Unused phone lines to intercom?

[xJoey Dubsx]

So question for all of you smart minds. If you have a house with tons of phone outlets, yet no phone service, can you convert the lines to an intercom? Looking at houses currently and seeing outlets on freshly painted walls. Figured there might be a way to make it so when you pork up one phone you could have the others ring with some kind of cheap and/or out dated office system. I know my mom's cordless phone system will ring all the remote phones either as a mass ring or to just one phone specifically but they are on desk bases, not wall mount. More if there is only one wall mount I could probably use that. Figured this would be nicer then yelling through the house.

 

[madosta]

If there are home runs back to one location maybe... but if they are all wired together you'd need something at each location to provide the ringer voltage out.

 

[CNGsaves]

Depends on how the wiring was done. If all those phone wiring runs are home runs back to centralized distribution point, then I think you could switch over to intercom setup. However, most old houses have phone lines as one big daisy chain of wiring - - which work best for telephone only.

Also, if you've got reasonably fast internet service, just buy Magic Jack Plus and you'll have cheap landline phone service to all those jacks. Renewal after the 1st year is only $20 or $30 per YEAR !! To get $20/yr you have to kick in 5 yrs at once so $100 buys you 5 yrs of landline service.

I would vote going with Magic Jack Plus, and then add multiple phone cordless phones like Uniden or Panasonic. These are only $40 or $50 at WallyWorld and work great with Magic Jack phone service. Depending on the cordless phones you get, they may have "intercom" features between phones, which would be much more convenient anyway.

 

[James-W]

You do realize you can get a wireless intercom system, put the intercom stations where you want them, and not worry about if the wires are running to those locations or not. We have a wireless intercom that we used for many years, but now we just use the cordless telephone and the telephone base. They work as an intercom as well and we can take the cordless phone anywhere we want because it is battery powered.

 

[2CWG]

The phone-style option seems doable, there are devices with built-in intercoms from Panasonic, AT&T and so forth. The classic "wall panel with pushbutton"-style intercoms may be a bit more tricky/expensive. Wikipedia has a fairly good article with some links.

When our family moved into our current home we were faced with a situation similar to yours: lots of phone jacks but no need for landline phones. We considered intercoms, but went a different route.

The phone lines in this home were installed using Cat5E and routed to a central panel... so I quickly re-jacked those in key locations (including the garage, of course), added a switch to the panel and patched in my router and wireless access points. Instant whole-house wired gigabit network with hardwired WAPs for ~$50.

Wireless has made great strides recently, but multi-point streaming performance on congested networks is still far better over wired infrastructure in my experience. By taking advantage of existing wiring, we were able to free up wireless bandwidth for the devices which really need it (phones/tablets) and provide solid, high-throughput connections to our media/gaming devices.

Just another option to consider!

 

[marty_p]

Great info, CNG and 2CWG!

What internet speed do you have for your Magic Jack, CNG?

And good luck to you, OP!

 

[CNGsaves]

I've got lowest tier of internet from cable company which is 3 Mbps. I'm able to surf internet, stream internet TV like ESPN/YouTubes, etc, plus talk on the Magic Jack Plus phone with everything working.

Occasionally the Magic Jack stutters when the streaming TV bogs everything down a bit. However, when just surfing internet and talking on Magic Jack, it works perfectly. I just LOVE my Magic Jack . . . best money saver I've discovered.

 

[Falcon67]

Our wireless intercom consists of smart phones with text messages. I could never find a reason to buy an intercom. That was something my dad installed in his shop - in 1965.

 

[jeffmoss26]

If all the wiring is homerun you could get an older phone system, not connect it to any outside lines, and use it only for intercom and paging. Doesn't really seem worth it, even to me as a phone guy (and I have a TON of phones)

 

[xJoey Dubsx]

Was just an idea lol. Hate the spots in the walls for phones, will have to put blank covers over them.