Hi everyone it's been awhile since I've been around. I've been getting up to speed on all the latest VOIP discussion but I've found nothing that answers my questions and dilemma that have come up.
We're looking into getting AT&T Uverse so we can upgrade our internet service, right now we have two AT&T POTS lines and DSL for internet. One of the pots lines has a second number and distinctive ring for a fax machine (the second, line a business line) and then the main house line.
Say we move over to Uverse, the cheapest thing to do to maintain those 3 numbers would be to convert the two lines to VOIP and make the 3rd (distinctive ring) number it's own POTS line for the fax (Uverse only allows up to two lines). That leaves us with the main house line and the business line on VOIP. Now here's my problem, the main house line is the line I use my rotary phones on, (302 is the main line's ringer) and there is no way I will allow my phones to become useless in dialing out.
I was looking into the rotatone and other pulse to tone converters but a few of them say they specifically won't work with Uverse modems, (it's already known that the Uverse modem is not pulse capable). I also saw the dial gizmo, has anyone used that one before? their website said nothing about what modems it might or might not be compatible with.
I know another option is finding a good used PBX, but that's gonna be out of the budget for awhile.
The other thing were considering is keeping the main number on POTS, and the two other numbers VOIP, but that's gonna cost more that way in the plan. (it will cost more that way because we need voicemail and caller ID on the main number, but not on a fax number)
Anyway, to finally get to the point. Does anyone have Uverse and have you found a way to make your rotary phones work on it? I'd love to know what you did.
Thanks,
Jonathan
You can get ATT Uverse with improved Internet service and not have to touch your POTS lines. That's the way we have it set up at home.
Quote from: JorgeAmely on July 25, 2011, 12:36:56 AM
You can get ATT Uverse with improved Internet service and not have to touch your POTS lines. That's the way we have it set up at home.
Thats exactly what I was thinking Jorge. I don't know the ins and outs of how AT&T markets Uverse TV but I have Telus Optik TV here in Western Canada and it is the same thing. Microsoft Mediaroom delivered over ADSL service via neighbourhood RDAC cabinets that are fiber fed so only "the last mile" of the circuit is copper. I currently have 31 meg ADSL service giving me three HDTV streams and one SDTV stream to the house along with 15 meg reserved for internet. Nothing else changed as far as my phone service and I have pretty much what GusHerb has. Two POTS lines. One is just the fax line and the other POTS line has two numbers on it (distinctive ringing), voice mail, call display AND the DSL/TV service.
Terry
Thanks guys. If we did that then I'd assume they would have to use the 3rd pair in the line coming to the house for the Uverse internet since I believe you can't do both POTS and Uverse internet on the same pair of wires (no idea about that but that's my impression).
I think keeping the two POTS lines as they are and then adding Uverse internet might be more expensive then doing two lines on VOIP and having a single POTS line, I'll have to start looking into that tomorrow.
There's so many options it's overwhelming, I've spent this whole day analyzing all of our available options that allow rotary/pulse dialing to STAY and internet speed to be improved vastly without increasing costs by too much.
Jorge you telling me that you have kept POTS and upgraded to Uverse internet at the same time is pretty much what I was hoping to hear. Did you have to use a separate wire pair for the internet service then? Did AT&T make a big stink about that?
The techs were saying that it's all on fiber optic now (I remember when they installed the fiber in the neighborhood 7 years ago...) and the difference between regular DSL service and the Uverse, is regular DSL service is converted to analog when it switches to copper where Uverse stays a digital signal all the way to the house. I'm not entirely clear on that but that is also my impression.
Terry your setup sounds just like Uverse. I hope they are the same in allowing the two POTS lines to stay and just add the improved internet service. I'll find out tomorrow hopefully.
Ditch the fax altogether and use fax-to-email service for incoming faxes if you really have to.
GusHerb:
All the Internet services, plus bunches of channels that we can't possibly ever watch come over the tip and ring wires of your POTS line. Plus we get to keep the POTS line.
Inside the phone utility box next to the house, they have a signal splitter that separates the Internet and TV signals one way and regular POTS the other way. The house wiring for all the phones in my house is connected to the POTS side of the splitter. The other side of the splitter goes to the Uverse gateway, which is pretty much like a router on steroids, because it handles all Internet services inside the house plus wireless access plus it serves the TV boxes (which essentially are internet devices with their own IP address) in the house PLUS 2 jacks for phones. We elected to keep our POTS line, however, if we had decided to use more modern phones, they would be connected to these two jacks. Currently, these jacks are not used.
I also elected not to use the wireless router inside the Uverse gateway. I use my own WRT54G router connected to the internet side of the gateway. To disable the Uverse gateway, I turned down the output power to the point where you can't see it anymore. Our internet ready printer is connected to the Uverse gateway, so that everyone in the house can use it.
