Dear Ma Bell,
We've been together for a long time, but we think it's time for us to take a break up. It's just... we met someone else; someone who will hook us up with free long distance. But don't worry, we'll give you a call sometime next year when we're looking for faster internet.In today's How-To, we're taking the diagonal cutters to the Ma Bell umbilical cord and hooking up our voice over IP adapter so we can use our old phone jacks. No soldering irons or caustic acid required. This time.
For today's How-To, you'll probably need:
- Screwdriver, pliers, wire cutters
- Extra phone wires
- Splice connectors (optional)
- VoIP Adapter
The idea for this one is pretty easy. We'll visit the ugly box that Ma Bell graciously left on the side of every single building, ever. Inside it, we'll cut the leash and take control. Back inside, we'll hook up our handy VoIP adapter so we can use the existing phone jacks that run all over the house.
Most phones get power from the phone line, so there is a limit to the number of phones you can connect to a VoIP adapter. Your mileage will vary, but you'll probably be able to use three phones with the average adapter. If you've got lots of voltage sucking phones, then you might want to pick up a
ring booster.
We'll be semi-violating this warning label. If you connected it to the wall now, the voltage from the phone line would probably do something bad to it. Before hooking anything up a trip to the telephone companies box is in order.
Our typical access box. There's usually some sort of customer access area. In this case, we have to loosen a screw and the cover pops open.
[Update: If you don't mind going into the telco side of the box, you can probably disconnect the line without cutting]
Proper application of a screwdriver (or a dime) gains access to this rat's nest.
The module pops open to reveal some color coded screws. Since our VoIP line will be the primary phone, we're disconnecting the red and green leads. Since some lazy tech didn't connect everything, we had to splice together the two sets of red and green wires. Normal phone wiring has two pairs. If you're keeping your regular line, or have DSL on it, the yellow and black wires are the pair to use for a secondary line throughout the house.
The rebel inside is gonna enjoy this part. Sure we could have unscrewed the terminals, but snipping those cables was more fun. If you leave any wire attached, make sure they aren't shorted. Most phone companies leave out of service phone lines powered.
Inside the box, two of the wires were terminated at the screw terminals. To complete the internal network, they need to be spliced together. We used standard weatherproof splice connectors available from any hardware store. To attach them, just insert the
unstripped wires and squeeze down the circle with a pair of pliers.
The wiring is completed. The first line is disconnected, and the remaining leads are now spliced together. Now, the center pair of wires of all the phone jacks are connected to create in internal phone network.
Our packet8 adapter just has three ports on the back. The Ethernet goes to our router, and now it's safe to connect the phone jack to a wall outlet inside the house. Now our VoIP adapter can live happily on our server rack, where it gets a UPS, and delivers phone service to the rest of our house through a pre-existing phone jack.
Bye, Ma. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
posted Jun 20th 2006 10:39PM
Hey, you guys give great advice: so hopefully someone can help me.
I live in a apartment and have Vonage and my cable company gave me a so called cable packaged deal, which included the digital phone line thing, so i took it.
What I need to set up is 6 out going phone lines, which means I have to get 3 of the vonage box with 2 phone ports each in the back of them and pay for all 6 phone lines. I really dont want 3 more vonage box and may need up to 5 at some point, plus thats a monthly vonage plan per each vonage line,,to much money$$ and to many vonage boxes.
Does anyone have any suggestion on how to accomplish this, in a less expensive way or more creative way.
Oh yeah, some of you are tech guru's,,,,so please speak or type slow for a simple person to understand!!
FYI, I run a outbound telemarketing from my home.
I wanted to do this, but there is no "typical access box" on my house. There is just a phone line that comes into the wall and after that just a small wall phone adapter on the other end that attaches to another adapter on the wall. Then it just strings along in another couple of rooms that I installed myself.
I once tried connecting my TA signal to that but it would not work.
I did this as well with my Vonage. All I did in my telco box is disconnect the line coming into my house. I ran a wire from my vonage ATA into my attic and spliced into my main trunk coming in. Then plug in phones to the wall outlets. You can do this without splicing too if you plug the adapter into the wall phone outlet (assumung you have one free and near your router.)
