bye-bye land line telephone

Today I got connected to internet telephone service for my home - the old land line still has dial tone but only gets the "not connected" message when used. The hub that the internet company provides has only one RJ-11 phone port - but four < 3 unused > RJ-45 LAN ports. What is my easiest route to connect my 3 or 4 home telephones to the new system ? 1. go to the interface box on the outside wall of my house and disconnect the incoming Bell line ; then run a new phone line from here to the hub ? < the hub needs to be located centrally in the house - not near the Bell interface > 2. other ideas ? Thanks in advance. John T.

Reply to
hubops
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No , don't mess with the incoming lines, there should be a phone out put jack on your gateway router...that's what you use.

Reply to
philo

Yes, one way is to do what you said. Disconnect the house wiring from the phone company at the box and run a wire from the new hub to the house phone wiring. Or if there is a house phone jack near the hub, disconnect the phone company at the box, then run a wire from the house jack to the hub.

Another way would be to put the hub where you have a cordless phone base station and just use cordless in the house. That's what I did. You can get a new 4 phones plus answering machine for $50

Reply to
trader_4

But I need to get all the home phones - somehow - into the single port on the hub ... doing it "en masse" via the interface seemed most efficient - but I'm no expert, to say the least - so I'm looking for ideas .. John T.

Reply to
hubops

Your choice. (We keep our land line because it has mandated availability/reliability guarantees)

Presumably, all that same "number"?

You need to see what the VoIP gateway is capable of driving before you saddle it with 4 loads. At the very least, you will need to verify how many "REN's" (Ringer Equivalence Numbers) it can drive. Then, examine each of your "3 or 4 home telephones" to see what sort of REN's each represents. If your loads exceed the capabilities of the VoIP gateway, you'll have to take other steps to make them work.

The obvious other option is just to disconnect TPC from your interface box (so YOU aren't trying to push signal OUT onto the incoming line). Then, run a RJ11 cable from the VoIP gateway to the nearest "telephone jack" inside your home. It will be wired to all of the other, similar, jacks throughout your home.

If they made provisions for TWO lines to come into your home (often on an unused pair of a 2-6 pair cable), then you can also try to chase down the uncommitted end of that cable and use it as a vector onto the "used" pair).

Again, disconnecting the phone company from your home AT the network interface for the reason outlined above.

Reply to
Don Y

You don't need to go *to* the interface. Every phone jack in your home already goes there! All you need to do is sever the phone company's connection to your house. I.e., "unplug the RJ11" that's in the TNI box.

Then, just find a nearby jack to pick up the EXISTING wiring to those other phones.

(Note that if the closest jack is in use with a phone, you can buy one of those little "Y connectors" that lets you connect two PHONES (or a phone+answering machine) to a single jack. The Y adapter won't care whether "you" are a phone, answering machine OR a VoIP gateway!

"Wire is wire"

Reply to
Don Y

[snip]

Taking into account the REN situation that Don mentions, his second option is exactly what I did when we gave up our landline in favor of our cellular phones. We bought a Siemens Gigaset which connects via Bluetooth to our cell phones whenever we are in range (our model will accept up to three cell phones and port them to the hardwired home phone system. All we do is plug in a single RJ11 cable from the Gigaset to the nearest telephone jack and we were done. The Gigaset gives us incoming and outgoing call capabilities on all three lines through a Panasonic cordless phone with FOUR extensions and an POTS or two scattered throughout the house. We do not miss the landline at all.

Reply to
Unquestionably Confused

Thanks Don - appreciate the input. I never considered the "loads" of my old telephones .. maybe someone here has actual experience ? I did keep my phone number. I will lose phone service for power outages and for internet system outages, and also the 911 will be less effective. But the Bell bill has been climbing steadily for 20 years - ~ $ 75. per month compared to $ 20. for the internet phone. I also switched sat TV from Bell Expressvu - to Shaw - free receiver; install; no contract ; slightly better programming - for slightly less money .. ~ $ 65. per month. The "stay with us " phone calls from Bell were quite lame - they are not interested in keeping the minimal users - they are looking for the bigger fish. I suggested that they sell a " 911 only " plan - for people who cringe at losing this great feature - it would generate a little income from otherwise lost customers and provide a continued contact to customers for future business .. and be a feel good thing - something lacking - I'd pay a few bucks for it. John T.