It works very well. I can post some pictures of the installation when I get home tonite.
Quote from: JorgeAmely on July 25, 2011, 11:31:09 AM
GusHerb:
All the Internet services, plus bunches of channels that we can't possibly ever watch come over the tip and ring wires of your POTS line. Plus we get to keep the POTS line.
Inside the phone utility box next to the house, they have a signal splitter that separates the Internet and TV signals one way and regular POTS the other way. The house wiring for all the phones in my house is connected to the POTS side of the splitter. The other side of the splitter goes to the Uverse gateway, which is pretty much like a router on steroids, because it handles all Internet services inside the house plus wireless access plus it serves the TV boxes (which essentially are internet devices with their own IP address) in the house PLUS 2 jacks for phones. We elected to keep our POTS line, however, if we had decided to use more modern phones, they would be connected to these two jacks. Currently, these jacks are not used.
I also elected not to use the wireless router inside the Uverse gateway. I use my own WRT54G router connected to the internet side of the gateway. To disable the Uverse gateway, I turned down the output power to the point where you can't see it anymore. Our internet ready printer is connected to the Uverse gateway, so that everyone in the house can use it.
It works very well. I can post some pictures of the installation when I get home tonite.
When I was looking at my router (2Wire 2701HG) I discovered it allows me to turn the wireless off completely, I would assume the Uverse gateway would allow the same?? it's really only a beefier version of what we have so I would assume most of the settings are the same.
Apparently it's not gonna be cost effective to maintain BOTH pots lines and upgrade the internet as well, I learned today, I think that adds like 20+ dollars to the monthly bill, so were gonna look into just keeping the one line (main house number) on POTS and switching the home office line over to the VOIP, which I think should keep the monthly bill around the same. and I still get to keep my pulse dialing on one line at least. (haven't called around yet to get any updated numbers)
:UPDATE: Ok we ordered Uverse internet and TV (I didn't want it but my dad caved and got it for his own curiosity, we've never had pay TV before) Both phone lines are staying as is right now. After we get the new service we'll look into converting the business line over to VOIP with Vonage. it's quite a bit cheaper then paying for Uverse phone. Install date is the 11th of August.
Quote from: GusHerb on July 30, 2011, 03:41:16 PM
we've never had pay TV before
So you mean that you have never had cable TV or any other provider, just over the air reception?
You are going to love Uverse, I'm thinking its going to open upo a new UNIVERSE for you. Are you getting the PVR and more than one box (for more than one TV set)?
Terry
Quote from: AE_collector on July 30, 2011, 09:05:16 PM
Quote from: GusHerb on July 30, 2011, 03:41:16 PM
we've never had pay TV before
So you mean that you have never had cable TV or any other provider, just over the air reception?
You are going to love Uverse, I'm thinking its going to open upo a new UNIVERSE for you. Are you getting the PVR and more than one box (for more than one TV set)?
Terry
Just one box, for the TV in the family room. So I won't really get to use it ever (the parents dominate the family room)
I certainly have known what I've been missing all these years but I'm not a TV nut so I don't really care though it will be nice to have. It would be nicer to have it in my room, where when I do watch TV is up there. I was over at a friends house who has the whole Uverse package yesterday, playing around with everything getting to know the hardware for the "Uverse" system. She has Internet, Uverse phone, and TV.
I started playing around with the cable box and she never set it up for her 1080P HD TV, so I did and in the 720P and 1080P setting it cropped the system menu and guide fairly bad, I couldn't figure out what the deal was with that. I adjusted the zoom on the TV itself and that had nothing to do with the cropping of the menu...
Then I went into the interface of the 2Wire modem through the computer and started checking all those settings out and discovered I can ring the phones on command! that's a neat feature to have, now IF ONLY that modem would accept pulse dialing it would be PERFECT.
Here are some pictures of the ATT Uverse hardware the techs installed in my house.
# 1: this gray box interfaces to the POTS line that carries POTS plus the Uverse carrier and separates them. The black and yellow pair carries POTS to the rest of the house wiring, which didn't charge at all in this installation. The Uverse carrier goes to the gateway inside the house over the white shielded cable that exits the picture at 12 o'clock. The blue and blue-white pair is the original POTS line. The red-green pair is what returns from the house alarm and feeds the house wiring. This alarm can "cut-in" anytime it needs to. The rest of the hardware are leftovers from the first DSL installation we had in the house.
# 2: The gateway box sits in between a computer and printer. Notice the white cable that arrives from the signal splitter.
