HOME OFFICE : Limited Capability of Built-In Phone Lines Can Cause Hang-Ups

Creating an office in your home often begins by adding a business telephone line. But with the average Orange County home pre-wired with just two phone lines, a growing home business and growing family can be stifled by limited built-in phone service.

Adding fax, modem, answering machine and business phone extensions can easily overtax a limited phone system. As a result, Orange County telephone service and supply companies have been increasingly busy expanding phone systems.

“One out of five calls we get now is for a home-based business,” said Barbara Perez, owner of A’s Prewire Plus, an independent telephone equipment and service supplier in San Juan Capistrano.

Kathy Becknell, a Pacific Bell business customer service representative, said, “Lots of people are getting business service in a residence during the recession, to cut overhead. We have seen a big increase within the past year especially.”

Steve Janovick, an installation and repair service technician for Pacific Bell, said that in homes where it is possible to have three lines, there is often one line each for the house, the kids and the business.

“When a third line is added, it is almost always for a fax or a modem, according to the work orders,” Janovick said.

About 2 1/2 years ago, Pacific Bell began developing products for the home office. Recently it began offering a Home Office Information Line, at (800) 281-8811, to advise home-based businesses about telephone equipment and services.

“It’s a growing part of our business,” said Linda Bonniksen of Bell’s Media Relations Department.

General Telephone and Electronics (GTE), which has approximately 200,000 customers in Orange County, recently defined what it calls the Work At Home market, which is anyone who works at home three or more hours per day.

“Forty percent, or 31 million U.S. households, fit that category,” said Tom Massey, GTE’s West Area director for retail operations.

To begin serving that market, GTE is devoting areas in its GTE Phone Marts to home-business needs and developing services for the home office.

Adding phone lines may be the answer if it is practical and affordable, or it may be better to switch several devices among existing lines. What you can do will depend on the difficulty of bringing service to your home from the telephone company’s local terminal, how your home is wired and exactly what you want in the way of phone service and convenience.

“You can have practically anything you want,” Pacific Bell’s Janovick said, “if you can afford it. We installed 25 lines in a residence for someone’s business.”

Much of Orange County was wired with cable for two telephone lines per residence cable, but skyrocketing growth quickly made that inadequate. Around 1983, according to Janovick, Pacific Bell started to place cable to provide five telephone lines per residence.

You can replace your two-line cable with five-line cable if you can get the cable from the phone company’s pole or pedestal terminal to your residence.

Most cable in the county is underground (even if you see poles nearby). If there is not a conduit to your residence, you are responsible for digging a cable trench between the terminal and your home. You can dig the trench yourself or hire someone to do it, but it must conform to telephone company requirements.

The next question is whether existing wiring in your home can handle extra lines. Some homes were pre-wired for three-, five- and more line telephone service by developers. If your home was pre-wired for two lines, you can add wiring by running it externally (such as along the baseboards) or paying a premium to have it hidden within walls and under carpeting.

Pacific Bell will run such wire for you or you can have it done by an independent, such as A’s Prewire Plus.

Pacific Bell’s labor charges for such service are $55 for the first 15 minutes and $16 for each 15 minutes thereafter. A’s Prewire Plus provides same- or next-day service at what Perez said were rates at or below Pacific Bell’s.

If trenching or rewiring your home is prohibitively expensive, consider using automatic, electronic data switches to enable several devices to share a single telephone line. With a data switch, Perez said, you can have a fax, modem, answering machine and telephone all on one line.

“The brand and type of equipment connected to the switch don’t matter,” Perez said, “as long as it meets recent telecommunications specifications.”

The switches cost from $300 to more than $400, plus installation, according to Perez.

Which route to go for additional telephone service depends on your needs.

With additional lines you have monthly line charges and the cost of getting the lines into the home, but the lines can be dedicated to their purpose. If you elect data switches, you have the initial cost of the switches and the consequence of other devices being inoperative when any one device is using the line.

Ultimately, you can only learn exactly what additional phone lines will cost when someone from a phone company looks at your situation. Fortunately, whether it is Pacific Bell, GTE or an independent, on-site inspection is free.

Pacific Bell does what it calls pre-filling an order, in which an installation crew visits the work site, talks to the customer and compares the work order to the location.

At A’s Prewire Plus, Perez said she tries to complete the work order over the phone but will “have someone go take a look” if necessary, for no charge. If the job cannot be done for the estimate, it can be canceled without cost.

If you are involved in new construction or remodeling, you may want to arrange for telephone pre-wiring.

Robert Curry of R&B; Telephone Prewire Services Inc. in Huntington Beach recommends you check with the sales office or contractor before the framing phase of construction to arrange telephone wiring.

“The modern standard for pre-wiring new construction,” Curry said, “depends on the builder. Basic wiring is for three lines and covers all the bedrooms and the kitchen. “Most of the requests I get for more than three lines are by people putting offices in their homes--for modems and faxes.”