[chongli]

The other catch is actually subscribing to those phone lines (real POTS lines, not VOIP lines). Where I live, the only game in town is Bell Canada. The cost for a single home phone line is $58/month!

They do have enterprise accounts where I presume you'd be able to subscribe to 24 phone lines, but that would not be cheap! Whether they'd even allow you to bring 24 phone lines into a residential house is another question. They might not even have trunk capacity to offer you that many lines at your residence, so then you'd need to lease office space so they could bring in a T1 line.

[jogu]

I don’t think anyone is suggesting getting actual phone lines, but rather more lines in a local network setting.

[chongli]

Ahh I see. I guess I was mistaken about the title, which suggests building a real ISP for friends & family, rather than just a simulated ISP within a local network.