# 3: The back of the gateway shows the white input cable and another white cable that goes to the TV box. The blue cable provides internet connection to the Dell PC and to the printer on the left. Notice that the jacks for the phones are not used, since we chose to keep the original POTS line. Another jack from the gateway goes to these routers, which in turn provide wireless and wired Internet access to other PCs in the house.
# 4: The routers reach the gateway with wiring provided by the builder of the house.
# 5: This is the first TV box. It has a hard disk to store recorded shows. It is connected to the gateway and it has its own IP address.
# 6: The second TV box is smaller in size because it does not have a hard disk of its own; it uses the hard disk of the first box to store shows. It has its own IP address as well.
The advantage of this system is that if you are traveling and forget to record a particular show, you can log in to the ATT Uverse site, locate your box, log in into it and change your show recording choices. We have done that only once.
Quote from: JorgeAmely on July 31, 2011, 05:29:22 PM
Here are some pictures of the ATT Uverse hardware the techs installed in my house.
# 1: this gray box interfaces to the POTS line that carries POTS plus the Uverse carrier and separates them. The black and yellow pair carries POTS to the rest of the house wiring, which didn't charge at all in this installation. The Uverse carrier goes to the gateway inside the house over the white shielded cable that exits the picture at 12 o'clock. The blue and blue-white pair is the original POTS line. The red-green pair is what returns from the house alarm and feeds the house wiring. This alarm can "cut-in" anytime it needs to. The rest of the hardware are leftovers from the first DSL installation we had in the house.
# 2: The gateway box sits in between a computer and printer. Notice the white cable that arrives from the signal splitter.
# 3: The back of the gateway shows the white input cable and another white cable that goes to the TV box. The blue cable provides internet connection to the Dell PC and to the printer on the left. Notice that the jacks for the phones are not used, since we chose to keep the original POTS line. Another jack from the gateway goes to these routers, which in turn provide wireless and wired Internet access to other PCs in the house.
# 4: The routers reach the gateway with wiring provided by the builder of the house.
# 5: This is the first TV box. It has a hard disk to store recorded shows. It is connected to the gateway and it has its own IP address.
# 6: The second TV box is smaller in size because it does not have a hard disk of its own; it uses the hard disk of the first box to store shows. It has its own IP address as well.
The advantage of this system is that if you are traveling and forget to record a particular show, you can log in to the ATT Uverse site, locate your box, log in into it and change your show recording choices. We have done that only once.
Thanks for posting these pictures!
The installation I was looking at they are using Cat5 to feed the modem which then uses that coax port on the back to feed the cable boxes. For the phone it's running back down another pair in the same Cat5 cable from the back of the modem, all the way back out to the NID outside, then back inside right on the other side of the NID where it then splits out to all the phone jacks in the house.
It seems the Uverse system is designed with alot of varying wiring methods in mind. Interesting to see yours is fed with coax cable. Was there a particular reason they fed your modem with coax right from the splitter instead of using Cat5?
Gus:
The ATT techs chose coax because the house is pre-wired with coax that arrives from every room in the house to the box just above the box in picture 1. You can fish the coax cables easily from the phone box. I really preferred this solution, otherwise the choice would have been to have them install coax or Cat5 over the walls and I would have declined the service if that had been the case.
Jorge:
I am just trying to compare your set up to what we have here. Is your gateway a D-Link box? It looks just like the one I have except mine doesn't have the jacks for phone service output on the back. At least I don't think it does.
I haven't seen a gateway fed by coax before either. Output from the gateway to other STB's (Set top boxes) YES, but not theinput. Obviously it works but my gateway only has one coax connector and that is an output to go to other STB's.
You have one of each boxes, correct? What is the inputs to each box fed by? I see 3 RJ45/CAT5 cables out of your gateway.aid one feeds the computer, one feeds the WLS routers since you kept your WLS routers rather than using the WLS built into the Gateway. So there is one more RJ45/CAT5 cable to one of the STB's? What feeds the other STB or is there another router somewhere that picks up both STB's?
Good alarm system by the way (DSC)......
Terry
Quote from: JorgeAmely on August 01, 2011, 12:32:21 PM
Gus:
The ATT techs chose coax because the house is pre-wired with coax that arrives from every room in the house to the box just above the box in picture 1. You can fish the coax cables easily from the phone box. I really preferred this solution, otherwise the choice would have been to have them install coax or Cat5 over the walls and I would have declined the service if that had been the case.
I'll be interested to see what our installer will want to do. Coax is strung everywhere imaginable in our house. (and in a horrible un-neat manor too...) We have a central TV antenna in the attic feeding all of the TV's in the house. I know my dad is gonna insist that they don't disturb the current coax runs so they will have to run a new feeder to the TV. A cable will have to be run from one end of the house to the other since the modem and family room are on completely opposite ends about 60 feet apart. the modem right now is located right inside from the NID outside.
