Ah...what a timely thread! We're currently utilizing a former bedroom as the computer room and have wireless handsets. I bought a fax machine the other day and couldn't use it because we don't have a hard line in this room. Had to take it back. LOL

The hard wiring is a small expense and worth it IMHO. You never know if you might need it down the road and it's much easier to add now rather than later.

we put an outlet box and conduit to the attic or crawl space in every room with a blank cover just in case.

only one hard phone line in the house well two cause it was in the price m bed room and kit for 911 we have not had a land line in a few years now
send faxes via email and receive them that way too

If you're depending on cordless phones, be sure they are digital. Calls on analog cordless phones are easilly intercepted by radio scanners.

I would put the option there to use. If its not its a hassle to put them in later. Time will fly, your kids will want a phone line and it will seem like yesterday that you built the house. You will be searching for the cordless in blankets and under beds instead of on the charger. This way if theirs goes dead, you still have the others.

We put phone jacks in 4 or 5 rooms, I think. These days, you can get a cordless phone with one main station and 8 handsets that just need a plug, so I don't think you really need one in every room. We were given a finite number of jacks for phone and cable (don't remember exactly how many). I decided cable was a lot more important. ;-)

Since we're in a rural location and on satellite TV we put phone lines in every location we might want to put a TV (the satellite receivers need a line). And we put phone jacks anywhere we'd want a computer for the DSL connection. In addition, we set a few locations for wired phones and message centers. When our power goes out, we need a wired phone to call the electric co-op to report it and sometimes the cell phone towers go out at the same time.

I'm doing 3 or 4 jacks, max. I prefer a cordless phone, and use my wireless laptop more than my hardwired computer anyway.

Come to think of it, it looks like I'll have more TV outlets than phone jacks!

It's a very good idea to have a 'regular' phone permanently installed in a central spot if you have power outages, though. Not just so you can answer calls, but so you can yell at the power company...

We only put phone jacks in the kitchen and the bonus room because we are relying on cordless phones and wireless broadband so we didn't think extra lines would be needed.

Now I wish we would have added more because I can see that we *might* want to have seperate telephone numbers in other parts of the house for our kids/guest rooms/future live-in MIL.

I ran 2 Cat 5e cables to every location where I know for sure there will be one of the following: Satellite TV receiver, digital phone base station, computer, printer/server. In my house this turned out to be 9 drops for a total of 18 cables. I terminated the 18 cables in a Leviton Voice/Data cabinet that I purchased at Home Depot.

To all other rooms where I someday might want voice/data/TV, I ran 1 inch conduit tubing, which you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes in 100 or 200' rolls, from the basement to each room. This allows me to run whatever cables I want in the future, when I need them.

For the phones, I plan to have one base station in our utility room and then 4 or 5 wireless handets around the house that will communicate to the base station. Given the new digital phone sets which can have many handsets (I have seen one with up to 9) tied to one base station, I don't think you need a phone jack in every room. If you go this route, make sure you have electrical outlets placed nearby each spot where you might want a handet so that you can plug in the cradle that holds and charges them up. If you have 5 handsets - you will need 6 outlets (one for the base station and 5 for each cradle/handset). You would also need the phone line run to the location of the base station.

We didn't want every bedroom to have cable/phone lines, but the electrician not only hardwired every room for both, he also hardwired the upstairs bedrooms (3) and the bonus room on each side of the rooms. His reason: in case we ever want to change the furniture arrangement. My response: cool, but I'm not paying extra! :) I guess we're covered even though we also had planned on simply using the cordless expansion sets.

We have phone and cable going in every room. We have no intention on getting a hard line phone. We use our cells for everything..BUT....it is there for future use. A friend of mine was about to buy a house and there was only a phone line in the living room. They are trying to decide if that want the trouble of putting in phone lines or not. Something else to think about it.

Remember phone lines are used for DSL too so it gives wiring every room will give you flexibility for things that are hooked up to the internet if you ever decide to go with DSL instead of cable. We wired every room for telephone and cable and actually put additional outlets for both in our office because we weren't sure how the furniture would be arranged.

Thanks so much for your responses, everyone!

We, too, will definitely have more Cat5 cable outlets for TVs than we do have phone lines! Even though we don't plan to have TVs in the kids' bedrooms yet...we'll definitely put the cables in for the future.

Another decision we had to make was whether or not to spend the $2000 extra dollars for upgraded wiring if we ever wanted to switch back to Satellite TV.