Reply to
hubops

Thanks for the ideas - much appreciated. I'm leaning toward the cordless phone option .. We have a 2-phone cordless now - buy another & a Y-adapter or replace with a 4 phone set ... I just hate the idea of scrapping these gadgets every 5 years ! ... my 3 home phones are all 20 years old & working fine. John T.

Reply to
hubops

[snip]

A good uninterruptible power supply will keep you in business through MOST power outages. We don't use one with the Gigaset but only because if we go to fire up the standby generator in a prolonged outage, the wall warts for the Gigaset and the Panasonic cordless phone is on one of the "emergency" circuits.

Reply to
Unquestionably Confused

John, if you follow through in the manner that Don, I and others suggest you can pretend that you're still bent over and taking it from Ma Bell/AT&T and buy what you want to use in the house, when you want to buy it. That said, the quality of the newer 5ghz cordless phones is really quite good. As I said, we miss landlines not at all.

>
Reply to
Unquestionably Confused

"Old" phones (i.e., from Western Electric -- the sorts with real BELLS in them) tend to be 1 REN -- the telco actually had to deliver the power to move the clapper to strike the bell.

Newer phones tend to have much lower REN's -- they "sense" the "ring voltage" (90 volts) and tell the little computer (damn near everything has a computer of some type!) "Hey, there's an incoming call!".

The little computer than figures out how to "ring A bell" (cricket chirp, etc.) to alert the user. Often, using "power" available from a battery pack or wall wart power adapter (i.e., the phone company is not supplying the "ring power"!)

By contrast, our "cordless phone set" has a REN of 0.1 and has to deal with four phones plus the answering machine (all wrapped in that 0.1 REN).

The takeaway, here, is to consider the *types* of phones that you have. Anything recent will have a "REN number" printed on the device, somewhere.

Our land line is about $30 -- most of that being taxes and fees. We have no fancy features. No long distance service (we use calling cards or SWMBO's cell phone for that and sidestep those additional fees). Her cell phone runs a bit less than $10/month. And, our ISP is $20. No CATV. So, our "communications costs" are ~$60/month.

TPC is making a huge mistake, IMO. They've got all that copper and CO equipment. They should be "GIVING AWAY" services to keep eeking value out of it. E.g., instead of trying to ding people $60 for DSL, give it to them for $20 -- let them buy faster speeds if they are shy on capacity (capacity that is not SOLD is WASTED!)

Here, they have been trying to replace wired land lines with WIRELESS land lines. It gives them a way around the regulations that apply to *wired* delivery.

(Why buy a wireless land line that you can't CARRY WITH YOU???)

Reply to
Don Y

+1 (What everyone else said.) The only advice I want to add is not to overload the 'ring' generator. If you have too many phones, often the output stage on the hub does not have the capacity to drive them all simultaneously, especially if they are old phones with real solenoid-operated ringers.

Other advice is to REALLY MAKE SURE that the cordless units are the same, i.e. I took great pains to ensure that my 2nd set of cordless Panasonic phones corresponded to the same electronic 'standard', but the new ones don't fit into the old charging bases, not even as required to 'mate' the handset to the radio ID of the base, let alone charge the batteries. So I have to remember which handsets go into which charging bases. (Actually, I don't. I just try whatever handset needs charging into a succession of bases until I find one that fits...)

