How does Charter phone connect to the phone lines?

[Metspitzer]

We are getting Charter phone added Wednesday. The faq says: Number Of Phone Lines

Charter will install up to two separate phone lines and a distinctive ring for residential customers. If you need more than two separate phone lines please contact Charter Business at 1-888-692-8635.

I really don't need two different phone numbers, but since the second line is free, I was considering how I may use it.

I currently have 2 cordless phones with 3 handsets each. One of the base phones is right where the router (and UPS) is located at the house. I am considering putting a single jack for that phone on the main phone number and then letting the rest of the jacks in the house be supplied by the second phone number.

I don't know how the phone equipment connects to the phone system. What would be nice is if the phone guy would just install a jack that has two ports. One for each phone number.

I could then plug the base into one jack and that gives the 3 most important phones the main phone number.

For the second line, I have a base block next to the equipment. I could just take a 6' phone cord and jump between the second line and the new phone jack line 2. This would make the entire house then be on the second phone line back feed through the room jack.

Would this work?

If it turned out that I would really want the other base (and the rest of the house) on the same number, I could just change the jumper and put all the phones on the main number.

[George]

They will connect a box called an MTA. It has jacks on it and you can do what you described.

As far as a second home number I wouldn't even have a use for a first home number. We dumped the land line and since most of our family and friends use the same cell carrier there are never any minutes used or extra charges. I think it makes sense to use the money you would put into a home phone into a better plan cell phone plan that you can use anywhere.

[David]

That is the common practice - back feed from the MTA to the other phones.

Just be sure that you disconnect the other phone company feed at the NID.

[Metspitzer]

>

Well...........I was on satellite when I returned to Charter for broadband.

I called to add TV and the package WITH phone was cheaper than the price they quoted me WITHOUT.

What are you gonna do? :)

[George]

>>

Not bother because it is a promo price. Our local cable company is comcast. They started offering phones maybe two years ago and had similar bundle prices. Then lots of people were surprised how much it cost after the promo expired. As I said we picked an idea that makes more sense for us. If it were a really significant savings I might take the MTA and put it unopened in the closet and put a tickler on my calendar to return it before the promo expired.

[Frank]

>>>

I got the Comcast triple play a few months ago when I upgraded TV's to HD. Saved about $70 just to take a phone.

Every year or 6 months it is a battle with Comcast to get their initial offer but that is what you have to do with either them or Verizon fios.

[Metspitzer]

>>>>

After my promo was over last time I had Charter, Charter gave me a good deal to stay. Many months later they imposed a bandwidth cap and I switched to DSL to protest. It didn't work. I realized now that it was an attempt to get me to subscribe to a heaver package.

I should have done it. Charter is much better than DSL. I don't think they are too strict on the cap, but initially I was using a lion share and getting it for cheap. I pay for the 30/4 meg package now.

Comcast is about the only ISP left that does not impose a cap.

[gfretwell]

The short answer is you are not connected to the phone lines at all. You are going down the TV cable infrastructure and connecting to the telco system at the head end.

Personally I would not want to do that. My landline phone is really the only thing that works after a storm. The power may be out, cable was always the first thing to go and the last thing to come back but POTS phones still work.

That is one reason why I still pay for a dial up line.

[Tomsic]

>>

Nice to have that second line if you have a home business though. Thanks for the info.

Tomsic

[gfretwell]

If it is like Comcast here, the cap is imposed by the amount of down time they have. I went with DSL and I am still happy. My neighbor hooks into my WiFi at least once a week because his Comcast is down.

When I had Comcast I had logging turned on for my weather station and I was getting a big stack of errors every day from timeouts because the connection was down.

[Art Todesco]

The 2nd line could be connected to you computer as a fax line, maybe. Some broadband telephone lines don't work as a fax line ... some do. Here I don't have the option of cable, so it's got to be DSL or satellite for data. But the telephone company does give you a 'free' POTS line if you bundle 3 services. I guess too many people are giving up their wired lines and they have lots of equipment and copper in the cables. But it is real nice for faxing. Sure, I'd like to send documents, etc. over email, however, medical people will usually only accept faxes for 'security reasons'. So, I have the main number connected to a 1 line cordless phone (5.8GHz) with 4 handsets scattered around. The fax line is connected to my computer which auto answers as a fax and it is also connected to a 2nd cordless (DECT 6) phone which allows 2 lines. I got it free so it was a no brainer to set it up with both lines. Besides sending/receiving a fax, the 2nd line could be used for an outgoing call when the 1st line is busy (on the 2nd cordless handset, or its wired base handset).

[Metspitzer]

>

I have a fax. The second number would be useful if the fax would work with it. I suspect that, although it would work sometimes, it would not work reliably. (I am going to try)

Since I do not have long distance on my phone, I have tried to use Google Voice to send a fax long distance. Sometimes it would work and sometimes not. But what made it worthless was that the times it did not work, the fax still reported successful. I had to send a copy of a driver's license once. The girl said it sent half of the page.

I was able to talk her into letting me scan it and email it. She gave me her email address and it was AOL. It amazes me the amount of people that still require a fax. Email is, more often than not, not an option.

On the subject of fax, smart phones should have that capability. Being able to send or receive a fax from a smart phone would add 0 cost of the phone.

[Evan]

The connection to the phone lines in your home is the same as the way the phone company connects, through the demarc box they just disconnect the phone company feed and cross connect their phone box into yours...

Something people should know about using Vonage and cable provider phone lines is that they are NOT protected in the event of a power failure the devices that connect you from the cable network or your internet connection needs power in order to provide you with phone service... The plain old telephone service provided by the phone company works during power failures if you aren't using cordless phones... Those who rely on cell phones to communicate during an emergency are foolish, the cell phone network can be placed in restricted mode by various local, state and federal officials during which phones which are not programmed into an authorized users list will not be able to make any calls other than to 911...

[Evan]

e-mail is too easily spoofed... not that fax numbers are all that secure either but obtaining pen register info on outgoing calls from a phone number and customer phone billing records is a lot easier than tracing down layer upon layer of proxies on the internet with connections supplied by more than one internet service provider in multiple countries when fraud occurs...

[George]

1-888-692-8635.http://www.myaccount.charter.com/customers/support.aspx?supportarticl...>>

So what makes you think the POTS providers of today are virtually bulletproof like they were years ago? Droves of people are abandoning service and ask a twenty something today what a home phone is. The result is those carriers have less money to work with and they have really cut back on maintenance and staff.

I never heard of your idea about only government phones working and other phones being disabled. The actual system is called WPS and what it does is allow enabled cell numbers to get access first.