This was one of the first things I did when I first made the switch almost a year ago to VoIP. I did read on Vonage's website that people were doing this, but, of course, it wasn't supported by Vonage. Works like a charm in my house.
--Bill
This is more or less how Charter and other cable companies hook up their phone service too. The only "not supported" bit is how many phones you hook to the adapter since it's realy just a longer phone wire (through the whole house). a ring booster is an interesting idea to support more phones though
I believe I will try this, but only after I send myself a "good luck" blessing from www.onlineblessings.com. Although a very instructional piece and well written, I am going to need all the luck I can get to do this right.
This is terrible. VoIP is a huge threat to thousands of peoples jobs across the country. Think about the families of the people who's job they will have lost because of VoIP. VoIP = Walmart.
So I guess we should force consumers to pay their phone bills so their employees can have a salary when cheaper means are available to consumers?
When the car was invented no one needed buggy whips any longer. I suppose we should mandate everyone use the horse and carriage instead of the automobile?
I work for a VoIP company. We provide excellent service for customers who can't afford to pay ridiculous long distance fees. Your previous post is extremely inconsiderate and selfish. By providing cheap telephone lines for people who can't afford it, its just another way we are enabeling people of all classes to communicate with the rest of the world and live an easier life.
Is this any different than plugging the VOIP adapter straight into the phone jack? I did this in my parents house when I got them Vonage, and all the phone jacks now have vonage flowing through them. Is there advantages to this more complicated way?
*sigh* there are always people like that (smoke_dawg). Maybe we should have stopped the industrial revolution because it destroyed all the people live's in the various guilds. Wake up, we live in an ever changing world
"This is terrible. VoIP is a huge threat to thousands of peoples jobs across the country. Think about the families of the people who's job they will have lost because of VoIP. VoIP = Walmart."
Edward Whitacre reads engadget?
Wait, you mean VoIP is taking away jobs? What about the jobs that it's creating. Let me guess, you work for a telecom company don't you?
I'm curious how does VoIP=Walmart? What kind of math is this? I'm a service member stationed in Japan, I use VoIP to keep in touch with my family & friends stateside and all I pay is a flat monthly fee... I fail to see how I'm depriving someone in the states their livelyhood or how I'm supporting a company such as Walmart... Clue me in because I'm just not getting it??
Happy with VoIP in Tokyo, Japan!
Smoke_Dawg, it honestly is not as big a threat as you think, maybe will cause shift in where some jobs are, but doubt thousands will be out of a job completely.
Also, some internet services require that phone lines be active (like DSL, not sure about fiber optic though) or get a special service, which is not yet available in all areas and costs a good amount to get installed. Many DSL customers obtain a very basic land line and get VoIP for the extra services they need, like unlimited long distance.
And also, not all areas have access to high speed internet yet, which VoIP requires. I know that just two blocks west of me, the people who live there cannot get anything besides dial up, and I am not exactly in a rural area.
And also, VoIP at this time does not work with wireless broadband which is a new thing, and may become quite popular. I can tell you from experience that they don't mix well, as the wireless broadband signal isn't stable enough for VoIP, so calls drop if you even get them period (which was my issue, couldn't get a dial tone at all).
So while phone companies will indeed have to deal with the problems that will arise with VoIP, as far as jobs go, I doubt there will be a loss, just a shift. Many of the large phone companies offer DSL and cell phones also, and I assure you, those will indeed make plenty of jobs, as those are not the most stable things in the world, take it from someone who has had to support both items.
Maybe you should go take a look at the articles that have come out about what jobs indeed likely will no longer exist in 2014. That is something to be a lot more concerned about. Funny how the only thing related to the phones is telephone operators, and that has nothing to do with VoIP. And funny how you aren't concerned about cell phones which already are used in place of a land line by many people, and that number is growing steadily.
"Edward Whitacre reads engadget?"
I dunno, never met the guy.
Smoke_Dawg_187 does though, on a completly different topic. See? right here
Posted at 11:39PM on Jun 20th 2006 by Smoke_Dawg_187 [ ! ]
Cool huh?
/sarcasm
telcos been jacking up prices with these "taxes" and "service fees" that you don't really understand for years....
VOIP is the way to go these days with unlimited calls without worrying about hidden fees...
it's nice to see technology actually working for people these days....
