Telephone Advice Please

[Doctormick]

Is there anyone here who has the technical expertise or knows someone who can help make the best of our home / business phone setup?

I'm keen to get another line put in purely for private use and to keep the existing line for business and at the same time to do something about the appalling reception we have with our digital cordless phone in the office which is about 30 metres and five brick walls away from the house and the nearest phone point. I have broadband setup on a netgear wireless system. Since we live in the sticks our only option (I believe) as a line provider is BT with whom we currently have one line and Broadband. We do also have Sky so I don't know if there's an option there.

The plan is to be able to answer both the private and business lines in the house and in the office and give us the option of switching off the business line in the evening or at weekends if we want and just letting the answer machine silently take care of incoming business calls.

There is also of course an option of transferring incoming out of hours business calls to a call answering service but that's another issue which can't be resolved until we have two lines anyway.

Can anyone tell me the best way of achieving this bearing in mind I want to end up with 2 clear voice lines in both the house and office and a broadband connection? I'm obviously mindful of both installation and running cost!

I look forward to hearing from you

Doctormick

[dom]

[Peter Crosland]

uk.telecom

would be a btter place to ask.

Peter Crosland

[Dave Liquorice]

You could make use of the LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) that is now available but that is nothing more than an accounting thing. The physical wires are still maintained by BT you just pay someone else.

Personally I'd get BT to put in another line, they'll terminate it where ever you want (within reason). Is your existing line "residential" or "business", in the interests of speedy repairs and better service I'd have at least one "business" line, preferably with your business number allocated to it.

When it comes to answering calls do you want to answer either line on any phone or would seperate instruments be acceptable? The former would require a small 2 line PABX, they are available and fairly cheap these days.

Both lines would need to terminate at the same place and as you have ADSL I'd make that as soon as possible after the lines appear and place the ADSL modem there as well with ethernet feeding a small switch else where if required. Use a NTE face plate and you won't need microfilters for every bit of POTS kit you have, multiple/poor microfilters can have bad effects on ADSL it is best to filter as soon as possible and run extension wiring post the filter.

[Peter Crosland]

Unfortunately this is unlikely to be available on a rural exchange such as the OP is on.

In rural areas there may not be enough pairs free to do so. BT's service obligation only requires them to istall one line per property.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you don't mind running cables a cheap hybrid PABX is just what you want.

I like the Panasonix KX-TA stuff. Its all programmable by PC these days to give you any pattern of ringing and dialling out you want, and will utilise cheap analogue phones everywhere..you used to need a digital phone to program it, but not any more.

Last install I did we simply took the output of the broadband filter to a router and to the PABX. All worked fine.

Not sure on current costs - but less than £500 certainly for a 3 into 8 type setup.

You can simply arrange for the 'business' line to run into an answering machine if you are out of the 'office'

[Dave Liquorice]

Well you can't get much more "rural" than us in England, LLU is (or will be very soon) available but not from the common big players though.

Possibly, depends how much growth there has been in the last 50 odd years. The easiest way to find out is to order.

[Peter Crosland]

Care to give some specifics? AFAIK most rural exchanges are unlikely to evr b unbundled simply because of the economics.

[Dave Liquorice]

Yeuch nasty "text" language sneaking in. B-)

Engaging brain it might not be full LLU. I know that CLEO have put their own (24Mbps capable) DLSAM into the local exchange and will be (or are) selling their ADSL services. Of course that doesn't mean they'll be selling the pair as well.