HardwareBanter - View Single Post - Hum from phone wires running next to mains?

**kony**

On 5 Mar 2008 14:42:21 GMT, wrote:

| One contribution I would make is that you are aware that your phone service
| will support 4 REN and that each phone is normally 1 REN, meaning that you
| can have a maximum of 4 phones. My parents had more of this and whilst from
| their perspective it seemed to work (they could call out), it stopped people
| from calling in because their phones stopped ringing.

I used to see phones rated in terms of their "ringer equivalence" here in
the USA. These numbers were, for some phones, as low as 0.2. I do not
recall ever seeing one about 0.9. That would suggest to me that you could
readily have more than 4 phones on such a phone circuit. I never had any
reason to actually do a scientific test of this.

It depends on how old the phones, or these days with modern
electrically powered phones, cordless/etc, the REN, number
may be very low per phone. IMO, no good reason not to get a
cordless phone these days as some are dirt cheap, except
it's nice to have at least one non-electric in case the
power goes out.