So, you took about 10 minutes longer and two more tools than you should have. A coin and your fingers were all that you needed.
You see, under the telco access in the left side of the DMARC shown in the photot, sits the lines heading to the CO switch. When you unlock and slide the hinged RJ-11 jack from this it gives them a test jack for the wires "they own" and drops voltage from your 25+ year old wiring. This gives them a convenient way to test then charge you for fixing your old crusty wiring.
By keeping that arm unlocked and undocked, you are disconnected from them and they from you. This makes selling your house (or more aptly moving out of your apartment) a re-connection breeze. Or when you realize that your TiVo or Sat dish won't dial out, you can get that POTS line re-installed again.
Now the rest of you can just plug that ATA, MTA, VTA or whatever acronym your favorite vendor has made up into any wall jack and enjoy your new faux dialtone. These devices will generate 3-5 REN, or Ringer Equivalency Number, so you won't want to put 3 of the old "clapper" ringing phones on your circuit; but the new phones with electronic ringers should never complain.
One minute and one coin's worth of work.
Dork
having a problem getting phone jacks to work. There is no nid. The 1 wire comes directly in from outside and is spliced into another wire how do I connect to the jacks. I have never seen anything like this. The modem is by the television and when I plug into that jack behind the television we get a dial tone but no where else in the house. She has a wireless fax how do I hook that up in another room when the jacks are not working anywhere else. please help.....If you could help maybe I could draw a simple picture to explain better. I have to go back tommorrow and try to get this to work. Her business is from home so she needs that fax desperately.
DEB
If telecommunication companies don't want to go bankrupt and have to lay-off all of their employees, they need to keep up with the modern time.
Telephone services did relitivly nothing to revolutionize, innovate, or even do much for the consumer heck they even cheap out on a lot of their equipment. LAN-Lines are low-quality and they can't compare to the technologies a cellphone has and the mobility. It costs less where I live to buy a cell-phone then to have a lan-line and that is excluding the bonus features you can add to a lanphone such as caller id, voicemail, and tone dial.
VoIP is a good thing. Phone companies didn't want to upgrade and they didn't want to go with what the people wanted so they are failing. I use Skype as my normal phone and it works fine, and long distance is free. Got a cellphone for on-the-go so its all good.
Gadget Guy,
Sounds like you have or do, work for a communications co?
I do as well. You are correct, that's the easiest way you disable the CO side of the DEMARC.
Since my office/network room is just inside from demarc, I spliced my VOIP into the secondary pair of my house and rewired some jacks to use the VOIP as the primary. So my satellite uses my telco line, and my business(side business) calls come into my VOIP line, but ring on certain phones.
Cloud,
The phrase is LAND-line, because the cable is buried, or travels over LAND, not lan.....
To defend the traditional telcos for a bit. The quality of a LAND-Line is far superior to any wireless or VOIP line. There are simple physics employed that keep LAND lines sounding better until their demise. Starting with bandwidth, all voice grade channels are 64KB, and all of the channel is used to carry high quality voice signals...there is no overhead for signalling or etc, becuase all the signalling is done with the keypad, BEFORE the voice-part of the call starts. However, people don't care so much about quality anymore, just having service. So I am not arguing a point, just stating that a lot of engineering and effort has gone into making the call as clear as possible, but again, now it doesn't matter.
As far as wireless and thier technologies; Yes cellphones are better[all around]becuase they can talk, send messages, surf the web, and entertain you. But the voice quality sucks....granted it's good compared to, say, two cans a cord...but nowhere near the quality of your traditional LAND-line.
I do agree that VOIP is a good thing, it's pushing the market to a more cost effective and mobile delivery of voice grade traffic. In effect also creating more demand for high dollar broadband services...
What's the big secret here? AT&T published directions for doing this and ships an illustrated copy in every AT&T CallVantage box it sells. And in their published version NO wire cutters are required. And here's another tip... their telephone adapters are built with the proper ringer equivalency so there's no issue with all of the phones in your house ringing and no warning label on their TAs. But hey, maybe this guy will reinvent the wheel next.
