What exactly do I have to do to add a second phone line to my house?
I know where the little rubber box is on the outside of my house; how do I hook up the wires I’ve just strung inside my walls?
And does USWest have to dig up my driveway to run a second set of wires to their side of the little rubber box?
This depends on a lot of stuff. If you already have four-wire phone cable running throughout your house, this is easy. The phone company will come and hook up a second line to the network interface box on the outside of your house. Line 1 will be on the green and red wires, line 2 on the black and yellow. If you don’t have this, you’ll need to get your phone company to install new cablin for you, which may cost money.
Depends on how old you house is. Most newer houses are already wired. I called the phone company and they set me up without even coming to the house.
My apartment has 6 wires (3 phone lines) wired up, so adding a second line wasn’t a problem. I just had the phone company activate the line and then went to a phone jack and tried to hook up the spare wire pairs, one pair at a time, to determine which pair was the live pair. The phone company wanted to charge me $200 to send out a tech to do the inside wiring for me, so I told them to forget it; I’d do it myself.
Unscrew the face plate of the phone jack(s) where you want the second line to be dropped. You should see one pair of wires hooked up to back of the jack plate. If you see other pairs of wires (wires are pairs will be readily visible since the wire pairs are typically twisted together), you can simply call up the phone company and tell them to turn on the second line. They may or may not need to come to your home to do some work on your outside phone box. Typically, if they do not have to step inside your residence, they will not charge you for the house call. You can then have someone wire up the proper spare wire pair to the phone jack(s) in question and plug in your phone (or you can do this yourself so long as you’re careful not to mix up the + and - wires).
If you have no spare wire pairs, you need to have an electrician come to your house and run wires from your phone box, through your walls, and to your phone jacks, a rather expensive process.
If there is only one pair running to your house(common with older houses in older neigborhoods), then they would have to run a second pair …Unless… They gave you a UDC. It is a bigger little grey box on that they replace the box on the outside of your house with(it essentially changes your one physical analogue line into two psuedo-digital virtual ones). I don’t believe the phone company charges you any more for it(I don’t think their allowed to by law) For the most part, it acts as if you have two lines, you get two phone numbers and everything. The problems are, There is occiasional bleed-through between the lines, Dsl is now impossible, unless the box is removed and you went back to one line, it is a more complicated system and will break down more often, require techs to come out and fix it, or waiting for the central office to reset it. Also modem speed will be slower for a computer using one of the lines. They have to come out and set it up, unless you happen to have a good friend whose a lineman.
If you have underground wiring, you house probally is ‘new’ enough to have multiple pairs running to it. If you have above ground wiring there is no reason to dig, they will just have to run another areial. Even so they might not have the copper pair to spare, in which case they might multiplex your line one like described below or a slightly diffrent method. either way any dialup service will most likely go to crap and the bell’s are only responsible for 9600 baud (most will get you to 14.4). if this is an issue - ask before you order, if they don’t know ask them to get you someone who knows.
If this is for internet service - look into DSL, cable, satelite, or in some places point to point microwave? well some kind of point to point service. If this is for a fax, check out efax or jfax - which will allow you to receive faxes via email - and for less then the price of a second line you get a local phone number (most likely).
Another thing is on it’s way, voice-over DSL, which will allow up to 4 lines and high speed internet over a single pair. they are working out the spect.s now. The Bell’s will most likely price it below the price of additional lines because they will save the copper