We currently use cable in our rental (after having satellite for 7 years in our previous house) and we really don't ever see us switching back to satellite. We use cable for TV of course, for internet, AND for our phone line...it's so much cheaper when bundled all together and the internet is SO MUCH FASTER than DSL so we've been very happy with it.

I also forgot to add - that even with using either DSL or cable for internet, we only need one computer that is "connected" via hard wire and we then have a wireless router for our other computers (laptops).

Hard-wired is always better and certainly more reliable. At least give yourself the option to plug a corded phone set into the wall while it's still easy and cheap.

I'm a nerd and telecommunications professional by trade and a concerned parent by nature.

Internet and television belong in public spaces only.
We have zero cables run into the kids bedrooms.
There is a single location in the upstairs loft for tv and data.
There is a single location in the master for telephone, data and tv, but only the tv is used.
The living room is the same as the master.
The only telephone cable used in the building is in the kitchen, where the cordless is.

My theory is, and I reserve the right to be completely wrong here, is that it's super easy to go overboard in wiring a residence and when it's all said and done you're going to need to move something somewhere some day that doesn't have the jack that you need anyway. (Does that make me a pessimist?)

As for only needing one router, depending upon the size of your house a router may not work well. And I agree that TVs and internet don't belong in kids bedrooms, but someday your kids will be gone and you may want to use their rooms for other purposes. We wired our kids rooms for both, but don't allow TVs, telephones or computers in their rooms. But one of their rooms will become a second home office after they are gone. We even wired our dining room just because a future buyer may want to make that room into an office. We also have cable tv, but wired for satellite--it did not cost anywhere $2,000 to do that for us.

Bungeeii;

Internet, phone and cable can be roughed in, even the plates and outlets installed, but it does not have to be hooked up if the concern is kids will use it.

Kids move out, bedrooms become guest rooms or offices, etc. It's better to wire for something you know you might use rather than ignore it because you could very well find yourself having to wire for somewhere else. I don't think it makes you a pessimist, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

We wired the master, kitchen, office and great room, I think. Sure comes in handy when the power goes out and there are no cell phones!!

Carolyn -

The 2K upgrade for the satellite option was to also wire it back into the home automation stuff. We're using Control 4.

wired everything, but used cat-6 for phone cables. chances are they'll be used for internet before the kids get to phone age.

It's cheap now; expensive later, that's why i'd do it.

I will agree that a computer should never be allowed in a kids room but we do have a TV for my daughter in her room. We thought long and hard about it before we decided to let her have a TV. She is only allowed a certain number of hours to watch TV or movies and to be honest she would rather be playing with her Barbies or outside then watching TV. I like being able to snuggle up in her bed with her and watch a movie together. My sisters kids are allowed to watch TV with the door shut and they do not have channels blocked on their TV's. That I do not agree with. Just my HO though.

I do think it is wiser to wire all the rooms, you just never know!

Good luck with :-)

When we bought our house the one thing we had to have was the wiring package for internet / cable TV and phone lines. One never knows what the future brings and while we won't be having computers in the bedrooms in the new house, we do have a laptop that very well could be brought up to the rooms if needed due to someone not being well.

Same thing with phones. While a lot of phones these days work off of electrical outlets, I would prefer a handset wired directly to the phone outlet. You also never know about fax machines, there have been times when we had to hook ours to the main phone number due to faxing long distance.

It's a pain having to fish lines through the walls. It's also a pain to have to cut sheet rock for a new outlet. Much easier to pay the builder to have it done when the walls are open. I wish we could send our sons to the new house to wire, one works for DirecTV while the other works for Comcast; yet we're not allowed to do that :(

Our electrician wired for satellite tv and telephones in all of the bedrooms, as well as several other rooms (my favorite being in the laundry room.... LOL). It was included in our original bid (although we hadn't requested it). They gave us a specified number included in our bid, and there was no getting money back if we didn't do it. We may sell our house, so for resale we decided to include them in the kids rooms.

I'm of the school that tv's/computers don't need to be in a kids room, so they won't actually be hooked up while our kids are living at home. But they are there for resale, or for future when they are grown and come home for visits (and then they can watch anything they wish to watch). :o)

Our electrician used cat5, so we can have more than one phone line, which we will need.

My opinion..... I'd wire it everywhere. As others said, easy to do now.... difficult to add later. It's not an expensive addition, so well worth it in my HO. :o)