"Starting with bandwidth, all voice grade channels are 64KB"
Actually It's 8k overhead for burst mode (I don't talk like a metranome), soo... 56k bandwidth...
If you want to read a much more detailed version of how to do this check out: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html
64KB is a single BRI channel, common POTS in hoomes are not BRI's, and they get multiplexed, so it's really more like 26KB (which is part of why recording programs have 22.5Khz labeled as "telephone quality", there isn't all that much dedicated bandwidth)
VOIP is quickly improving though, if you have the bandwidth and QoS. There are clients and codec's that will do full stereo and "CD quality" audio and you just can't do this on the tradictional land-line phone network. I haven't use one myself, but word is that the difference is kind of like when someone phones into a radio station for an interview vs a satalite hookup for the interview.
I've been using Lingo for quite a while now. Knowing that the house phone wiring is parallel, one of the first things I wanted to do was plug the adapter into my house wiring. I was concerned about overloading the adapter box, so I called Lingo's technical support. My question got passed around a bit, finally to one of their technical "experts." The guy I talked to said he didn't know if it would work or not and suggested that I give it a try! I figured that covered me if I fried the box.
I disconnected my house wiring from the external network. In my case, there was a small box outside with a sort jumper with RJ11 plugs on each end. I just unplugged it. I then ran a standard phone cord from the adapter to a convenient phone plug. I have about 5 phones connected, but I have the ringer turned off on all but a couple. No problems at all.
Smoke_Dawg - stop blowing smoke. No one's lost any jobs over VOIP becoming popular, and even if some telco people do get the ax a decade from now, the cable company will be hiring.
Mwhaha... we have a home wiring center where I can just plug in the VoIP box (which we're actually getting today) to all the jacks with one simple wire.
Did I mention this new house rocks :)
Thank you GadgetGuy!
Easier way....
If you have Time Warner, get the Time Warner digital phone, use it for a month or so, then switch providers to Vonage or whoever. Time Warner DOES this for you as part of the installation. Once you have it done, it's done for ever and you can just plug your phone out on the Vonage/Asterisk box into the house's phone system.
wow, all i did was take a splitter, connect it to the back of my vonage box. one wire went to a phone, the other went to an existing phone jack in the wall.
and voila, all pre-existing jacks worked.
i deno why all the extra work. maybe it was the way my house was wired, but those who are looking to try this may want to try that. it cost a whopping 50 cents and 10 seconds.
actually, maybe i connected the splitter to the back of the phone, instead of the voip box.
may or may not matter, but before anyone says it didn't work, figure i'd mention it. in case it does.
i'm not home to check myself, sorry.
I climbed the pole, cut down the wires and ripped the box off the house... NEVER again ma bell! They wanted $300 to fix wires that were falling off the house 'cause they didn't install them right. Cable company buried the line for free. VOIP for over 2 years and $hundreds saved.
or just notify your alarm dude. He will come and do it for you, but he will grumble about how much VoIP sucks.
Further he will tell you that one of the reasons your new service is less expensive is because they do not have to pay any service techs, relying instead on the cheaper labor of handy subscribers and thier alarm dudes. And he is right.
>The quality of a LAND-Line is far superior to any wireless or VOIP line.
Simply not true. I used to have Qwest and over a few years, my line was down frequenctly, had poor audio quality, static, clicks, echo, and calls were frequently droped. We complained and it went on for literally years. Finally we switched to Vonage and sadly, my VOIP line is much higher quality and more reliable. It really depends.
How am I suppposed to do this? My telephone box is about 3 in x 3 in and has a big bolt in the middle. It is so old should I even open it? (My house is 150 yrs old)
Just for people like Smoke_Dawg_187 , remember who owns all the physical copper and fiber lines that are on the poles and carrying your VoIP data from place to place. Just cause you pay a bill to Vonage (or other VoIP company or Skype), doesn't mean that the Verizon's or AT&T's are not getting a cut of that. Plus, as bandwidth increases, new lines and more fiber needs to be installed and/or replaced and that is where the Teleco's will be making their money... They are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Verizon won't be getting any more of my money until they bring FIOS to my area. we dropped POTS when the phone company told us they were going to charge us $100 for two moves in six months...we went with AT&T CallVantage and could not be happier. less than $34/m with taxes...a $15/m savings and more features than traditional line from Verizon. Of course I have heard I could save $5/m more with Vonage...The only headache and what is keeping me from going to Vonage is the pain of porting a phone number...It's not as simple as porting a cell phone.
