What kind of lines and equipment are you currently using?

[poplar1]

Dial tone can be from the following: Central Office, PBX, Hybrid Key, VOIP, Cell Phone adaptor.

POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service): Traditional telephone line from the phone company central office, over copper wires.  

PABX (Private Automatic Branch Exchange) : The dial tone you hear on a single line set comes from the PBX equipment. With single line sets, you usually "dial 9 for an outside line." At that point, you are connected to a trunk. On older systems, you would hear a second dial tone from the phone company central office. The trunk is a path to the telephone central office or other provider. Originally, the trunks were fed over the same copper outside cable pairs as the POTS lines, though they were supposedly conditioned. Trunks allow you to concentrate many outside calls on fewer pairs; calls from one PBX line (extension) to another PBX line don't go through the central office equipment.

Certain key systems (Hybrid) allow you to mix industry standard single line phones of any manufacturer(including rotary on some systems) along with proprietary multi-line phones that work only on that manufacturer's system. On a Panasonic 616 Key System that has not been reprogrammed, when you first pick up the handset on a single line set, you will hear dial tone produced by the Panasonic system, not an external dial tone. When you dial 9, you will hear dial tone from the outside provider such as AT&T.

VOIP: Magic Jack, for example, produces its own fake dial tone. I guess this reassures the users that you can really make a call using this gadget. (For some reason, voice mail systems don't recognize the tones coming from the Magic Jack+ that I tried.) The calls travel over the internet using your high speed computer connection. The adaptors that allow you to connect a phone to your computer line were not designed to be used with rotary phones, fax machines or alarm systems.

ALSO: There are adaptors such as the X-link BTN Gateway that allow you to connect standard single line corded phones. The adaptor then connects to your cell phone to make or receive calls. You don't need a traditional phone company analog line or an internet provider or cable company, just your activated cell phone.

[AE_Collector]

I tried to change my vote and it won't let me.

Try again wds. The ability to change your vote had evaporated so I put it back. It isn't the "default" set up.

Terry

[AE_Collector]

I have heard many people argue that cable provider dial tone ISN'T VOIP but I think that is probably a technicality since it isn't running over the internet but rather is piggybacked onto their cable network. Bottom line to me seems to me that if it isn't VOIP, it isn't far removed from VOIP.

Terry

[Owain]

Anyone ever tried running Voice-over-X25?