Your modem is fed with Coax but what are the cable boxes fed with? from what I take if your using the coax connector on the modem to feed it then you couldn't feed your cable boxes with coax since there is only one coax connection on the modem.
OK new internet and TV is here! Everything went fairly decent. Installer insisted that the new modem be put behind the TV (in the old recession where the tube TV used to be) and I wasn't having it. That's a terrible location for home wired networking purposes and wireless reception. He argued that he is to make the decision on where it's best blah blah blah and if you don't do what he says there will be a 55 dollar fee for a "custom" installation... I knew right away this was the pressure from AT&T talking, not the installer being an asshole (quite a nice guy actually)
Installer used Cat5 to connect the modem to the cable box. We (after lots of arguing and my dad turning blue in the face about to kill this guy) came to the agreement to use the home run he already ran from the NID to the cable box, use the existing home run cable from the NID to the modem (also cat5) and use two of the spare pairs on it for TV and make the splice into the TV run in the box. (could have just ran straight from the modem to the TV but this guy was dead set on putting the modem behind the TV when he ran the cable)
Used a DSL splitter that fits on the NID (Balun as he called it) since we kept both phone lines.
Internet is so far working as it's supposed to, TV is working fine. Extremely happy with the upgraded speed.
He gave us some tips on dealing with the big evil faceless AT&T... Talking to him really confirms just how terrible they treat everyone including there own service people.. I hate big evil faceless corporate monsters. Been reading the Rape Of Ma Bell lately (read it when I was alot younger and couldn't really follow it like I do now haha) and all the pieces just go together. Makes me wish even more that the original AT&T/Ma Bell were still around...
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1428846810.png
Seems like with just about everything, people have a script or pattern they follow, and to get then to vary from that pattern is tremendously difficult. I know with my cell provider, when you call, the agents have a script they follow and they WILL NOT go off script. It's not until about three layers up that you can actually discuss something with someone, rather than just answer questions off a flow chart.
Glad you got it installed (mostly) the way you wanted! I like those bandwidth numbers! ;-)
As for the old Ma Bell, remember Ernestine? "We're the phone company. We don't care, we don't have to."
Guess I'll be the guinea pig here. I ordered two DialGizmos on the strength of the e-mail received the other night. Justin Vietz said that they will work with U-verse and has sold many in the states. I gambled on two of them
Now the fun with the installation. First, the installer left the box open to the elements. It rained early this morning, but it still works. I closed the box tonight. Surprised that my wife's puppy did not snag the wires from it. Outside cabling is sloppy, I'm going to make an issue of it as it will make for a PITA to mow or weed whip as the cable is diagonal from the interface to the underground cable path. A neater installation would to go horizontal to the downtube leading to the basaement.
Second, I think the polarity to the phone side is reversed. While the rotaries will not work, the Touch Tone in the master bedroom. a 1969 Trimline would not break dialtone. Reversed the tip and ring, works now. During the installation, the tech needed access to the wireless transmitter for the cordless GE. He didn't say why, but I suspect he reversed the polarity at the block instead of at the interface.
As soon as I get some time from work to schedule a tech visit
Quote from: Shovelhead on August 18, 2011, 09:36:50 PM
Guess I'll be the guinea pig here. I ordered two DialGizmos on the strength of the e-mail received the other night. Justin Vietz said that they will work with U-verse and has sold many in the states. I gambled on two of them
Now the fun with the installation. First, the installer left the box open to the elements. It rained early this morning, but it still works. I closed the box tonight. Surprised that my wife's puppy did not snag the wires from it. Outside cabling is sloppy, I'm going to make an issue of it as it will make for a PITA to mow or weed whip as the cable is diagonal from the interface to the underground cable path. A neater installation would to go horizontal to the downtube leading to the basaement.
Second, I think the polarity to the phone side is reversed. While the rotaries will not work, the Touch Tone in the master bedroom. a 1969 Trimline would not break dialtone. Reversed the tip and ring, works now. During the installation, the tech needed access to the wireless transmitter for the cordless GE. He didn't say why, but I suspect he reversed the polarity at the block instead of at the interface.
As soon as I get some time from work to schedule a tech visit
I'll be interested to hear how those dialgizmo's work. We almost got Uverse phone but I decided NO since then I wouldn't be able to just plug a rotary phone in and dial without something in between it and the modem to convert pulse to tone. My other concern was reliability, I'm skeptical of VOIP and for good reason. Two friends of the family that live not even a half mile away both have Uverse and they both have trouble with it all too often. Just this past week one of them had no phone service for 4 days, the other one I couldn't get through to there house no matter how many time's I tried there number, and most all of that one day.
