Telephone installation contractors

In years gone past, it was the responsibility of the phone company not only to bring phone service to your house but to do the phone wiring within your house as well. This is no longer the case. When you order phone service to your house, the local phone company installs a network interface device, a sturdy grey plastic box usually mounted either in your basement or on an outside wall.

You can do your inside wiring yourself, or you can pay the local phone company or a third party (such as an electrician) to do it for you. Doing residential phone wiring is easy, however, and the local phone company's charges for this service are steep. Even if you have to buy wire and modular jacks, you're going to come out way ahead if you do your own work.

Installing extra lines can be a problem if you rent an apartment in a multi-unit building. The wiring between the network interface device and the apartment is not the phone company's responsibility, so you'll have to work out with your landlord who's going to do the in-between wiring if you need additional lines. Your landlord may not want you to do the wiring for fear you don't know what you're doing; but the landlord may also object to picking up the tab if the phone company does the work. Whose responsibility it actually is probably depends on your lease.

I once had a deadbeat landlord who I didn't even bother approaching when I needed a second line installed. Instead, I just ran my own wire out thru a hole I drilled in the window frame and down a six-story fire escape in the alley to the basement, where I had the phone company representative install an ordinary residential network interface device for me next to the big panel. When I moved, I just unhooked my piece of wire and rolled it up for my next wiring project, and then I spackled over the hole I had drilled. The landlord was none the wiser.

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