Reply to
Mike Duffy

We have probably a dozen 1500VA UPS's scattered around the house. They come in handy in an outage as you can plug a CFL or LED lamp into one and have LOTS of light (instead of living with flashlights or candles). Figure 10-15W for a CFL gives you many HOURS on one of these beasts (battery capacity is ~170WHr; assume 70% efficiency gives you 120WHr -- so, almost 10 hours for a "60W equivalent" CFL)

[Neighbors always wonder why our house is so brightly lit when they are in the dark! :> ]

We can access our internet provider as this computer and "modem" are similarly powered.

I keep a handheld UPS on the bookshelf that I can carry to (very small capacity.

The "base station" for our cordless phone uses the battery in the

*phone* (if it is sitting in the cradle) to power the base station in an outage. So, the answering machine continues to work -- as do the *other* cordless handsets (you just can't remove the handset that happens to be *in* the base station!)

This is one of those "Why the hell didn't folks think of this 20 years ago??"

Reply to
Don Y

SWMBO *prefers* the cordless phones as they have a speakerphone option. She'd much rather hold the phone in her lap and talk normally than have to hold it up to her ear.

I keep a (genuine) "trimline" phone hanging in the closet as a fallback. And, the "long range" cordless base there as well.

[I've been migrating everything over to VoIP *inside* the house... but still tethered to a land-line service! The magic of PSTN gateways! :> ]
Reply to
Don Y

Even this can go wrong!

My folks picked up two sets of "dual handset" units. In short order, NONE of them were working! Seems they really wanted to be recharged in the same place that they were initially "paired". You couldn't just stick them into any place that *seemed* appropriate.

I ended up having to put colored dots on each handset and base/charger so they would know where each one "belonged".

Our current cordless set allows you to type in a name for the phone (e.g., Kitchen, Living Room, etc.). While not essential, one of the "speakerphones" has failed (and I am too lazy to take the flimsy plastic thing apart to figure out why!). So, we are careful about where we leave that handset "charging".

Reply to
Don Y

Why not just unplug "the house" from the Dmark box outside and plug the output of your VOIP into any empty jack. They are all wired together. They don't know where the signal comes from.

Reply to
gfretwell

My OOMA has one RJ-11. It's centrally located by my computer. When I got it the OOMA, I ran a wire from it to where the old Comcast phone modem wires were attached to the house wiring, and swapped them. I used two IDEAL 85-950 UY-I, 2-Wire Butt Splice IDC, which fits common phone wire. My phone service was changed from Ma Bell to ATandT to Comcast over the years, so the entrance is sort of a mess of wires. I took the easy path and just disconnected the Comcast splices, since all my phones worked with that splicing. And all 4 work with the OOMA. But this is all in my unfinished basement. Maybe your best bet is to wire to the nearest jack backside. Depends on where you feel comfortable running the wire. You should disconnect the Ma Bell wires and tape them off.

Reply to
Vic Smith

John,

When I first switched to VOIP, I simply disconnected the incoming cable from the phone company and fed back through the existing phone wiring in the house. It worked fine.

However, somewhere down the line I had a problem with the phone wiring in the house. I have numerous cables running indoors and a few to outbuildings as well. Rather than fuss with tracking down the wiring problem, I just abandoned the wires and bought a cordless phone system. The base unit connects directly to my VOIP adapter, and all the other handsets are wireless. I can move them anywhere in the house, even if there are no phone jacks.

You might check to see if additional handsets are still available for your existing phone system. I bought an extra handset for my Panasonic so I could have a phone out in the garage. I got the part number right off one of the existing handsets.

Otherwise, a new phone system is relatively inexpensive and will bring everything up to modern standards.

Anthony Watson

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Reply to
HerHusband

Novel idea, but that's one expensive flashlight. :)

We kind of enjoy the rare power outage. It's an excuse to take a break from technology, build a fire, light some candles, and spend some quality time together.

That said, my VOIP adapter and phone base unit are connected to my computer's UPS system. :)

If the outage lasts more than an hour or two (rare), we can always fall back to our cell phones. Or, people can just call back later.

Anthony Watson

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Reply to
HerHusband

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