My other reason for not getting it is i HATE any kind of wait for a call to go through from the time when you finish dialing the number. calling there VOIP lines takes a few seconds. Dialing land line to land line takes all of 1 second to go through, and two seconds long dialing another land line long distance.
Our installer was fairly neat and orderly in his installation, he mainly copied how I routed my wiring that i ran for the phone jacks. Although a couple days later my OCD kicked in and I was re routing that cat 5 he ran for the TV and adding many additional staples. I also found myself making the wiring in the NID look absolutely neat and perfect.
The tech is supposed to be out on Sunday evening(!) to fix my concerns. The Dialgizmos did not show up yet so that will be updated later in the week. BDM and I spoke the other night about a a dial tone issue with my 233G since the changeover.
Well, I think the decision has been made to turn one of our lines into VOIP in the name of money saving. It will be the business line, the one that we mostly don't use and I don't use my old phones on. Vonage offers 11.99 for 300 minutes, Uverse offers 25 dollars for 250 minutes. Does anyone have any reason at all to use Uverse voice instead of Vonage? (call quality, reliability etc) I don't care about the fact that with Uverse voice I can just use our existing modem.
Also, does anyone with Vonage have an ATA/modem that accepts pulse dialing? I heard things in the past about that, but don't know where I heard that from.
I recently had a problem with a customer using Vonage. Their security system wouldn't reliably communicate over Vonage with the monitoring station. Format was SIA. A change to the 800 number for the monitoring statIon seems to have fixed it. Presumably getting the call off of VOIP and onto PSTN sooner is why the 800 number fixed the problem.
Terry
Still waiting for the Dialgizmos to show up. They said that it may take up to fifteen days to arrive in the states.
Update on the tip and ring reversal. The tech was out Sunday and verified that the wiring was correct. We discussed phone design and polarity issues with early touch tones. He stated that there would be no problems with reversing the tip and ring wires.
And as a P.S. I caused confusion to the call center when I said that there was a problem with the tip and ring wire polarity. They had no clue to what I was referring to.
DialGizmo's arrived today. Installed them, THEY WORK! At least on my 102 and 302. My three slot, well I have some work to do on the dial per my conversations with BDM last week.
I only did a regular dial out, still have to learn all the new features the Gizmos add to the mix.
Quote from: Shovelhead on August 26, 2011, 11:27:48 PM
DialGizmo's arrived today. Installed them, THEY WORK! At least on my 102 and 302. My three slot, well I have some work to do on the dial per my conversations with BDM last week.
I only did a regular dial out, still have to learn all the new features the Gizmos add to the mix.
Glad to hear they work! If we ever get forced into a service that doesn't accept pulse I could use those then.
Only problem is if I have to have one per phone, it could get costly. I have a rotary phone in almost every room, and in the family room two of them on each end of the room. Then the kitchen and library have touchtone Trimlines, so I was quickly scouring the website to see if it was ok to use a touchtone phone with a dialgizmo connected. (if I did have one dialgizmo connected as a whole house device)
Nothing says if it will effect touchtone dialing or not.
Quote from: GusHerb on August 27, 2011, 03:24:54 AM
...I was quickly scouring the website to see if it was ok to use a touchtone phone with a dialgizmo connected. (if I did have one dialgizmo connected as a whole house device)
Nothing says if it will effect touchtone dialing or not.
I would imagine it would be fine -- the DTMF should just be audio content just like voice to the Dialgizmo and the Dialgizmo should just pass it through untouched. Of course that's just conjecture on my part.... ;-)
So I had DSL for many many years since it first came out. Mainly because i despised COX communications and thier premium charges and forcing people to bundle for cheaper prices. so after waiting for AT&T's sloth approuch to running Uverse lines finally this month i was able to order Uverse internet to replace the older DSL after waiting six years or so.
So they send me the modem and self setup instructions etc. When I had ordered u-verse Internet I never requested to turn off POTS. So when my appointment time came, the phone line died and the uverse modem wouldn't connect. So using my cellphone as of course the phone line is dead and I can't dial 611 I call AT&T uverse support. They tell me that Uverse is fine and that after reviewing my order someone "Forgot" to note that I was keeping the POTS part of the line. So they set it up wrong! Now I get to wait two days with NO internet and NO POTS! What great service!!! I can't Imagine in the days of MA Bell that customer service/ordering dept was this bad! I think AT&T got worse or maybe it was SBC that originally set it up. either way they came from same company! I hope once this is resolved it just works for many years like my DSL did!!!
