Fibre

Virgin have long had monopoly-esque pricing for their hundreds-Mbps down / tens-Mbps up with lousy customer service and ever rising prices. Suddenly FTTP comes along and gives people gigabit, often symmetric, with very decent speeds at half the Virgin price. I can see why they are jumping ship.

Theo

They've only been in this (and surrounding) villages 4-5 years with their "project lightning" which is FTTH, if virgin had got in 6 month earlier when BT were still on miles of ropey copper for ADSL, they'd have probably had good take-up. But as it is, I think only the football supporter hardcore have switched to them ...

The original cable infrastructure for TV started to get redundant with Sky satellites and then Terrestrial Digital and the Internet has sounded its death knell.

Virgin is left with no unique selling points at all, especially its customer service which beyond contempt.

They're owned by Liberty Global who seem to be following their US cable model: rinse your customers because you have a monopoly in their area. Unfortunately they haven't got the memo that increasingly they don't have a monopoly.

(and even Project Lightning was using RFoG to begin with - RF over Glass - which inherits all the downsides of DOCSIS cable. They've recently switched to XGS-PON like everyone else but still lots of RFoG installed. The one handy thing is they can run RFoG and XGS-PON on the same fibre and migrate users by removing the external fibre->coax converter, although not sure they're doing this yet)

Theo

Jeff, if you have the “normal” Zen router you can actually plug your phone into the USB socket and then share your phone’s data with everything connected to your network. You do have to go into the router settings once to enable using your phone as a modem but you don’t have to “switch back” so to speak. The facility just isn’t enabled by default.

Tim

I assume you meant the RJ11 "Fon" socket rather than USB; page 152 of the manual doesn't mention DECT phones as connectable USB devices (and our rather old Panasonic DECT phone KX-TG8062 only has an RJ11 connector).

I couldn't see anything in the Fritz!Box DECT menu settings and features section about sharing the phone data, but haven't checked any online "Help" info.

By the way, do you know if the Fritz!Box RJ11 Fon socket is the same as the "green" socket I see mentioned on occasion in this and other VoIP threads?

Ah, I’m referring to using your mobile phone as a modem, not DECT handsets.

It’s the USB socket on the side (easy to miss) that you plug your mobile phone into.

Sorry, no idea.

Tim

I don´t have a BT box so its hard to compare, but I use the RJ11 with the supplied BT type adaptor to connect my Panasonic DECT and it seems to work as it did on the POTS line, so I would say "yes", but it may not put ringing current on the third wire, which may be an issue if you have a really old phone that needs it. Usually using an old ADSL filter will fix this.

I think i other ways the Fritz!box functions pretty much like the BT box. It can do DECT base station, answerphone, call blocking, CLI etc.

If you use it as a DECT base station, or connect multiple IP phones it will act as a PBX so you can do internal calls. It will also import your google address book, and some Panasonic DECT phones can see that when you use it as a DECT base station.

It just won´t talk to BT Digital Voice handsets.

Dave

My Fritzbox 7530 has two phone/Fon sockets - one RJ11 which is like the green sockets on other boxes, and one strange rectangular one on the side with lumps:

I don't use the RJ11, but ISPs like Zen do on their versions - that's where you plug in your phone for 'digital voice'. If you are bringing your own router you'd have to configure it with the credentials for your chosen third party VOIP service, since none of the digital voice services support using your own router.

Theo

Yes, I have a travel kit that came with various national to RJ11 adapters

Ok - crossed line... :-)))

I'd seen that in the manual. IMHO, that Fritz!box manual should be a guide to how other manuals are put together.

It's answered by Theo downthread - it is the same thing.

You use a small adapter, RJ11 to BT

In message <rnx0g45NKS$ snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk>, Tim Lamb snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk> writes

OK. Engineer called this morning. The issue turned out to be the router! Lots of calls to BT and his mates but I think all he actually did was a factory reset. Sadly he was unwilling to do the link from the green socket to the house internal phone cables so I have that to do.

What millennium did you buy that in?

Definitely the previous one, early 90s. The Italian/Dutch/Belgian adapters are hilarious, roughly equivalent to BS546 5A mains plug.

Yerrs. I think that was also used in Germany once...

If you get a standalone ATA then they are available in a number of configurations - they vary in how many physical sockets they have, and also the number of separate SIP providers they can talk to. Of the two socket ones, some are configured so that both ports connect to the same account, others will allow different accounts for each (and so two separate phone numbers)