2 voice lines in an cat5 env

It'll work.

From: snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net

And quite well to boot. Cat 5 is superior than standard phone wiring for phone applications.

POTS (plain old telephone service) neither benefits nor is harmed by using CAT5 over CAT3 or just plain old wire.

While Cat5 won't provide any benefit over Cat3 for POTS, I would beg to differ on the statement that there's no benefit over "plain old wire." As one who has been involved in the installation of phone systems for over 30 years, I can tell you that POTS can absolutly benefit from CAT3 or better wire particularly if you live near a radio station's antenna or suffer from other crosstalk/interference problems. The greatest demonstration of this was a job I did at the Maui News about 20 years ago. For years they were plagued with having to listen to a local radio station in the background on every phonecall. No amount of grounding or filtering would eliminate the problem. When we installed CAT3 for their new phone system the lines were dead quiet. No more "music on calls" to put up with. I thought the editor was going to kiss me but fortunately he opted for a hardy handshake. As a test, before we put the new phone system in service, we tested the lines with just POTS and 2500 sets to demonstrate the benefit of the CAT3 cable and it was clean as a whistle. In another case, in my friend's home they always had a radio station in the background on the phones at the far end of the house. I replaced the old "quad" wire with a length of CAT5 and the lines are now quiet. Bottom line folks - CAT 5 is dirt cheap now. Use it (or better) for all phone and data runs. I even run it for doorbells so it can support intercom and video.

From:wkearney99 snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

Yes, the POTS service only needs 2 of the wires in the cat5. Technically, you could run 4 lines over one cat5.