Once you get all the speed bumps smoothed out you will love Uverse. Switched from DISH and I don't miss their Customer "Service" a bit. AT&T has been a joy to deal with so far. At least they didn't hang up on me like DISH did once during a tech assistance call. Intentionally by their C/S rep because after almost two hours on the phone I told him that I wanted someone to come out to fix the problem. He told me that I was uncooperative and he was done with me. Unfortunately for him he gave me his name and a tech case number at the start of the call and I wrote it down. ;D Bet he got a tuneup later that day from a supervisor due to my callback ;D
We had a few things to iron out, one being that our WE Touch-Tones (circa 1969) would not break dial tone. Switched polarity via tip and ring, viola, it works. A couple of Dialgizmos installed and the 102, the 302 and the 233G all work again.
As a generalization I'd suggest that folks here not mess with "bundles" of any kind unless they're prepared to undergo various forms of lawful torture to keep their old phones working and maintain reliable service.
Very often these "new" types of service don't operate with rotary phones. Very often they use VOIP transmission which means no modems either (don't laugh, there are still viable uses for modems: I use dialup to connect to PBXs for remote programming). VOIP, depending on how it's implemented, can also result in a decrease in transmission quality, sometimes as bad as a cellphone (G.729 compression).
Usually these services depend on ATAs that in turn depend on grid power and have a backup battery that might be good for a couple of hours of standby: not a good thing in natural disasters that knock out the grid power.
Keep the POTS line if you have one. Only way to be certain that things continue to work as they always have. And it's reassuring to know the phone will keep working during power failures.
Well its friday!! and i STILL HAVE NO INTERNET OR POTS!!! my patience with AT&T is running short. I will call them when i get home and ask what the holdup is!!! I can't understand why it would take a week to login to a server and update my account and turn POTS back on. I just don't get what takes so long!!! I hope u-verse internet blows away DSL Speeds I had for the last 6 years!!!
Be nice when you talk to them: honey works better than vinegar.
Curiosity works best of all: you're trying to solve a mystery.
Emotions are contagious, and curiosity is particularly viral, so put your puzzle-solving hat on before you make the phone call to ask what's up.
BTW, I had a turn-up & test with AT&T on one of their new IP-based "bundled" business phone services for a client last week. All went perfectly according to plan. I did have to remind them to give me G.711 transmission (landline-quality audio) rather than G.729 (cellphone audio), but that was all done and everything worked.
Quote from: GG on October 12, 2011, 10:33:59 AM
As a generalization I'd suggest that folks here not mess with "bundles" of any kind unless they're prepared to undergo various forms of lawful torture to keep their old phones working and maintain reliable service.
Very often these "new" types of service don't operate with rotary phones. Very often they use VOIP transmission which means no modems either (don't laugh, there are still viable uses for modems: I use dialup to connect to PBXs for remote programming). VOIP, depending on how it's implemented, can also result in a decrease in transmission quality, sometimes as bad as a cellphone (G.729 compression).
Usually these services depend on ATAs that in turn depend on grid power and have a backup battery that might be good for a couple of hours of standby: not a good thing in natural disasters that knock out the grid power.
Keep the POTS line if you have one. Only way to be certain that things continue to work as they always have. And it's reassuring to know the phone will keep working during power failures.
Amen...Never give up your POTS line. I sure won't!
I haven't had a Plain Old telephone line for three years now. I don't miss it a bit, well maybe the radio station that supplied music on talk from Verizon that was "my CPE inside cabling," even though I proved it to them with a butt set at the DMark, but I regress. I went to Comcast digital and it has been wonderful. More of my old phones ring when connected than when I had Verizon. I purchased a Panasonic 616 for testing old phones and I never looked back. POTS line was almost $40 with no LD back when I terminated service. To keep it around would have cost me $500 a year. With number portability, we got to keep the number we had had forever. A Pansonic 616 for the cost of 1 month of a POTS line was the best investment I ever made. For serious collectors it is a must. Just my humble opinion....Doug
Quote from: Doug Rose on October 16, 2011, 08:06:34 AM
I haven't had a Plain Old telephone line for three years now. I don't miss it a bit, well maybe the radio station that supplied music on talk from Verizon that was "my CPE inside cabling," even though I proved it to them with a butt set at the DMark, but I regress. I went to Comcast digital and it has been wonderful. More of my old phones ring when connected than when I had Verizon. I purchased a Panasonic 616 for testing old phones and I never looked back. POTS line was almost $40 with no LD back when I terminated service. To keep it around would have cost me $500 a year. With number portability, we got to keep the number we had had forever. A Pansonic 616 for the cost of 1 month of a POTS line was the best investment I ever made. For serious collectors it is a must. Just my humble opinion....Doug
Most of the time, a new digital phone line will be just fine. However, in due course, for any variety of reasons, the cable will go down, and then you won't have phone service. My Time Warner cable TV service suffers routine outages, some of which last for more than a whole day. Still, they are constantly harassing me to bundle it with digital phone service. I think not.
