VoIP seirvices that do not support rotary dials

[Phonesrfun]

I wonder if we need to have a sticky read-only topic in our forum on how to tell if your service provider does or does not support rotary pulse dialing.

It seems to me that we have had a lot of new folks dropping by lately who have probably bought a rotary phone only to wind up disapointed because they cannot dial out due to the lack of support from their dial tone provider. 

I think some sort of informational place with symptoms, how to test, and then offering some solutions might be good.

Any thoughts?

[Matilo Telephones]

I think a lot of lurkers and passers by on this forum have questions on exactly this subject. So it might be very helpfull, IMHO.

[WEBellSystemChristian]

That's a great idea for a topic!

I know Magic Jack and Ooma do not support rotary alone, just to add to the list.

A Panasonic 616 wired to them works well, but the pulse-to-tone converters work terribly!

[JimH]

I have Comcast cable telephone.  When it was installed, no problem, the rotarys worked.  Suddenly they would not break dialtone.  I had a tech come out and switch the modem, problem solved.  Now suddenly it's not working anymore.  I was told the modems do "update downloads" or something.  I'm thinking of going back to the old AT&T  landline.

[Under Dog]

We have Frontier fibre optic connections out here.  Fortunately, the old rotary phones still work on them.  Pretty sure they pulled out the copper for the fibre, and we cannot go back at this point...

[Bill]

I could be wrong, but I'm not sure that the name of the service provider gives all the information we need. I say thisd because a given provider may use any of several different modems when doing the installation (whatever is cheapest at the moment, I imagine), and different modems may have different capabilities.

In my case,  Cox called me a week ago and offered me an upgraded package at a reduced price. I accepted, and the Tech came out Friday to install a new modem to handle the higher Internet speeds, as well as the digital telephone. Previously I had a Motorola SB4100 modem and a separate digital phone interface box, and the combo did indeed support pulse dialing. When the tech arrived, box under his arm, I immediately asked if the new modem would support old-fashioned pulse dialing. He assured me that it would - but he went back to his truck and got a different box. The new modem is a Ubee DVW326B all-in-one (Internet and phone modem), and it does support pulse dialing. But Cox apparently can use other modems that do not support it.

Perhaps when answering the question, we need to specify both the service provder and the modem.

Incidentally, the tech announced the downside of this change as he was finishing the installation. "Your house alarm system might not be compatible with VOIP. You should check with your alarm company. Goodbye." Sure enough, the alarm system could no longer communicate - who knows why. My only option is apparently to retrofit the alarm with a radio communication box, to replace the phone communication. Cost is $125 up front, plus $5 a month added to the bill. Bummer, dude.

Just a thought.

Bill

[unbeldi]

Indeed,  VoIP service providers, whether the incumbent telecos, the cable companies, or pure-play ITSPs, such as Vonage, use various types of ATA equipment which must always be mentioned when making comparisons.

Some may even still use multiple VoIP protocols.  For example Optimum ran SIP and MGCP service simultaneously for a long time, and I don't know if they have weeded out the MGCP system by now. When they gave me a DOCSIS 3.0 modem at one time (a few years ago), because I complaint about dropouts, I noticed that my service ran on SIP all of a sudden.

Over time, Vonage has used at least a dozen different terminal adapters.  Some support dial pulse, some don't. I think all I have had did.

So, indeed, it is not the service provider that matters the most, it is the specific piece of equipment that matters and the software version that is running in these.  Dial pulse service requires hardware support in the analog terminal adapter, which is provided by the serial line interface circuit (SLIC) chip, but it can be disabled by the software loaded, so a service provider may in fact no longer support it by the version of software they load into the unit remotely.

[persido]

I have Verizon Fios TV, internet and telephones, all my telephones work fine with Fios.

Scot

[twocvbloke]

I think I'd have to second the device-naming rather than service-naming, as a lot of the service names mentioned aren't available worldwide, whereas the hardware itself usually is (often with some regional variations), so naming what device you're using is more useful, of course there is the issue of firmware gaining or dropping support, but there's often generic firmware available to use instead (assuming you own the device and are allowed to use it in a customised setup)...

So, for me, a Linksys PAP2T, no good for pulse-dialling, either in firmware or hardware, though handy for use as a ringdown device...

