Why would I want more than one phone line?

If your home contains any of the following, you probably need more than one phone line:

Home Office, Teen-agers, Modems, Fax Machines

Life must have been much simpler in the past! For centuries, man actually survived without any telephones. And modern man made do for decades with only one phone in an entire house. But times have changed.

If your home is like mine, your phone line is always busy when you want to use it. Having more than one phone line is relatively inexpensive and solves many of the problems encountered in today's communications intensive world. Here are just a few examples of how an additional phone line could really meet your needs:

Avoid the competition for dialtone. Make calls while another family member is chatting with friends. Dedicate a line for your teen-agers, so that you don't have to answer their calls and can still make a call when they're on the phone.
Give your "in-home" business a more professional appearance. Dedicate a line for business use. Prospective customer are likely to be more comfortable doing business over a call answered with the name of your business. And at night you can forward business calls to voice mail and still recieve personal calls on the "other" line.
Improve your fax capability. Make calls while waiting for an important fax. Or, send a fax while waiting for an important call. Avoid the choice of either needing faxes resent because they were interupted by "Call Waiting" or missing voice calls. Have one line without "Call Waiting" for fax and modem use and one line with "Call Waiting" for voice calls.
Access the internet without tying up the only available phone line. Make voice calls while on-line. Make calls while another family member is on-line. Go on-line while another family member is making voice calls. Go on-line at the same time another family member is also on-line.

Obviously, the average home today needs more than one phone line!

How many? That will vary according to how your lines are used. A family of two adults and two teen-agers could easily use two or three lines. The same family might want four lines if there is also an "in-home" business or a lot of modem or fax use. If you decide you need three or more lines, it might be wise to start looking into a small key-system. Using such a system to manage line access may serve your needs best. Many of these systems allow use of standard single line phones and are therefore comparatively inexpensive as opposed to buying several standard multi-line phones.

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