The cable companies, as well as the cell phone vendors, are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the government from requiring back-up power for their systems. This is understandable, as backing up a million cell transmitters will cost a ton of money. My POTS line comes from the Culver City C.O., just over a mile from my house. I have had the privilege of visiting the basement there, and have seen close-up the rows of batteries and the diesel generator which should protect my service if and when the time comes. I have had the same phone number since 1964, and in all that time I can't ever recall a time when my service was down for more than the time it took some repairman to finish his doings on the pole. JMHO.
Dave
Ultimately that is a problem of using the wrong architecture for a network: making technologies do things they are not really suited for.
Looking at Paul F's "zone charts" in the "Help ID this phone" topic, you see 302s in the long rural lines category beyond Zone 5: this worked because the central office could feed power to carrier equipment located along the long cable spans.
With a multitude of cellphone carriers, that's not possible as it is under a regulated monopoly. So each carrier has to provide its own backup batteries at each cell tower, and for the most part these batteries are only good for a few hours rather than days, and of course don't have diesel generators to keep them charged.
Coaxial cable was originally developed as an interexchange carrier medium for long hauls, up to and including undersea cables. In that role the equipment at each end, at the COs, is backed up by the CO battery banks and diesel generators. Coax also made possible "CATV" or "Community Antenna Television," to bring TV to suburban and rural areas beyond the reach of household antennae: one big antenna tower plus a coax cable network could serve a town. This morphed into "cable TV" with its growing multitude of channels. (And originally it was also sold as having "no commercials" because you paid for your subscription!)
Coax is ideally suited for those applications. But it requires local terminal equipment at each subscriber's location, and that in turn depends on the power grid. So making it do double-duty to provide telephone service, is stretching the architecture beyond its designed limits.
Further, when the potential subscriber base is spread out over a multitude of competing carriers, and each carrier's market share can fluctuate almost at random, none of those carriers is able to engage in the kind of long-term planning and capital investment that characterized the regulated monopoly model. This is why the cable & cell carriers balk at the thought of having to invest in more robust power supply infrastructure.
Lastly, investment itself has changed from a dividend-based model (buy stock, keep the stock, earn your profit on the dividends of the company's profits) to a trading or speculation based model (buy and sell rapidly to profit from moment-to-moment changes in stock prices). This has also spelled the end of what used to be known as "safe stocks" such as utilities and "industrials." It is also ultimately what led to the recent economic bubbles and the present economic depression, that in turn spawned populist protest movements in both political parties (the Tea Party among Republicans, and Occupy Wall Street among Democrats).
So, to get things back to where they should be, we would: a) restore the rules that made for a stable investment climate, b) regulate the telecom infrastructure according to sound engineering principles.
Two other examples of what that looks like in practice:
As it is, you can download a movie via Netflix. When millions of people are doing that, the internet groans under the load, and carriers have to start charging "measured rates" for data service.
Under the "new old paradigm", you would order the movie via the internet over DSL on your phone line, and it would be downloaded via the cable TV network into your set-top box for viewing at your leisure. The internet would not groan under the load of being stretched to serve the purpose (television) best served by coaxial cable networks.
As it is, you have fragmented cellular and landline service, with power interruptions and bad audio on cellular, and neglected station wiring in buildings as an impediment to landline service.
Under the "new old paradigm," cell towers would be backed up by central office power supply, telcos could invest in improving cellular audio to near-landline quality, telcos could invest in upgrading the inside wiring in buildings, and you would have one phone number that rang both your landline and mobile at the same time (with a call-transfer feature between them as in Centrex).
And the same rules that made it possible for each type of carrier to do what it does best, would also smooth out fluctuations in the economy, from the present "bulimia/anorexia" model (boom and bust, binge and purge), to a normal business cycle where the fluctuations were moderate rather than extreme.
We can have this if we want it: start by writing to your elected officials.
FINALLY!!! I have uverse working WITH POTS!!!
I called AT&T again and this time they sent out a Tech. I was glad becuase I was certian they messed up wiring the line for uverse. It turns out they disconnected the POTS wires and left the wires hanging in the tech closet and hooked my original phoneline directly to the DSLAM Fiber optic Wires from the fiber switch on the street. After finding my original POTS wires, I asked if he could hook the DSLAM Wires to the yellow/Black Pair in my main phone wire and the POTS wires to red/green. he agreed and hooked it up this way, I dont have to use DSL FILTERS!!! He was an AT&T employee since 1980!!! he remebered the old days and it was fun chatting with this tech. I showed him some of my phones and he thought it was really neat and didn't charge me anything for the extra wiring! I guess I made out after all. Had they not messed it up I wouldn't have met this guy or gotten the custom wiring to my condo!
