Cordless phone intercom/paging

I'm hoping someone has already been through this, because it's driving me up a wall. I want to buy one of the many brands of cordless phone where you get a base station and multiple handsets, but I want one important feature: intercom.

Now the frustrating part is that what I grew up calling an intercom was a device where you pressed a button and spoke and anyone near the other stations (or a target station) would hear your voice. It seems that, in modern cordless phones, "intercom" is now lingo for the ability to ring any of the other phones, which someone must then answer.

Does anyone know of an actual intercom in the original sense of the word on a modern cordless phone? I've heard people say that this is called "paging," but that now seems to have come to mean "making a handset beep so that you can find it in your seat cushions." In fact, every word that might have meant what I thought it meant now seems to mean, "you can make it beep or ring."

Thanks in advance!

Reply to
AaronJSherman
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You probably need business speaker phones to do voice paging, heres one:

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There are others on smarthome.com that also do this, "speakerphone with intercom" is what you want, (unless you want to get into an expensive centralized phone control system). When you page all phones, the first one that answers gets the exclusive connection to you. Not sure if the person answering can simply talk to the speakerphone or if they must pick up, but at least you would have whole-house voice paging capability, instead of whole-house ringing. Conversely I dont know if you can pick up any phone and "listen in" simultaneously to all the other extensions unsolicited, like the old intercoms would let you do. But the owners manuals are all out there at smarthome to find out. There may even be a wireless business speakerphone with intercom and paging.

Reply to
RickH

In the world of business phone systems "intercom" means that you can page a particular telset through its speaker and they can talk back to you. "Paging" means that you can page one telset, several or all, but they cannot talk back to you.

I am not aware of any residential-grade intercom system that would combine both ways of "paging". But business phone systems, albeit slightly used, that have both features can be had on eBay for laughable amounts of money and installed in a residential house in one evening or just about. All the manuals are usually available on the Web if they were not included with the system. Note that they will require all cables to come back to the system unit. You can also purchase cordless sets for those system, but they are usually on the expensive side. I would seek out Avaya/Lucent Partner systems only because I'm familiar with those but there are many more makes/models to choose from.

Good luck!

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Reply to
DA

I know this isn't what you want, but try a single-handset with a base unit type cordless. They do just that kind of intercom.

Or, you could have a dedicated wireless intercom system, which you can probably get from Radio Shack or some such place.

Reply to
Bob M.

gman had written this in response to

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: Aaron,

I would be grateful to learn if you found a true paging/intercom cordless phone system. Like you were several yrs ago, I am most frustrated in looking for this feature. My kids and wife scream thru our house. This is not rocket science. Thanks so much.

Best, Glenn snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

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Reply to
gman

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:

Have you considered a wireless intercom that is independent of the phone ??

Such as:

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Reply to
Reed

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What sucks is that if you use it for an intercom, and not just saying "pete, pick up line 1", you have to go over to it to talk back. At a very old job in a very old building with a very old intercom, we could reply without having to go near it. They are available but quite expensive last time I priced them, and now it's just me here so I don't need the intercom anymore.

Reply to
Tony

Better yet, pretend you're civilized. Don't reply if some asshole screams across the house. If somebody doesn't come downstairs at dinnertime, go on without them.

Reply to
AZ Nomad

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You mean that if someone calls you on the intercom, the intercom automatically switches to send mode without any action on your part? That's a nice feature to have for the boss. He just presses your intercom number and without saying anything, he/she can hear everything that is being said in the room.

Reply to
willshak

That's true, and I normally don't like it when they give new meanings to old words, but here it makes sense. If you left your cordless phone on Listen all the time, I think it would run down the battery much faster. (Used to be, you could totally turn off the phone, so the battery only discharged through leakage or something. Would last

4 days out of the charger. Can't find that anymore so I broke down and bought a couple remote phones each with its own charger.

Here I think you're unfair. Sure, it's good to find in the seat cushions. They even make tv remotes now that beep like this, I think.

But it will also enable you to page someone, who might have the phone in his pocket (My mother did this when she was getting weak, becaue there was no phone in the living room and it was unneeded effort to go to the kitchen to answer the phone. Also if she wanted to make a call, she had the phone), but if not, he can walk to the nearest beeping phone and talk on it, via intercom.

I take intercom to mean not going outside the house, or at least not using the telphone company lines. And page to mean just what it says.

My uniden with 3 cordless remotes says that they will all talk to each other even during a power failure. Like a walkie-talkie. It's just me too, and I wish I had a bigger family so I could use this paging feature. I wish I owned a business so I could buy more hi-tech office equipment.

Reply to
mm

The Uniden TRU9485 has an intercom feature with a distinctive ring. I can ring any handset or the base station individually, or all phones on the system. It appears that Uniden no longer makes this model, but the two-line TRU9466 seems to be available. I think that both models are expandable to at least 10 handsets.

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Reply to
RosemontCrest

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Yes, exactly!

When a room is being listened to it first makes a two tone sound.

Reply to
Tony

My, my. Aren't we the judgmental jerk?

Reply to
ScottK

The old Motorola MD670 (2003) series phones had this feature, it was called "global page" and it was awesome. The phones had some other problems but I used mine until I couldn't get batteries for them. Motorola dropped out of the cordless phone business for awhile and when they came back to the business, their new models dropped this feature.

I've been waiting for this simple feature to be included in *any* phone since. It's amazing that no one has implemented this.

Reply to
ScottK

Says the fool replying to a 4-year-old post.

Reply to
Home^Guy

You mean like this unit ?

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where the info says: "Use the intercom feature to talk between handsets. "

Reply to
Retired

Now we have 2 doorknobs continuing a 4-year-old thread.

Reply to
Home^Guy

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"Use the intercom feature to talk between handsets. "

No. Almost every cordless phone allows you to page and talk between handsets like that. The page we're talking about is not a beep, but a verbal announcement.

The Motorola unit I spoke of allowed you to hit "Global Page" from any handset and then whatever you said into the handset would be broadcast to all other idle handsets (loudly, in speakerphone mode.)

As in the example of the OP: "Dinner is ready, everyone come and eat." could ring through the house.

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Scott.

Reply to
ScottK

And a third doorknob who doesn't realize the question is STILL valid after four years and therefore worthy of discussion.

Reply to
ScottK

Which is noticably different than the ancient OP's idea of intercom.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

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