wiring house phones for VOIP?

[Barry Feldman]

Here's the deal. My Modem is in such a place that I can't really put it near the main phone box.

I was told that if I disconect the incoming hard wires on the existing phone lines and go out of the VOIP box with just a phone wire into an existing phone jack the house will be wired.

First of all is this correct? Secondly I don't know which are the incoming wires from the copper system is it the blue and white wires. There's an old 2 copper pole connector box that looks around 40 years old where the wire enters the house and disperses to the jacks.

Anyone with any knowledge of how to do this or if it can be done. The sound on VOIP is good and the price difference is ridiculous

BF Glen Head NY

[PrecisionMachinisT]

Pair 1 is usually gonna the blue pair.

Once youve disconnected your incoming CO line at the demark point, you can connect the voip modem anywhere to your existing phone wiring.

Curious.....what voip service provider are you using??--I been thinking of maybe going this route for all our long distance outgoing calls for some time now.....

[Barry Feldman]

The blue pair one meaning the blue and white I see coming in?

I'm using Optonline service. It works very well but it's not pure VOIP.

Pure VOIP would be straight into a broadband modem via an adapter and the analogue sound would be converted by the box provided by, say, Vonage, ot internet packets.

Optonline accepts the signal and sends it out to their own dedicated lines via analogue. At some point after that they convert to VOIP for the delivery of the call but it's got to go back to analogue for the "last mile" as the telco's call it.

Optonline makes their money taking over the first mile from Verizon. I haven't used pure VOIP ie:Vonage yet.

so again all I see connecting from the outside in are a blue and white wire - two wires?

BF Glen Head

[Chet Hayes]

I believe this is incorrect. Optonline supplies you with a broadband cable modem telephony device which sits in your house and goes between the cable and the analog phones. This is exactly what Vonage also supplies. As far as I know, the conversion from digital to analog in each direction is done in that device, which makes sense for a number of reasons. Have you seen any info which suggest otherwise?

I think Vonage is virtually identical in terms of technology. Cablevision may have better quality of service because of their internet network and ability to control routing within their own network, but the basic system is the same.

[G. Morgan]

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 20:47:06 GMT "Barry Feldman" used 18 lines of text to write in newsgroup: alt.home.repair

Directions if you have discontinued service from the traditional phone company ONLY. If you are keeping that old service AND using Optimum online for phone service -->disregard Go outside to the telephone NID (gray box). It looks like this:

the flap that reads "customer access" and unplug the modular cord inside it. There may be more than one if multiple lines were ever installed (unplug them all if you no longer have POTS (plain old telephone service)

if you have the old, smaller, telco grounding block, let me know, the instructions will change.

2> plug a standard RJ-11 phone cord from "line 1" of your cable modem to the nearest jack. If you need a phone jack at the cable modem, get one of these: and plug it into the modem (one jack for the telephone, the other for the nearest jack)

If you have a different NID than the one I posted a picture of, plan on keeping Ma Bell's service, or have a MONITORED burglar or fire alarm, this will NOT work. I'll help you further if you have complications.

Good luck,

-Graham

Remove the 'snails' from my email

[Barry Feldman]

I read this about Optonline in the NY Times or in Newsday. It's a hybrid and it's not pure VOIP. I just was doing a google search and couldn't find the information that I read - but I'm pretty sure T'm right. Cablevision doesn't supply the "black box" that vonage, Verizon, MCI et al do when you get their VOIP service.

Look, I hope there's no difference because I hate cablevision and always switch as soon as there's a better deal around :-)

[JerryMouse]

We use Unlimited Voice from Earthlink for our outbound business calls.

We pay $33/month for another POTS line (with the extras: Caller-ID, voice mail, etc.) and all the LD we can use. Sucker plugs right into our PBX. No excise tax, no fuel-surcharge tax, no 911 fee, no Al Gore tax, no sales tax, no capital equipment reclamation fee, nada.

Our LD bill went from $200/month (at 3.5 cents/min) to zero.

Couldn't be more pleased.

[Joe Fabeitz]

[Philip Lewis]

well... if you have a UPS on devices required to make them work. We have a similar situation with wireless phones. (see below)

Cell Phone?

That what we did when we had a fire in the house. My first reaction after i realized i didn't want to open the door was to go throw the main breaker. Then we realized the cordless phone wasn't working. The cell phone was a handy backup. (I need to get a battery backup for the cordless base unit)

We don't have VOIP, but we have a UPS on the wireless router and DSL modem. Which means our laptops still function on the network when the power goes out.

As to barry's original question, I *think* he was asking if he disconnected the (presumably unused) feed from the telephone company, and attached the output of a VOIP to standard telephone converter to that junction box, would it work.

If your VOIP "magic box" was designed to feed a regular phone (plain old telephone servive == POTS), it sounds like that method will work. You should research the limit of how many phones the internet/POTS unit is able to drive. It might only be rated for 1 unit in which case multiple phones might overload it.

[Dave]

The Vonage.com site has a help document that explains how to modify your wiring. If you can't find it there, try

and search the FAQs there...if I remember correctly, they have some nice diagrams, etc., on what to do.

Dave

[Art Todesco]