Great to hear it! All's well that ends well. And now you have the best of both worlds, and a chat with a cool dude from the telco.
We got the whole U-Verse package in bulk (Television, Internet, AND Phone) last October. I was a big fan of AT&T until U-Verse came to my house, and I'm sure that you can understand why. When we first got U-Verse, I still had a 28-year-old non-cable ready TV hooked up (with an adapter) to the cable output in the basement. We previously had Comcast X-finity, and I could pick up channels 2-13 on the Basic Analog system because, at the time, Comcast still supported local analog channels (as of April 24, they are 100% digital). I was able to use the knobs to change channels, and if I wanted digital cable, all I had to do was disconnect a little cable box from another TV, hook it up to this TV, and get over 100 channels.
So when we got U-Verse, there were two problems: no analog cable at all, rendering the tuning knobs useless. I couldn't just plug the cable into the output. I needed the box, which I thought wasn't the end of the world, but it still bothered me. Well, since I wanted to test U-Verse cable on this old TV, I removed the box from another TV already programmed with the box. When I tried to hook it up, I was told that I couldn't just move boxes from one TV to another like I did with Comcast X-finity. I needed the technician to come over to my house to re-program the cable box for this TV. At that point, I just said "screw it" and moved that TV into the back room unable to pick up more than 1 over-the-air channel. I knew that the technician would not program a cable box for such an old TV.
I was reluctantly coped with that until we got to the phone situation. First, we were only receiving Caller ID on 1 phone (out of 4). We get a lot of ridiculous automated sales calls, and we wanted to avoid picking up the phone to such callers. Next, as you all know, I couldn't dial out on my Model 500 rotary phone (yet calls still came in). And of course, I could not find any pulse-to-tone converters that functioned with AT&T, perhaps the only major telephone provider to go 100% pulse-dial free. I was told that U-Verse saved us $180 per month over Xfinity. Personally, I think that using my rotary dial phone, having Caller ID, and being able to move cable boxes at will from one TV to another is worth more than that per month. In the grand scheme of things, nothing is really cheaper. If you're saving money on something like this, you're probably sacrificing something else that you enjoy whose value is equal to or greater than the money saved. Therefore, the benefit of $180 less per month doesn't outweigh the "real" cost to you.
It all sounds terribly expensive to me. But then I'm cheap and pay:
- about £10 a month for landline phone (evening and weekend calls inclusive and my daytime calls are few). And the line supports pulse dialling :-)
- about £7 a month for internet (8MBps / 10 GB a month with Unlimited overnight usage)
- internet includes a free VoIP number (but not calls)
- another free VoIP number from sipgate.co.uk with calls about 1p/min.
- I don't have any subscription TV but have to pay the £145.50 per year TV licence (which is compulsory for all TV viewing and pays for the BBC)
For the TV, "Freeview" (digital terrestrial television) gives about 50 channels (about 10 'proper' channels excluding shopping etc) including the 4 peak-time adult BBC channels, 2 daytime children's BBC channels (all advert-free), a movie channel, etc. http://www.freeview.co.uk/Channels
I know little about U-Verse TV other than that it runs on the Microsoft Media Room platform which is what my Telus Optik TV in Canada runs on. A fanatastic system that blows away all of the other competitors so far.
I am wondering if there is confusion with regards to moving your set top box. I can pop into programming on my STB's to change it from 4x3 to 16x9 output and 480/720/1080 etc to work properly on different TV's. What you can't necesarily do is just move the STBB to another room and connect it to an old cable (or network) connection and expect it to work. If Mediaroom is running on Co-ax in your house the system turns those co-ax runs into an HPNA network which is nothing like the old analog coax feed to a TV. Thus you need a STB for every TV even if it is an ancient TV.
If you know what you are doing you can likely heat up an old coax in another room for a STB but previously unused (with U-Verse) runs aren't likely already connected and ready to go. Special HPNA splitters are required as well.
Here if we have a phone line with Optik TV it arrives at the house on copper so is a regular POTS phone line with ADSL on it to run the TV and Internet. Dial pulse is still supported as well. If we have FIOS (fibre to the house) the phone line is on the fibre and is seperated out to an ATA and connected into the twisted pair wiring inside the house.
On a side note, the system is capable of so much more than an ancient CRT TV can deliver. With everyone dumping their old CRT TV's for flat screen LCD/Plasma TV's it is dead easy to find used CRT TV's with slightly better resolution and lots of different types of Inputs (rather than just co-ax inputs) that will work considerably better with U-Verse or other TV providers and they can easily be found for free.
MW: I merged your topic into this existing U-Verse TV discussion.
Terry