[Bill]

Followup to my Post #5 above. As it turns out, the alarm system failure has nothing to do with VOIP.

The tech from the alarm company came out to install the radio link, and asked who my service provider is. When I said "Cox", he said "Oh, well, we can fix that. For some reason Cox always reverses the incoming and outgoing pairs within the alarm box." It took him less than a minute to exchange the pairs in the alarm box, another minute to confirm with his office that the fix was good and the alarm system works, and he packed up to leave.

Being an old phone guy, I couldn't just let him leave without more information. His explanation, confirmed by a quick Internet search after he left, is this. The incoming phone line from the street is first routed directly to the alarm box. Inside the panel is a relay that connects the incoming line to the feed to the rest of the house. Under normal circumstances, the house phones work normally through the relay connections. But when an alarm is tripped, the relay drops out, disconnecting the house phone distribution from the incoming line. (This is called "seizing the line.") Now the alarm panel has exclusive use of the incoming phone line, without interference from anything else in the house, and uses it dial out to the monitoring service.

For some reason, Cox reverses the incoming and outgoing lines at the alarm box, then re-reverses them somewhere else in the system, probably at the modem. When Cox changed out the modem from a two-part set (Internet in one box, phone in another) to an all-in-one, the extra reversal was undone, and the alarm couldn't dial out when it needed to.

Food for thought.

Bill

[poplar1]

One would hope that if Cox wants to be in the dial tone business, they'd train their techs how to install an RJ-31X jack.

I now understand why the fire marshall in GA requires at least one dedicated line for commercial fire alarms. The backup line can be shared with telephones, so long as a properly installed RJ-31X excludes the phones when the alarm is in use.

[IIfx]

Comcast Digital Voice used to support pulse dialing. But now for some random reason Comcast is going through and disabling the pulse dialing feature on their soft-switches, actually enacting the policy of "rotary phones not supported."

So, what used to work for months and months is now disabled due to some over obsessive engineer who had to follow every letter of policy and disable a software function that costs $0 to run.
There are still areas in Comcast's footprint that support pulse dialing, but it will one day just cease to work.

[unbeldi]

Comcast Digital Voice used to support pulse dialing. But now for some random reason Comcast is going through and disabling the pulse dialing feature on their soft-switches, actually enacting the policy of "rotary phones not supported."

So, what used to work for months and months is now disabled due to some over obsessive engineer who had to follow every letter of policy and disable a software function that costs $0 to run.
There are still areas in Comcast's footprint that support pulse dialing, but it will one day just cease to work.

I think you have to be more fair to the engineers and policy makers.
I am almost certain there is no such "Policy" of disabling pulse dialing at the service provider level. The soft-switches do not even know or need to know about what your telephone is capable of.  There is most certainly no feature on the soft-switches to enable or disable pulse dialing. They only see the digital SIP or MGCP signaling from the analog terminal adapter (ATA).  The processing of this feature depends entirely on the ATA that is either attached to your CATV modem/router or is built-in to it,  as the trend has been to provide cheaper devices.

The fault most likely lies with the equipment manufacturers who design the units and simply use cheaper SLIC chips now that don't include DP decoding anymore. This has been a trend in VoIP terminal adapters for many years.  It is usually also the equipment manufacturers who provide firmware upgrades for the devices and remove such feature capabilities from the software because they don't provide any NEW devices anymore that could use the feature.  This may happen even without the knowledge of the service provider who simply pushes the new firmwares into the customer devices when upgrades come along.

It is not the "service" that provides pulse-dialing, but the adapter that the telephone is connected to.

[andre_janew]

I know that magicjack does not support a rotary dial.  However, they do have a dial displayed on the computer screen that you can use with your mouse.   It is also possible to type in the number with the numbers on the top of the computer keyboard.  If you must use an antique phone with a VoIP service, use a phone with no dial.  A WE302A works very well for me!

[Phonesrfun]

I haven't tried Magic Jack for a couple years, at least.  The one I had was about the size of an over-sized thumb drive and of course, getting all its power from the USB port, did not have enough oomf to drive even a single REN 1.0 ringer.  Did they increase the size of the MJ ATA, or is it still the thumb drive concept?  If so, you must not use the ringer in the 302.