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Standard Phones? Voice Over IP (VOIP)? Phone Systems? 

There are many options when it comes to phones in your home. Which way you go depends on how you use your phones.

We can make it easy for you! Call or email today for a free quote or read on if you need more information:

PHONE NETWORK CABLING

In the past, when you built a new house, your builder would run 4 conductor phone cable to phone jacks in your house. This limits you to only two phone lines, and does not allow for the use of phone systems (see below). It's hard for me to believe, but there are builders that still do things this way today. With more and more people working from home, and starting businesses in their homes, it is not uncommon to need more than 2 lines. Also, it is common to “daisy chain” the wiring, which runs the wire from your phone input box, to one jack, and from there to the next, and so on. This precludes you from using a phone system like a key system, and is generally not a good idea. A key system, gives you features like you have on your phone at work. Things like music on hold, being able to transfer a call and intercom through the phone. At ADI, we recommend running a 4 pair phone cable from each phone location to the mechanical room (home run). You should run at least a Category 3 (CAT 3) cable for each location to the mechanical room. This cable is rated for voice or data up to 10 Million bits per second (10Mbits/sec) and gives you a lot of flexibility. Since Cat 5 or 6 cable is now very close to the price of Cat 3, we just run Cat 6 for voice.

PHONE OPTIONS

With a Cat 3, Cat 5 or Cat 6 cable home run from each phone location wall plate to the mechanical room, you have a variety of choices for your phone system. You can connect all of the wires in parallel and use regular phones (wired or wireless). This gives you the flexibility to have a combination of up to 4 lines anywhere in the house.

PHONE SYSTEMS

The other option is to use some kind of phone system. There are a variety of solutions from companies like Panasonic, Lucent and Vodavi. All of the Cat 6 cables terminate at the phone switch, and this gives you the capability to transfer calls, music on hold, intercom, paging and other functions. The low-end systems will use your normal phones, but are limited in their functionality. Most will use proprietary phones (Panasonic phones will typically only work with a Panasonic system). This will give you all of the functions discussed above. Typically you will buy the basic phone system in configuration like 3x6 (3 incoming lines and 6 stations or phones). Then you will expand it as you need for your home. If you need more lines, you add a line card that adds 3 more lines. If you need more phones, you can add a 6 phone expansion card. If you need Voicemail, you can add a Voicemail expansion card. Typically they have an input that allows you to connect a tuner or CD player for music on hold. The phones themselves will have options also. At the bottom end, it will just be a basic phone with no features. At the high-end, the phone will have an LCD screen that will display things like the time and date, caller ID info, speed dial names and so on.

VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL (VOIP)

VOIP is a popular choice today and is basically just digitized voice transported over your computer network. There are two places you might use VOIP:

Within your Home: With this option, the phones around your home are connected to the Ethernet Network (see the Computer Networking section for details) and talk to a VOIP gateway that converts the VOIP stream to the Analog phone world outside. You will usually get all of the features above (Call transfer, music on hold, ETC.). But since each phone is on the network, you can get other features that are network related on your phone. Want to be able to check your stocks? Do a quick Google search? Control the lights in your home? These are all possible from your phone with VOIP.

Outside your home: Companies like Vonage have made VOIP outside your home a popular option. In this case, you could be using VOIP, normal Analog phones, or a phone system within your home. All will work. The difference is that instead of using AT&T or Sprint as your provider to the phone network, you would use a VOIP provider (Like Vonage) instead. Why would you do that? Well, it is usually cheaper, has many more features, and they will bundle in free long distance calls. VOIP will REQUIRE that you have a high-speed Internet connection in to your home. Other than that, all you need is a Router that supports VOIP. So the Router will connect to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and provide you with an Ethernet connection for your Computer Network and a Phone Line connection for your phones or phone system.