Make all your phone jacks work with VOIP

So I just took the plunge and got a VOIP service (ITP) for my house. The only issue is that they say you can't hook it into your existing telephone wiring, so you have to use cordless phones and have the base-station plugged into your VOIP box.

This is because the voltage from the phone system will damage the box. Which is quite true.

Most residential phone systems are a star topology, which means every jack connects to every other jack.

So if you go outside to your Telephone Interface Box (if you have one) you can open it up. There's a "Customer access" section, that's just a screw to open. Open it up, and unplug all the connectors, and you've solved the issue of power. That disconnects your houses phone lines from the phone company.

The phone system should now be 100% isolated. Now you can go and plug your VOIP box into any phone jack in the house... and all of your other phone jacks will now work!! (there is a limit to the number of phones you can have hooked into the system at once. I'm not sure what that is though. 3 or less should be fine)

So now I pay $9.99 a month for local/long distance to the US and Canada, and I can still use all the phone jacks. Instead of the $39.99 a month, plus $50 of install fee's Comcast wanted from me.

 

what VOIP provider did you use?

 

ITP. It had decent ratings, and was cheaper than Vonage. the $9.99 plan is for 500 minutes a month. But I mostly use my cell, so that's not a problem.

 

yep most systems will have the juice to power your house jacks and the customer access is a great way to isolate. I have vonage and live in a condo, so once I called qwest to disconnect my landline the voltage went down to near zero and just plugged in the fax throughput on my basestation to the wall. Of course the base plus the cordless it talks to is plenty for my place.

 

does itp give you the hardware? or do you have to buy the box seperatly?




edit: i read the website looks like its free

 

Yup, hardware was free. It is a little slow making outgoing calls, but I'm going to call tech support on Monday to get that figured out.

 

any contract requirement?

 

Nope, no contract requirements

 

I've had my house setup this way for almost a year. I didn't know it was a secret.

 

Isn't that what the e911 service is for. To send your info?

 

i dont think voip uses e911, i think just cell phones right now. but not sure

 

I had to fill out an info page for e991

 

Switch to SunRocket. Their unlimited package is 16.58 a month if you prepay a year at a time. If you cancel early you get the difference back.

 

Essentially, your call will get routed correctly, *if* you actually fill out the information correctly. If you don't, it won't. It's not automatically set up like it is with land-line services.

Also, some Vonage areas (like, for instance, Minneapolis) are E911 enabled. If you have Vonage, you can check by dialing "933" and it will tell you.

 

I may end up going with vonage, this makes for a good argument for it.

As for 911, I wonder if spare cell phone would work better/quicker, it may not provide an exact location, but it should be nearly as quick as a land line, in fact I'm pretty sure any cell phone with out without service would work for this.

Brian any insight on that idea?

 

That would work fine. Any modern cell phone has has the ability to call 911 as long as it has signal... no service contract required. I wouldn't keep a landline just for 911 purposes.

 

And a charge... People always talk about being able to use cell phones without service to call 911, but what are the odds they'll keep the phone charged if they never use it for anything else?

 

Leave it on the charger.....after all, you aren't carrying it around.

 

Often, when people talk about using a cell phone for 911, they're talking about the car, but that's a digression, since we are talking about the home, so yes, it would make sense to just leave it on the charger.

 

Well even I could've figured that out