On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:03:10 -0800, Mark Henigan wrote:

I haven't seen more than two wires per line
in years in residential installations; and,
that is all they gave me.

I don't mean to be picky or trying to disparage your analysis, but are
you looking at the number of 'cables' that were installed, or the
number of 'wires' inside the 'cable' that you see?

I don't know about Calif., but here in Ohio, I have not seen less than
two 'cables,' each containing 'two-pair' of 'wires' in years.  My
previous house, built circa 1966, had two 'cables' and my current
residence, built in 1979 has the same.  Newer construction [my son's
house] built circa 1996 has three such two-pair cables.

One 'on the cheap' construction that I've seen is where the builder put
jacks that were only for a single line, even though there were multiple
'pairs' of wires in the box.  In that case, we just changed the jacks
and the cover, connected the wires and we were off and running.