Yes, and for us there was only one – in the kitchen. We would have to take off running if we were upstairs when it rang, since it would take us four rings to get downstairs. We had to hope it wasn’t someone who was used to more than one phone, because they would hang up after two rings. And no answering machine, *69 or Missed Call list.
I think this is why my father still startles and rushes to the phone, which is right in the same room now. 
Thanks for the feedback so far–my preferences are sometimes unusual so it’s good to hear from some normal people.
The actual sitch: I’m down to studs in three bedrooms right now. My plan has always been to run CAT5 to each room, possibly 2 lines to one of them in particular because it feels more like an office and as my wife and I could conceivably be working from home in a few years it’d be good to have an office for two. But as I was taking in the scene last night I noticed the old phone lines dangling among the studs and I wondered.
I think what I’m a gonna do is run some 1 inch PVC pipes from the attic to the LAN jacks as conduit. CAT5 outdated? No problem, just swap & drop. Want to drop in some phone lines? No problem. And having dinked with phone lines in the past (resulting in no functioning phone jacks) I might just leave the existing infrastructure in place, just routed through the conduit. That way it’s there if someone wants it.
And since we’re playing, any reason to run coax alongside the CAT5? I wouldn’t think so, seems like you really only need coax to get the Comcast signal to the modem & cable box. TV somewhere else in the house can talk to the LAN or wireless, ya?
Frankly, I think Cat5 is already outdated; you might want to run Cat6.
I don’t have one single inch of coax in this house, so I’d see no purpose in running any these days.
Some rooms here have three runs of Cat5. The TV boxes are on a physically separate LAN as AT&T’s implementation of IPTV will swamp the average home grade switches or routers. The normal data LAN supports computers, printers, and DVD/BD players, and the third set of cables is for the phone system.
If I didn’t have the PBX, that third run of Cat5 would still be useful for standard phone lines, and Cat5 isn’t wildly more expensive than decent grade “phone wire.”
FWIW, although I have working phone wires in my house, I actually only use one jack. I have a set of five cordless phones that all talk to the same base station. They have individual charging stations, and I have them placed in various rooms in the house.
Is there a considerable downside to running the phone lines, since the walls are open right now? You don’t even need to expose them if you don’t want to - just run to appropriate places and you have an easy way of “adding” them in the future if needed.
[QUOTE=Digital is the new Analog]
Is there a considerable downside to running the phone lines, since the walls are open right now? You don’t even need to expose them if you don’t want to - just run to appropriate places and you have an easy way of “adding” them in the future if needed.
[/QUOTE]
The only downside would be in the sunk cost of the wire, but if you end up using only one run in the future, you’ll come out ahead for not having to foot the labor expense of not needing to fish wire through finished walls, ceilings and floors.
If you don’t mind blank wall plates, it would be better to run the spare cables to wiring boxes so when the day comes you want to use a wire, just take the blank plate off, grab the wire, and put a jack on it. Otherwise, you can leave the wire in-wall and hope you don’t cut into it some day when you do need to use it.
Better yet, run conduit. Then when houses go fiber optic, or room temperature superconductors, it will be easy to replace the wiring.