs that I don't use. One white cordless in the 
kitchen, though the phone unit meanders about the house. One pale blue 
cord phone in the bedroom. One Nokia cell phone with a black-and-purple 
lace motif faceplate. :)

Phone jacks everywhere, with each jack capable of handling 2-3 phone lines.
"66" style punch block in utility room.  That's where the cool stuff ends,
though.  One phone line (used to be two), 4 phones.  Cell phone also.

Two lines, one used just for computer (which is also the fax). Two
two-line phones; two one-line wired phones, a cordless phone, and an
answering machine, all on line 1. I had an intercom working over the
phone line, but that has been removed. 

Re #16: Huh.  I've never seen a house with 66 blocks installed, though I
suppose that kind of thing will be getting more common.

Dorm room: 1 phone line, 2 jacks, shared with my roommate.  I use a 
cordless phone, he has a corded phone.

Home: 3 POTS lines (main number, kids line, work number), 1 ADSL line.  
the POTS lines terminate at a punch block, then are spread out to the 
rest of the house.  Jacks in just about every room. 

I carry a cell phone, as do both of my parents.

I have a cell phone, and a POTS line which is also for DSL, so two 
phone numbers.  I have two phones connected to my phone line; one in 
the bedroom on my desk, one on the bar in the dining room.

Since I got the DSL connection, which allows incoming and outgoing 
voice calls while connected to the Internet, I have never once wished 
for a second phone line.

Two phone lines coming into the house -- one we use for voice,
the other for modem.  The voice line has a total of six phones
on it -- three on the second floor, two on the main floor,
one in the basement.  All but one of these phones is cordless,
so during a power failure only that one will work.  Four of
the six phones are black and have built-in caller id.

Oh, and of course Mary and I each have our own cell phone.

Funny thing is, I don't think I have any more phone conversa-
tions than I did when I only had one phone.

One cell phone, one land line.

Hmm.  Four POTS lines, one ASDL.  Lines terminate at telco 'network
interface' two gray boxes on back of building.  Multi-pair cables
enter basement and are punched down on type-66 blocks.  From there
to 'media module' (also does RF for radio and TV) a type-110 'rack'
panel with mixture of rj-11 and rj-45 for local distribution to 
basement or via multi-pair cables to remaining three floors type-66
block where further distributed to mixture of type-110 rj-45s 
and rj-11 terminal blocks (spade).  Reason for mixture of 110 and
66 is the majority is scrounged from datacenter moves.  (For some
reason folk leave behind when they move out and new folk buy new
when they move in.  In my opinion one can actually re-use blocks
even if you have to replace cat-3 with cat-5.  All cable scrounged
from rolls of new belden cat-5 as people don't bother to plan
runs and end up with lots of 'short' rolls at the end of a job.)

Thinking about cutting back to three POTS lines now that the
reliability of the ASDL line seems to have improved somewhat.
(currently house line, business line, two fax/modem lines -
both me and whats-her-name are 'bit heads' -ie need connectivity)

Two line wireless phone system with 4 stations.  Two separate
wireless phones. Five hardwire phones (no phones in bathrooms - 
yet). Two two-line and three one line caller-id boxes - not counting
the computers which log caller-ID and are 'digital answering 
machines' which page-out on messages (irritating as haven't 
fixed page on hangups).  Oddly enough, no wireless networking -
got too many 'crack' programs I guess.  Four 'web cams' - can
watch server room, front door, back door, and side alley from
anywhere - motion detector software puts a box around the changed
pixels of snapshots stored (eventually backed up to CD).

No cable TV.  Multi-channel streaming audio on in-house network.
(Soon to get CCTV-4 sat dish, 200$US with no subscription fees.)

  No land line, one cell phone.

Ok, what is a POTS line?

Plain Old Telephone Service

Oh Sheesh!

One POTS line, one SDSL line, one cell line each (myself and wife), digital
cable.  The POTS line has three phones connected -- kitchen corded w/ caller
ID, master bedroom cordless w/ caller ID, and office/guest bedroom cordless
w/o caller ID.

one land line, one phone in the wall, one cell not in use at the moment, two
modems.

I've got two POTS lines, one cell phone, one two way pager that I carry in
my laptop bag and use very rarely, and one DSL line.  I don't talk on the
phone all that much at this point, so it really seems kind of excessive. 
However, the pager and cell phone are paid for by work, as will be the second
phone line and DSL line when I get around to filing the expense reports.  I
use the second phone line for work stuff occasionally, and give the number
out to companies I think might try to use it for telemarketing, and let it
go straight to the answering machine without ringing most of the time.

When we moved in, the house had five jacks, all wired with cat-3:
one in each bedroom, the kitchen and the living room.  I replaced the
3x6 punch-down block with a 4x12 and added a jack (analog and ISDN) in
the basement.  We now have one POTS and one ISDN line.  The living room
has the only phone-less jack.  Daughter-mine has a cell phone; the rest
of us live with the landline.  If I recall correctly, the living room
and master bedroom have 'live' ISDN jacks as well as the analog jacks,
but nothing is plugged into them; the 'modem' is in the basement.

one land line, one land/radio (900 Mhz cordless).  I love my cordless, 
but a 2.4 Ghz would be convenient since we have gotten occasional 
cellular interference.

No cellular.  Just can't afford that.  Modem is dial-up too-- can't 
afford DSL.

What is a typical monthly phone bill for people with the multiple lines?

Heh. I only have one phone line and I'll bet I pay at least double what 
you pay because I like certain extra features. 

Two phone lines, one for voice and one for fax.  We have one of those 
Sony devices that has a base unit and four cordless extensions with 
their own recharger bases.  The little displays tell you which 
extension is currently in use, if any.  Very handy.  Plus we all have 
our own cell phones, so that totals six separate phone numbers.  

I talked about jacks, but I forgot to talk about phones.  I've got five rooms,
all of which have phone jacks.  The kitchen has two phone jacks, for some
reason, although I'm only using one of them.  I've got five phones, one for
each room.  One is cordless; the rest are wired.  The cordless phone and the
phone in my office are both two line phones, the rest talk only to one line.
A couple of those phones I use really rarely, but since it took me a while
to figure out where the movers had packed my phones when I moved here I had
to buy some new ones, so once I foudn the old ones I had extras that I figured
I might as well use.

My ISDN line is roughly twice the cost of an analog line.  Since it is,
effectively, two lines, that makes sense.  (Just remembered that it does, in
fact, have two telephone numbers associated with it.)

        One cell phone, and one cable modem.  That's it.  If the cable modem
goes out, I borrow someone else's connection, generally.

1) Cell Phone
2) 3x POTS lines
3) T1
4) Pager with direct 800/888/877-type number.
5) efax.com number that i can get faxes and voice-mail on.
(it e-mails you .rm files and .tiff files with the faxes/voices)

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss