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  #61  
Old 05-09-2023, 12:40 PM
Ed in Tx's Avatar
Ed in Tx Ed in Tx is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie View Post
Last time I posted here, I mentioned that my phone bill was at $70. That was in 2019. Recently, it hit $105, and I finally had enough!
My AT&T VoIP phone is $32 a month plus taxes which runs it up to $45 a month. 50% Fed state and local taxes and fees! Audio quality is better than the old land line which was prone to static and noise. VoIP not as reliable though. The old wire line never lost power. After about 2 hours the battery in the modem that does the VoIP phone runs out, and takes about 8 to 10 hours to recharge, so not reliable for prolonged power outages. And yesterday I noticed I had not received any calls in 10 days. Got to checking, called the house phone with my cell phone and nothing, no ring, no indication of an incoming call! I called out to my cell phone and that worked, then tried incoming call again and it works now, rings the house phones. So I learned I need to check it occasionally to make sure everything is working. First time since 2015 that's happened.

I too disconnected the old line from the terminal box on the house. It was inducing an AC hum into the phone line. And I plugged the modem into one of the jacks in the house which connected all the house phones to the VoIP system. The AT&T installer at the time told me that wouldn't work! He had no idea why I had a hum on the line either. After he left I fixed it myself by disconnecting the old drop line from the pole to the house, wound up the wire and tossed over the fence. They have let the old wire system deteriorate like someone else mentioned with plastic bags over the terminal boxes etc.
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  #62  
Old 05-09-2023, 09:43 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie View Post
Last time I posted here, I mentioned that my phone bill was at $70. That was in 2019. Recently, it hit $105, and I finally had enough!

My cel phone is thru Verizon, and I found they had a cellular home phone service for about $25... and I got to port my original AT&T phone number. I am thinking this is the same service that n8nagel mentioned a few posts ago.

I have a little white box that picks up the cel signal, generates a dial tone, and acts just like the copper line. Plug your phone into it and presto! Works great.

I went outside and disconnected the wiring in the AT&T box on the house, and then plugged my white box directly into one of my phone jacks, and it sent the dial tone all throughout the house. So now, even the old phone on the wall works.

The only drawback (which is one I expected) is that I am not able to dial out with my rotary phones... but I have a cordless phone that I can use. My rotary phones ring loud and work great when an incoming call comes in!

There is also a battery in the white box that lasts for several hours if the power goes out.

My old Sony answering machine also works just fine with it.

Considering this is 80 dollars cheaper than what I was previously paying, I think the system works great and I am very satisfied!
If you don't need a separate line and don't want to pay a subscription to use your old landline phones with the cellular network get an Xlink BT.... Basically it's a Bluetooth headset for cellphones that lets you use your old wired phones (Even rotary phones) as Bluetooth headsets...You can even dial out. IIRC there's even functions to dial the Google voice command system to control the smartphone if it's not in the room. My friend has a mystery control Philco and the remote lets you turn it off, but not back on so he has it plugged into an IOT outlet that his phone controls so I watched him turn it on by picking up his rotary phone, dialing 2 digits and saying "Computer turn on the Philco".

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed in Tx View Post
My AT&T VoIP phone is $32 a month plus taxes which runs it up to $45 a month. 50% Fed state and local taxes and fees! Audio quality is better than the old land line which was prone to static and noise. VoIP not as reliable though. The old wire line never lost power. After about 2 hours the battery in the modem that does the VoIP phone runs out, and takes about 8 to 10 hours to recharge, so not reliable for prolonged power outages. And yesterday I noticed I had not received any calls in 10 days. Got to checking, called the house phone with my cell phone and nothing, no ring, no indication of an incoming call! I called out to my cell phone and that worked, then tried incoming call again and it works now, rings the house phones. So I learned I need to check it occasionally to make sure everything is working. First time since 2015 that's happened.

I too disconnected the old line from the terminal box on the house. It was inducing an AC hum into the phone line. And I plugged the modem into one of the jacks in the house which connected all the house phones to the VoIP system. The AT&T installer at the time told me that wouldn't work! He had no idea why I had a hum on the line either. After he left I fixed it myself by disconnecting the old drop line from the pole to the house, wound up the wire and tossed over the fence. They have let the old wire system deteriorate like someone else mentioned with plastic bags over the terminal boxes etc.
Many installers are not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree...The one that wired cable in our house was having a hard time figuring out how to run a line to various rooms without going on the outside of the building which ma didn't want....I noticed the phone lines traveled to the upstairs rooms through the vent ducts/which rooms they serviced suggested we use that method and we were able to get cable upstairs that way....This was back when I was in college and he was so impressed with that wiring solution he asked me if I wanted a job with them.
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  #63  
Old 05-11-2023, 08:13 AM
n8nagel n8nagel is offline
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Originally Posted by Jeffhs View Post
Your parents must live in a very small town far away from any major city, if they do not have high-speed Internet or cable TV. (Do they have any kind of Internet service at all?) I never in my life heard of an area that isolated from modern technology, except in rural areas tens or hunreds of miles from any major city. Do they still have a TV antenna on a tower, as people used to have in small towns years ago? If not, do they at least get one or two TV stations with rabbit ears? Again, I cannot imagine any area in the United States that far away from TV stations that the residents cannot get at least one channel, even in this age of digital TV.

At least your parents are within range of at least one cellular phone tower, which is good because without cellular, they would be completely without reliable phone service. As I said, I cannot begin to imagine how any small town could be that firmly cut off from modern technology (no high-speed Internet, no cable TV) in this day and age. As I said, they must be in a very small town, literally "in the middle of nowhere", as the expression goes.
You've pretty much described where they live; they are close to Youngstown but in a semi-rural area. Problem is, they bought their house before any of this was a consideration, the only thing anyone had at that time besides power, phone, and possibly gas was cable TV which was still fairly new but they didn't care that they didn't have it (there's no gas service there either; if they wanted gas appliances they'd have to get a propane tank.) They live on a semi-paved (it's technically dirt, but years of tar and chipping it have made it sort of asphalt like) road but all the houses on this road are a good 1/4 to 1/2 mile off the road. So nobody there has ever had cable TV, FiOS, etc. They are limited to using HughesNet for internet because Starlink doesn't serve the eastern US yet. Frustrating because it's a pocket of 5-6 houses that are affected like this. They're old enough that were I able to work remotely I might consider moving there so they didn't have to sell the place and move as they get older but as so much of my work involves CAD the lack of internet access makes that impossible.

Edit: now that I think about it, I should look into getting them a cell phone booster for their house. I want to say they have either AT&T or Verizon and have "OK" coverage, often when I visit I have to go outside to get a signal (I have T-Mobile). I know that cellular internet is starting to become a thing - when I got my last new phone the rep mentioned it - maybe it would be cheaper/faster than HughesNet for them, if they had a roof antenna.

Last edited by n8nagel; 05-11-2023 at 08:21 AM.
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  #64  
Old 05-11-2023, 09:23 AM
Electronic M's Avatar
Electronic M Electronic M is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by n8nagel View Post
You've pretty much described where they live; they are close to Youngstown but in a semi-rural area. Problem is, they bought their house before any of this was a consideration, the only thing anyone had at that time besides power, phone, and possibly gas was cable TV which was still fairly new but they didn't care that they didn't have it (there's no gas service there either; if they wanted gas appliances they'd have to get a propane tank.) They live on a semi-paved (it's technically dirt, but years of tar and chipping it have made it sort of asphalt like) road but all the houses on this road are a good 1/4 to 1/2 mile off the road. So nobody there has ever had cable TV, FiOS, etc. They are limited to using HughesNet for internet because Starlink doesn't serve the eastern US yet. Frustrating because it's a pocket of 5-6 houses that are affected like this. They're old enough that were I able to work remotely I might consider moving there so they didn't have to sell the place and move as they get older but as so much of my work involves CAD the lack of internet access makes that impossible.

Edit: now that I think about it, I should look into getting them a cell phone booster for their house. I want to say they have either AT&T or Verizon and have "OK" coverage, often when I visit I have to go outside to get a signal (I have T-Mobile). I know that cellular internet is starting to become a thing - when I got my last new phone the rep mentioned it - maybe it would be cheaper/faster than HughesNet for them, if they had a roof antenna.
Cellular internet is getting pretty good. On vacation I've been able to run 2 different internet video streams at once off of it. Trick is making sure you're on whatever network has the best coverage at your home base. The family cabin had no in network sprint support, but grabbing a month of month to month Verizon got me reliable coverage there. If the neighbors have smartphones ask them what carriers they have and how good the data coverage is there.
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  #65  
Old 05-11-2023, 09:40 AM
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Charlie Charlie is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by n8nagel View Post

Edit: now that I think about it, I should look into getting them a cell phone booster for their house. I want to say they have either AT&T or Verizon and have "OK" coverage, often when I visit I have to go outside to get a signal (I have T-Mobile). I know that cellular internet is starting to become a thing - when I got my last new phone the rep mentioned it - maybe it would be cheaper/faster than HughesNet for them, if they had a roof antenna.
My parents live in a similar neighborhood. Their house is new, and my dad put all kinds of fancy insulation in it. Some of that stuff in the attic has that shiny foil-looking stuff on it, and while it works great as being a heat barrier for the attic, it also ends up working as a signal barrier. Getting radio or cel signals in their house was impossible (but go out the door and you're just fine). We ran a cel booster in there... stuck the antenna on the side of the chimney... worked great. Their internet was having two hotspots. Those work great, but have limitations if you want to have anything more than just wifi for the pc.

During covid, one of the things The White House noticed was people in rural areas had horrible internet capabilities when they realized many kids were unable to go to school on their computers at home... not enough bandwidth or a large enough data plan for all that video streaming back and forth with the rest of the class. I remember them talking about it on the news one week. The White House said they were going to give the internet companies subsidies to put real internet in these areas. Well son-of-a-gun... they actually did it! My parents' neighborhood was one of the first in our area to get it. Got them hooked up 2 months ago. Now they have fast internet, all kinds of tv stations for a lot less money, the house is now tricked out with all kinds of Alexa devices, and no more cel phone issues. And those hot-spots are now all in the garbage.

Speaking to a internet rep in Walmart one day... he showed me on a map where my neighborhood will be getting the same thing in the next year! That means I can stop relying on hot-spots as well!

Now that they have all these capabilities in their home, I will likely look into hooking them a house phone up via the internet. There has been a time or two in which I was there, but since no one was home, there was no phone for me to use.
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  #66  
Old 05-11-2023, 10:01 AM
n8nagel n8nagel is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M View Post
Cellular internet is getting pretty good. On vacation I've been able to run 2 different internet video streams at once off of it. Trick is making sure you're on whatever network has the best coverage at your home base. The family cabin had no in network sprint support, but grabbing a month of month to month Verizon got me reliable coverage there. If the neighbors have smartphones ask them what carriers they have and how good the data coverage is there.
They're going to need a repeater/signal booster of some kind to consider that, I'm going to need to research. Can you put the antenna on the same mast as an OTA TV antenna or would they need another one? Any ideas where to start looking for a quality product? Would ideally like to put something there that covers all US carriers/bands that way it'd help me and other visitors as well that may not be on the same carrier. Even if they don't get cell internet I'm thinking this is worth pursuing now that they've dropped their land line.
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  #67  
Old 05-11-2023, 10:11 AM
n8nagel n8nagel is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlie View Post
My parents live in a similar neighborhood. Their house is new, and my dad put all kinds of fancy insulation in it. Some of that stuff in the attic has that shiny foil-looking stuff on it, and while it works great as being a heat barrier for the attic, it also ends up working as a signal barrier. Getting radio or cel signals in their house was impossible (but go out the door and you're just fine). We ran a cel booster in there... stuck the antenna on the side of the chimney... worked great. Their internet was having two hotspots. Those work great, but have limitations if you want to have anything more than just wifi for the pc.