What about all the concessions the government has issued telco's in order to help them create and distribute broadband service to consumers? European customers with far worse infrastructures are way ahead of the US in terms of fiber to the home and higher speed connections. I realize that this takes time but common!!! The telcos want concessions from the government to expand their infrastructure and a tiered Internet so they can charge consumers and content providers! I agree with the user that said this creates more jobs than it takes away. Analog telephones are becoming an outdated technology and telcos should embrace the change and work with it instead of fighting to keep outdated infrastructures.
This is RETARDED!!! I work in telco, all you really need to do if you have disconnected your telephone service is unplug the cord from the 'Smart Jack' in the phone box(it's a normal looking phone cord). Then just plug a phone cord from your voip router into any wall jack in your house and just like magic, you have voip dialtone on ever jack in your house, no splicing or jacking with your phone box and having to repair it later if you go back with the telco.
This posting is for the poster named "me." You really should go to your NID (network interface device) as pictured above and at the very least disconnect the wires from the terminals serving your house. Otherwise you may have sporadic direct current flowing into the system. It may not be causing background noise or hum now, but it may in the future. And, it's subjecting your TA to a voltage spike -- albeit it a small one. In many of the newer NIDs, all you need to do is "unplug" the little modular pigtail and you're done. On older ones you may have to lift 2 wires (the green and red) from their terminals. Cutting the wires as suggested above is radical to say the least.
I didn't bother with the wire hookup to the box. I disconnected the phone line from the outside, and just plugged the vonage into an empty phone jack. It was a self contained curcuit. (as mentioned above.)
Alot less hassle.
I might point out out that failing to disconnect your home wiring or ISW as we call it in the industry, from "ma bells" outside line before attempting this rewire could result in not only serious harm to your teledapter, but may get you a hefty charge from your local telco company. You are in effect sending your VOIP line down the entire network if you do not disconnect it, therby "hogging" a network pair that belongs to the telco which it can no longer use and will have to spend time and money finding out where the trouble exists....money you will likely have to pay back to your local telco for doing unauthorized/unapproved of work inside a telco owned box.
Just thought I'd mention it, it is becoming an increasing problem
I'm all for technological innovation and reduced costs for necessary services, but I thought it might be important to bring up one key point. VoIP is great as long as you have power. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone who lives in a natural disaster prone area where you may be without power for several days (California/Earthquake country, Coastal towns/hurricane Country, Plains/tornado country, mountains/blizzard country). Most times in situations where the power is out, the old tried and true telephone landlines continue to work. Ask anyone who lived in the northeast during the blackout of 2003 (???) when everyone who had a cordless phone was SOL. My friend had the only landline in her apt building... she made a LOT of friends.
An added comment:
To have dsl you must have a regular phone line. Comcast is charging 57.00 per month for cable tv service/19.99 for 6 months to suck you in. I see no need to keep comcast when ATT is charging 12.99, phone costs me $15.00 for a basic line (which by the way works when ATTadvantage goes belly up from no power and 19.99 for calladvantage with unlimited long distance plus I can take the ATA box up north in Michigan and it works there also as well as when I visit my brother in Arizona. Wow what a blessing...phone service is crystal clear on both lines (dsl and advantage). Just make sure you buy a phone for your home dsl line that doesnt require power, so that it will work in an emergency. I now can dump verizon wireless (100.00 for 2000 minutes) and buy a prepaid plan. yes yes yes!
yes I have two, no three phone numbers
1-dsl line
2-virtual phone number useable anywhere there is dsl/cable
3-prepaid phone from walmart net10 (356 days to use 1500 minutes for 99.99) no i did not buy a tracphone. This is cheaper than paying 117.00 to Verizon..I hate that I have been paying Verizon over 1200 dollars a year for their service.
OR you can do like my friend, he ported their phone number to Calladvantage and they charge him 44.00 total price for a dedicated line and ATT calladvantage (19.99) but he has no regular phone in his home now, but bought a prepaid cell phone.
I would like to ask a question, are u guys using another broadband service other than DSL on the Mabell line. Cuz it seems to me if u are gonna cut the line completely u are in effect cutting ur DSL. Then how would u place ur voip calls. Suppose some one only has DSL on the one line he surely cant take that approach.
The writer is really cutter happy, he does too many useless things. In the pic where he shows the red and green screw terminals after lifting the jack the circuit is already disconnected. What more does he want to do cut down the pole. lol
The 'disconnected' jack is for testing the line with a handset. The wires had to be disconnected.
The broadband connection is via cable modem.
I work for a VoIP company in their support department, and yes, this is the way to do it. There are a few things you want to keep in mind on this, however.
Some devices suck at pushing out voltage to your phone lines. As an example, our device pushes 5 volts in order to ring a telephone. Some phones, mostly Motorola and their rebranded Radio Shack brothers take as much as 9 to 11 volts (their "REN value") in order to ring. I worked with a customer that had 6 Radio Shack phones hooked up this way. His phones would ring twice, then drop the call, and if he picked up the phone, there'd be nobody there until he hung the phone up or pushed flash. We narrowed it down to a single, innocent, corded Radio Shack. Turned the ringer off on it and all of a sudden the phones all rang properly. So be aware that even though all your phone jacks may be "working", you may not be able to use them all at the same time the way you always have.
If you're having call quality issues, don't expect your VoIP company to help you as long as you're connected to the wiring. They are not responsible for your badly wired house. Wiring can cause delayed hang-up (your phone rings as soon as you hang up), echos, "tunnel voice", and worse. Believe it or not, a properly wired phone line is wired in sequence, not in parallel. Every house I've ever checked is wired in parallel, and that's a bad thing.
Some companies may not warranty their product if it's hooked to your phone line. Lightning strike, connected to your phone wires, other electrical and ethernet is working fine? Shouldn't have plugged in that house, pay for your new box. Granted, I've never heard of this happening and I know we'll just replace a smoked/fried box without asking any questions, but I hope everyone realizes that the sticker you're "violating" is there for a reason.
So is Vonage or TW Digital the way to go, or maybe, since I've already got Skype and Skype-in I could just get a Skype cordless phone. What do you guys think?
Skype's cheaper, and last time I went with Vonage I couldn't figure out that tangled mess in the phone box at all.
Hello. Just wanted to add my 2 cents worth here. As an employee in the telecommunications industry, I can say that VoIP is *not* going to bankrupt any of the big telco providers anytime soon. Mainly because they all provide internet access, as well, through DSL or T1 (or E1 in Europe). In some areas, you can't get Cable, but you can get DSL (and in some areas it's reversed.) So, if you have DSL and want to use this method, take all of the filters off of your phones and put the splitter filter out in the NIJ outside. Wire the black-yellow pairs to the "DSL" side of the filter and plug the filter into the "test jack" from the telco. Then, you can leave the green-red pairs connected or your can cut them as per this article, it won't matter because they are no longer connected to the telco, since you removed them when you plugged the filter directly into the test jack. Once this is done, you *might* have to rewire whichever jack your DSL modem is on to use the black-yellow pair for the DSL modem, or your modem might simply recognize the swap-over and continue to work. That depends on the model of your DSL modem.
An alternative method to the black-yellow is to use the red-green pair of the cable going to the DSL modem for the PC side of the filter, if you know which cable it is. This is the *best* method, but not the easiest as it assumes your know something about the wiring in your house or have a lineman's tone and probe for tracing out wiring.
Now, for those of you who have plugged directly into the phone jacks without unhooking from your telco provider, watch out for spurious current from the telco. More often than not, even though you've called and had your service turned off, the line is still connected through their SLICs until they need that port for someone else. Also, if a lightning strike hits your telephone cabling outside, it could travel down the line and straight into your ATA and *could* travel through the ATA and into your network. It's best to remove the umbilical if you are going to go VoIP. In the future, if you sell your home, the telco will rehook the homewiring up. It's their job. Anyone telling you otherwise is a lazy telco worker. :)
Undrhil
As interesting as this might sound, isn't this illegal?
I know you have LIMITED access to the gray box to add additional phone jacks., but cutting the lines from the street to your home requires access to the restricted section of the box and isn't that destruction of private property as in Telephone company property?
And what about the fact that you can only use up to 3-telephones., my home alone has 15-phones., i'm not planning to loose 12-telephones just to gain free long distance.
My ISP/DSL and whole phone service comes from one of MaBell's Southern Children any advice how to get another ISP/DSL to replace them? Is not as simple as it sounds. I'm sure they will not let me go without some sort of penalty even after 15-years. Muchless if i cut out their lines.
Everything in the how-to is all on the customer access side.
One thing that isn't mentioned here is that you will lose land-line emergency service. I don't know about all VOIP services, but there are some that do not have 911 support. If your power or network is dead a you won't be able to dial 911 even if your VOIP service has it. You also cannot contact your power company in the event of an outage like you can with a regular land line phone. If you have a cell phone that you keep charged this is a great idea, but if you rely on the landline for emergency service, then don't do it.
As far as the wiring in your home is concerned, the info presented here is correct. Variations will exist from home to home...you'll have to deal with that. If you don't get it, reread the instructions...everything you need to know is already here.
There ARE some errors or misconceptions in some of the postings. Voice quality is and always will be better over a land line than it will over VoIP (notice, I said "voice" quality - not music, etc.) if all parts of it are working properly. The reason is simply because the land line network was designed specifically to care voice signals. As such, that network was designed to carry signals between 300 Hz and 3000 Hz (the dynamic range of the average human voice). This is done over 64 Kb of bandwidth. Why is 64K the magic number? Because of Nyquist's Theorem (Google it), which states that any signal sampled at twice the highest expected rate of the signal can be accurately reproduced. Therefore, the phone company (giving you a little extra slack) assumes the highest frequency signal you can speak is 4 KHz, and samples your voice at an 8 KHz rate, each sample is 8 bits of data - 8000 samples per second X 8 bit samples = 64Kb. This is called PCM or Pulse Code Modulation. (BTW: that's still the technique used by G.711)
An aside: someone knowledgable posted that it's really only 56Kb - he wasn't exactly wrong. When T1 circuits first came into use (downtown Chicago, IL, USA), somebody said something like, "hey, we can't use all 64Kb for voice - we need to pass some signalling information on that circuit as well", so... something called Robbed Bit Signalling was invented! This was an algorithym where by every 8th bit of the voice signal could be 'robbed' and used for signalling purposes (without degrading the voice quality). As PRI circuits replaced T1 circuits the need to use Robbed Bit Signaling went away. What's a PRI, what's a T1? The phone circuit delivered to your home is an analog phone circuit (none of this digitizing has taken place until the signal gets to the phone company's equipment), as soon as your signal hits the phone company's equipment, at the CO, (Central Office) they do the PCM encoding, because the digital signals are easier to deal with then a bunch of analog signals (anyone remember cord boards?). The CO is a digital (in almost all parts of the USA) switch that decides how to route your call. When the CO finds a bunch of calls going in the same general direction as your call, it 'bundles' or more precisely, 'multiplexes' your call with those calls and passes them along to the next CO. That 'bundle' is a T1 or a PRI. A T1 is 24 channels of 64Kb PCM encoded voice. A T1 'robs' 8Kb from each channel for signalling purposes. A PRI is also 24 channels of 64Kb, but in the case of a PRI only 23 channels are used for voice and the 24th channel carries all the signalling information for the other 23 channels. So, long story short... land lines today are indeed 64Kb.
BTW: E1 (the standard used in Europe)is similar to T1, but a little better at using bandwidth. The E1 standard came after the T1, so they had the advantage of learning from our mistakes. ;-)
In contrast, a G.711 VoIP call consumes 256Kb of bandwidth. Do the math, that's 4 times the bandwidth of a land line! Why did I specify G.711, what the hell is G.711 anyway? G.711 specifies how a VoIP call may be encoded. This particular encoding method is the equivalent of a land line, that is; an uncompressed, PCM encoded signal. In a 'perfect network' (no congestion and no latency) it should sound as good as a land line. It is 'probably NOT the encoding method used by your VoIP provider. Other encoding methods are employed which reduce the bandwidth requirements, but these algorithyms 'compress' the signal, much like the algorithyms you choose from when you convert an audio CD to MP3 format. No compression algorithym is 'completely' lossless, so if you use one, you DO lose something. About the lowest that you can reduce VoIP bandwidth requirements, with the various compression techniques, is 115Kb per voice call.
