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Difference between ATA and DTMF

Started by Telephoner123, May 25, 2016, 01:42:45 PM

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Phonesrfun

Terry,


I did give it some thought.  I have a regular land line with my cable company that does have 911.  My wife and I both have cell phones too.  I have not decided to replace my land line with the Google voice line yet, but that may be next.  Apparently there is a loop to have to go through to port a land line over to GV.  Anyway if and when I do that, I will do the 911.  The use of the GV account is only for playing with any way and won't be available to grandkids or anyone else at my home.  As it is, my C*Net line doesn't have 911 either. (naturally).


Currently, I am paying $5 US for my cable-based phone service.  Several years ago, I signed up for the phone service at $5 for life.  Great deal when it is I think $29.95 a month even in a bundle.  The problem with that is that having the phone locked in prevents me from "negotiating" with the cable co. any other bundle deals.  It seems they want to rip me off one way or another.  Very frustrating. Therefore, $31 up front and $1 per month doesn't seem too bad, but when compared to 9 or ten cents a month, that's a pretty large difference!


At work, we have to dial 9 for the outside line and once I mis-dialed and accidentally did a 9 and then somehow did 11 and then hung up.  The next thing I knew, someone from 911 was calling me back.  Yikes.  Our system is programmed so that you don't even have to dial a 9 before dialing 911, although you can.  It is set up to go right to 911 by just dialing it from the in-house dial tone.  It looks like our phone people did what you did from your PBX.

-Bill G

markosjal

#16
Quote from: AE_Collector on January 01, 2017, 10:32:28 PM
I have a bit of an issue with the ability to opt out of 911 service. I saw the efforts we went to make 911 calls from PBX's work in all situations. The problem is that most PBX's have dial 9 for outside service which means a person who is unaware that the phone they grabbed to call 911 in an emergency is a PBX extension OR even if they are aware of that, in an emergency they are likely to go off hook and dial 911 which only dials 11 after grabbing an outside trunk. Precious seconds lost in confusion in an emergency.

We set up PBX's to dial 911 on outside trunks no matter what convoluted attempt to call 911 was made from extensions. So now take this Google phone service that has NO ongoing monthly charge, just a dirt cheap one time charge. Even I would be tempted to avoid the hassle of signing up to get the ongoing 911 service in that scenario.

I pay 9 or 10 cents (Canadian) per month for Greater Vancouver E911 service on my Telco pots line so $1 US per month for 911 service through Google voice is quite simply an outrageous price that will dissuade even more people from doing it. A typical scenario where countless $$$ millions are spent providing the E911 service but large numbers will opt out of the service to literally save a buck.

And finally, Something else that happens is that people have poor memories. A voip line us installed without 911 service because it is just an extra line to the main pots line. Some time goes by, before long the voip line is the main line being used without a review of the fact that there is no 911 service on it. Then at some point the decision is made to ditch the pots line and by then 911 service is nowhere near being on the radar. I have customers with monitored security systems who eliminate their phone lines AND ignore the trouble light on the keypad that appears soon afterwards and then they are mad at me when they discover they are paying for alarm monitoring that can't function! To me this is quite a similar situation to the no 911 situation except the alarm monitoring problem actually created a "trouble light" warning that was STILL ignored.

Off my soap box now...John, I need your soap box to get off of!

Just my view on what can go wrong and WILL go wrong and why some things really shouldn't be allowed. And I didn't even get into the likelihood of people moving their voip service from one location to another and doing nothing to update the 911 address info.

Terry

Terry,

What you are not factoring in is that e911 is based on POTS telephones, not VOIP , threfore it is higher cost to implement it in VoIP . $1 dolar a month compared to what you pay to your Telco is probably a pittance, regarless of how they break it down to you.   

Also rates are structured differently in Canada than in the USA . Take a look at VoIP calling rates at Les.net, voip.ms or rapidvox.com you will see that the cost of a call is less to canada than the USA . You may also note that the cost of a DID (incoming number) is more in Canada than in the USA , normally.

BTW for you Canadians, have a look at freephoneline.ca . this will allow you to get a phone line with many calls to much of Canada. It will only work on a softphone but you can pay them for an unlock key and install it in an ATA or asterisk. The cost last I checked came out to a one time fee equivalent to about 59.00 USD . That is not bad and as I recall they alsoi GIVE you Canadian e911 included .

Now I have an asterisk PBX (no '9' or other prefix for outside calls)  and do business with a lot of Canadians. A freephoneline account would be great for me to use on my asterisk PBX in conjunction with Google voice. Google Voice gives me all of Canada to call but freephoneline would give me a canadian number showing to Canadian destinations (at least major cities) . if you are in Canada with a canadian address , use the freephoneline.ca 911 service and  Canada based 800 calling which is not the same as USA based 800 calling.

I do happen to already have a Canadian number for Canadian clients and it is based in Vancouver , but it does cost me a few dollars per month , so according to my math after about 18 months the freephoneline.ca unlock key will have paid for itself  in comparison to buying the stand-alone DID every month.

Of course you could have a HT502 with Google Voice and Freephoneline and I think you can probably work some dialplan fu to always force the 911 calls to go out via freephoneline regarless of the selected line. Pretty sure this works on Linksys/Sipura/Cisco ATAs at least.

Mark
Phat Phantom's phreaking phone phettish

markosjal

I can host your Google Voice accounts , GV911 accounts, and C*Net account to merge them into a single phone line with up to three extensions. just $20.00 USD per year. You have to also pay, a one time fee of 6 USD and your own GV911 yearly as well at $12 per year.  Each of the tree extensions gets its own C*Net number , and you get one ring group with its own C*Net number.

Call if interested
C*Net 1 777 3139
USA +1 503 489 7870
Phat Phantom's phreaking phone phettish

markosjal

Quote from: AE_Collector on January 01, 2017, 10:32:28 PM
I pay 9 or 10 cents (Canadian) per month for Greater Vancouver E911 service on my Telco pots line so $1 US per month for 911 service through Google voice is quite simply an outrageous price that will dissuade even more people from doing it.

First off the pennies you pay is a "bundled Price" Its like getting the phone line for 10 dollars more from your broadband provider.

When it comes to e911 on voip $1 per month is a good price comparatively. I think it is about that price from such Canadian providers like Les.net and VoIP.ms. Also, its not 911 from google it is from GV911.com but is accessible as a PSTN number form a google voice line.

So I assume AE Collector you are implying your POTS line costs you less than a dollar per month? The only way you can do that in Canada is freephoneline.ca and it is still not 100% Canadian coverage and does not include calls to USA, oh and $75.00 Canadian to connect to your own device or asterisk.

Oh Canada

Mark
Phat Phantom's phreaking phone phettish

AE_Collector

Quote from: markosjal on August 19, 2017, 02:47:17 AM
So I assume AE Collector you are implying your POTS line costs you less than a dollar per month? The only way you can do that in Canada is freephoneline.ca and it is still not 100% Canadian coverage and does not include calls to USA, oh and $75.00 Canadian to connect to your own device or asterisk.

Oh Canada

Mark

My pots line costs something like $30/month (before my employee discount) including quite a few features. The (Mandatory) e911 service charge is less than 10c/Month.

Terry

markosjal

10c a month on your bill however subsidized elsewhere in the 30 dollars a month

Mark
Phat Phantom's phreaking phone phettish

AE_Collector

Could be but I suspect this is only a charge to cover the Telcos connection costs to the 911 dispatch, not the funding to run the dispatch centre. That's paid for in our property taxes or other taxes.  10 cents per line per month times a couple of million landlines generates quite a bit of cash.

Terry