We discuss the role of telephone data collection as part of a multimode survey effort. In such a survey, telephone may be a starting mode, an anchor (or main) mode, or a follow-up mode to other modes. In this overview, we review the complimentary attributes of telephone collection vis-à-vis other modes and discuss administrative issues involved in fielding a multimode telephone survey, including instrumentation, survey operations and management, data quality and comparability, survey costs, and survey design. The authors draw on experience from three MPR multimode surveys, with the following mode combinations: paper/web/CATI, web/CATI, and CATI/CAPI.