So if VoIP bandwidth requirements are so great, why does this technology make any sense at all? It's a game of statisics - when you got your 64K channel from the phone company it was all yours, all the time, the whole time you were on your call... BUT, you weren't using it all! A large part of any phone coversation is the transmission of silence - either yours, or the party you are speaking to. Land lines transmit silence, VoIP calls do not. You may need 256k of upload bandwidth when you are actually speaking, but none when you are not, so...the bandwidth you are not using gets used by someone else and everything works out fine in the end. ;-)
So VoIP vs. land line??? Got news for you... If you have used a land line to make a long distanse phone call anytime in the last few years, YOU have already used VoIP! These telcos that you hate...they have already been using VoIP equipment to move calls from one end of the country to the other for several years - you never noticed because THEY do it SO well!!! That 'perfect' network I mentioned earlier - they have it, they own it! (Someone mentioned QOS earlier - when you control the whole network, is the only way that it can work effectively.) Their competitors are trying to duplicate what they have already mastered. How do I know? I worked in the R&D lab that designed the equipment that they bought.
Who do you think invented VoIP??? It was the telecommunications industry. Will you put people out of work by switching to VoIP? Yes, but we already knew that. The telecommunictions industry has been working towards this end for some time now... long before you heard about it. It was/is the natural progresion of technology.
One day (in the not too distant future), your ISP and your VoIP provider will be the same company. You will not have 'phone' jacks in your house any longer, you will have data jacks to which you (at your whim) will connect either a PC or a SIP phone at any time you like (or some other Internet Appliance). That day is coming, and it's coming sooner than you think. In the meantime...by all means use Vonage or use Skype if you like...whatever saves you money and gets the job done. It will only drive the big telcos to do better and quicker. Do your self a favor...take a look at non-branded SIP phones and open source VoIP switches like asterisk.org
The power and alarm caveats should be heeded, but are fixable.
I just recently bought a brand new house, so the VoIP was a snap. I just bought a WEATHER-TIGHT outside box, spliced all of the Cat3 cables together (there were 3) and plugged my Vonage into one of the less noticable jacks.
Since I am IT for a large bank and have required home access, the bank has provided me with a very large UPS to keep my cable modem, etc. going in the event of a short power failure. When I recover from the 1st round of "new home" expenses (re: pay my AMEX bill), a generator will be the next thing on the list. I will buy enough of a generator to supply the 'fridge, HVAC, and computer gear at the minimum.
As far as the Security goes, ADT has a cellular option for the alarm, it just costs a bit more per month and $150.00 to install.
BTW, my bank is replacing most all of the metro T1 lines with fiber access from the cable company. We have 2 branches (out of 15) that have T1 lines that bounce up and down EVERY TIME it rains. The telco tells us, "if we fix your lines we have to fix everyone in the general area". Like it's our problem their lines are old and bad.
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I use SKYPE a lot. I have a 3-line, 9-extension PBX phone system at home that allows me to use other phone jacks for analog phones. I was able to connect ATT VOIP to one of those phone jacks in the past and all jacks in the house were activated. What adapter would allow me to connect my SKYPE to my Home phone system?
Thanks for the input.
Smoke_Dawg_187 I see your point, but if phone companies didn't charge so much there would be no need for VoIP. Anyway it didn't work for me. What should I do next?
Walmart is Sam Wal, talking from the after life. He plays it the same way with his help!
Thanks for this excellent post. I recently switched to at&t's Callvantage service and their instructions did not cover the "lazy tech" scenario and the need to splice the wires. It only said to disconnect the wires. That's $100+ Ma Bell's Inside Wiring Dept. is not getting from me.
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Hello All:
After exhaustive experimentation and searching for the right way to utilize my home's entire wiring for my VoIP service, I found a company that markets adapter kits to do just this...I installed it with ease and the polarity is now correct. The site is www.bonwire.net
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Jimmy
PS: Polarity is still important dudes!!!