Solve line-sharing dilemmas - using telephone lines efficiently - Technology Information

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1997 by Charles Pappas

`The only time a one-liner is funny," says self-employed research editor John Immediato, is when it's Henny Youngman's." Immediato is referring to the troubles he faces trying to run his business with a sin line. "Every day I call dozens of people and then they call, e-mail, and fax me back -- or try to, because I'm usually online doing my research." Millions of business owners have reached the same point and added a second line. And a third. And a fourth.

But sometimes phone companies can't give you the extra line without ripping up your lawn, tearing through walls in your office, or installing a new exchange down the road. Other times, you can't afford to add a line because it increases your monthly costs. No matter what the holdup is, there are a variety of tactics that squeeze the most from the fewest lines. Our six solutions work as well for a single-line as a multiline location. (Note that your local phone company may use different names for the services mentioned here.)

Solution #1: Make one line do the work of two. Lynx Automation's Fax Detector (407-696-5531, www.lynxtelecom.com; $99) steers incoming voice calls to your phone and incoming faxes to your fax machine. Just plug it into your phone jack, attach your telephone and fax machine, and it will point calls in the right direction. No extra phone lines or expensive rewiring are necessary. Fax Detector also works with caller ID to help prioritize which calls you should answer.

Solution #2: Set up a temporary extra line. With Ameritech's FlexLine (800-776-3487, www.ameritech.com), you can have an extra line when it suits you. Just use the additional number when you need it, and Ameritech will charge you approximately $12 per month and a five-cents-per-minute usage fee (16 cents per call in Indiana) -- about 50 percent less than a regular business line.

Solution #3: Train your line to ring selectively. With Sprint Local Services's Selective Call Ring (913-624-3000, www.sprint.com) you can program your phone to ring differently for up to six separate callers for just $5 per month. Or for approximately $7 per month, you can assign a different ring to any phone or fax in US West's territory (800-603-6000, www.uswest.com) with its Custom Ringing service. You only pay for a single line, and you can easily skip the calls that aren't for your business.

If you assign different rings to different machines, Lynx's $119 Rin Director 400 directs up to four incoming call signals to the fax machine, PC modem, or answering device that you've associated with each ring.

Solution #4: Send faxes while online. Many entrepreneurs hook their PC's modem up to their fax line. To fax something that you've just found on the Web without going offline, such services as Faxaway (206-301-7000, 800-906-4329, www.faxaway.com; $20 minimum initial deposit) are essential. Not only does Faxaway allow you to forward text or a graphic attachment to a fax number via your e-mail account, it also can seriously cut down on the cost of domestic and international faxes. Faxaway charges as little as 11 cents per minute for domestic calls or 24 cents per minute to the United Kingdom. Each time you send a fax via e-mail, Faxaway confirms delivery by sending an e-mail that also updates the balance remaining in your account.

Solution #5: Receive faxes while online. If Immediato subscribes to the $12.50 monthly JFax service (Jfax Personal Telecom, 888-GET-JFAX, www.jfax.com) and the $4.15 monthly call-forwarding feature from Nynex (www.nynex.com), he'll be able to receive incoming faxes while he's online. Immediato can program the Nynex service to forward his incoming faxes to a special JFax number when he's online. JFax, in turn, rushes the fax via the Internet to Immediato's e-mail address as a file attachment that he can pick up while still online. For an additional $4.15 per month, he could also forward his voice line to the JFax service and play back the voice messages on his sound card. JFax only has local numbers in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Atlanta, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Vancouver, and Montreal. This service quickly becomes too expensive if you have to forward calls to a JFax toll-free number.

Solution #6: Share Internet access. Immediato might need part-timers assisting him some day. Each extra researcher would need to surf the Net for information. Instead of calling his phone company to pop in another line for the modem on one of his other PCs, he and his assistants can share access to the Web over a network by installing Artisoft's i.Share 2.5 (520-670-7100, 800-846-9726, www.artisoft.com). With Microsoft's, Novell's, or Artisoft's own networking software, i.Share will have you sharing Net access as easily as you would files and printers. It's available in a $249 version that handles up to 32 users, and there's an economy size that handles three people for just $99 -- about what you'd pay for installing an extra line and one month's cost.