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Ooma
ark_ader:
I have this setup at home in the UK, but it involves a series of systems that pretty much covers any telephone (and most external internet) facilities, including voicemail, fax, and dial up. My system uses Skype for long distance calling (our family is Skyped) and reduces telephone charges around £10 a quarter. Before we had calling cards, but our telephone provider is sneaky and started to charge us for 0800. I have a mobile and I do not use the minutes up properly (like 400 minutes a month goes to waste) so we looked at only getting a mobile only scenario.
I have a Skype to BT adapter and with works on a Win 9X legacy system with Super Voice. Its an old IBM 240 laptop with built-in modem and works a treat. Its super quiet and if the power fails we have a limited UPS. Because of the driver issues I have it running on a Nlited 9X box with a but I am about to revise the system with Puppy Linux and Asterisk. I was looking at the Raspberry Pi to migrate into.
Its all transparent, no more sales calls at dinner-time (yes they are now doing that crap in the UK), cold calling, and wrong numbers. Most of my calls gets diverted to email notification so I can call them back on my mobile. Nobody really knows if they are calling a land line or via the internet. Our phone bills have gone down 30% and with the parts I had around, it has saved me a bunch of cash. No it doesn't play Mame...yet.
It is a real pain in the butt to get working originally, and finding the drivers for the interfaces was a real challenge, but I wish we had a system like ooma in the UK that I could just get working without recreating mission control.
Also I voice record all incoming and outgoing 0845 numbers to service centers, and I have managed to snag a few dishonest call center staff, so in all a very handy system. I also have non geographical numbers stored for banks and the utility companies so I do not get smacked with additional charges as they keep you on hold for 20 minutes plus. I proxy all my home internet via wifi and with Netlimiter, so SKY+ doesn't hog all the bandwidth.
The best thing about the 9x box, is the speed. It flies in 256mb.
My next project is to move away from TCP/IP and back toa 4.1 Novell Box with IPX for the home wireless network, the fun part is trying to make the SKY router into a bridge. ;D
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: SavannahLion on October 28, 2011, 01:22:26 am ---No, you need the dial tone so if the telephone company is a major ---tallywhacker--- and physically "cut" the line, you're not going to dial jack.
--- End quote ---
That's a good point. I doubt they will, though, given how hard it is to get them to come out to your house to do anything at all.
Ed_McCarron:
--- Quote from: SavannahLion on October 28, 2011, 01:22:26 am ---No, you need the dial tone so if the telephone company is a major ---tallywhacker--- and physically "cut" the line, you're not going to dial jack.
--- End quote ---
It's not a matter of being ---punks---. Once you're off their books, the CO will kill your line at the switch -- why waste the port on a non-existent customer? And the copper pair that runs to your house? No longer in their records, it'll get reassigned to someone who's paying for it.
Tread lightly, for now. If you value 911, keep the cheapest landline option they have and don't use it for anything else.
Having worked in the telco industry, I'll try a lot of things -- but knowing how the system works, I'll stick with copper for now. I won't even switch to FIOS or cable for telco until they work the bugs out.
Read the fine print. Even Comcast recommends (well, they did...) keeping a land line for emergency use.
Ed_McCarron:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on October 28, 2011, 10:12:29 am ---I've always thought about stealing free electricity off those phone jacks but it'd probably take like a week to charge a AA battery.
--- End quote ---
On hook, you'll get 48-ish volts. Pull more than 12ma and it'll go off-hook and they'll be on to you. Metal squids will attack.
Oh, wait, wrong movie.
Ed_McCarron:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on October 28, 2011, 10:25:18 am ---
--- Quote from: Ed_McCarron on October 28, 2011, 10:19:43 am ---
--- Quote from: pinballjim on October 28, 2011, 10:12:29 am ---I've always thought about stealing free electricity off those phone jacks but it'd probably take like a week to charge a AA battery.
--- End quote ---
On hook, you'll get 48-ish volts. Pull more than 12ma and it'll go off-hook and they'll be on to you. Metal squids will attack.
--- End quote ---
Oh yeah, totally. And did you know that if you put an extension cable on your neighbor's jack, the cable company will know! They've got a special truck and can drive around and tell who's stealing cable!!!
::)
--- End quote ---
Roll all you want. Pull enough current to take the phone off hook (>12 ma, give or take) and the phone company will know. Because, well, the phones off the hook. That's how the system works. You pick up a phone. Current increases. Voltage drops to talk battery levels (7-ish volts.) The CO's switch supplies dial tone and listens for dialing instructions.
It's got nothing to do with urban legends and white, unmarked vans.
Will they do anything about it? Probably not. They'll just think theres a short somewhere and shut that port off, or lift some bridging clips somewhere in the CO to open the circuit. If it's a paid circuit, they'll just ignore it and wait for your "My phones not working" phone call.
Squids, well, YMMV.
Cable, not so much. Tough for them to tell what you're doing since there's not individual cables running back to the cable company.
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