During covid, one of the things The White House noticed was people in rural areas had horrible internet capabilities when they realized many kids were unable to go to school on their computers at home... not enough bandwidth or a large enough data plan for all that video streaming back and forth with the rest of the class. I remember them talking about it on the news one week. The White House said they were going to give the internet companies subsidies to put real internet in these areas. Well son-of-a-gun... they actually did it! My parents' neighborhood was one of the first in our area to get it. Got them hooked up 2 months ago. Now they have fast internet, all kinds of tv stations for a lot less money, the house is now tricked out with all kinds of Alexa devices, and no more cel phone issues. And those hot-spots are now all in the garbage.

Speaking to a internet rep in Walmart one day... he showed me on a map where my neighborhood will be getting the same thing in the next year! That means I can stop relying on hot-spots as well!

Now that they have all these capabilities in their home, I will likely look into hooking them a house phone up via the internet. There has been a time or two in which I was there, but since no one was home, there was no phone for me to use.
I remember seeing those notifications to check the map that the FCC had because apparently there were places that carriers "theoretically covered" but residents still didn't have any good high speed internet options... well soon as I saw they were asking for input on that I checked sure enough they were already aware that there weren't any options on the street on which my parents live :/
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  #68  
Old 06-13-2023, 01:04 PM
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AdamAnt316 AdamAnt316 is offline
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I have a collection of several dozen vintage phones, mostly by Western Electric. Said collection is partially cataloged on this page, though I haven't updated it in years. We had FiOS installed here about 12 years ago. They disconnected our copper pair, though I think the old cable is still within the old network interface in our basement. Fortunately, the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) they installed does support pulse dialing, though it is very sensitive about the rate of pulses, so if the dial is too slow (or too fast?), it doesn't acknowledge a digit being dialed. This has resulted in me taking a number of my vintage phones out of service, though I've been able to lubricate the dials in some of them to get them pulsing normally. Anyway, here are some pics of a few of the phones not found on my above list page, plus an alternate shot of one which is:

Western Electric three slot payphone, actually a 'franken-phone' put together by the fictitious "Long Island Telephone Co.":


A Western Electric 151AL dial candlestick next to an Automatic Electric 40 "Monophone", both from the '30s or so:


A Western Electric 5302 (old-style 302 set with a 500-like housing fitted around its innards) next to a Northern Electric 500F party line set, both from the '50s:


Three European touchtone phones from the '70s:


A Western Electric 354 wall phone from the early '50s:


A Western Electric "Americana" replica wood wall phone from their early '80s "Design Line":
Attached Images
File Type: jpg payphone_wall.jpg (88.4 KB, 30 views)
File Type: jpg oldphones.jpg (106.5 KB, 32 views)
File Type: jpg europhones.jpg (94.4 KB, 32 views)
File Type: jpg blk354_1.jpg (108.3 KB, 32 views)
File Type: jpg americana_small.jpg (135.9 KB, 34 views)
File Type: jpg phones_small.jpg (140.9 KB, 34 views)
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Last edited by AdamAnt316; 06-13-2023 at 01:11 PM. Reason: Added descriptions of the phones
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  #69  
Old 06-14-2023, 12:51 PM
user181 user181 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamAnt316 View Post
I have a collection of several dozen vintage phones, mostly by Western Electric. Said collection is partially cataloged on this page, though I haven't updated it in years. We had FiOS installed here about 12 years ago. They disconnected our copper pair, though I think the old cable is still within the old network interface in our basement. Fortunately, the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) they installed does support pulse dialing, though it is very sensitive about the rate of pulses, so if the dial is too slow (or too fast?), it doesn't acknowledge a digit being dialed. This has resulted in me taking a number of my vintage phones out of service, though I've been able to lubricate the dials in some of them to get them pulsing normally. Anyway, here are some pics of a few of the phones not found on my above list page, plus an alternate shot of one which is:

Western Electric three slot payphone, actually a 'franken-phone' put together by the fictitious "Long Island Telephone Co.":


A Western Electric 151AL dial candlestick next to an Automatic Electric 40 "Monophone", both from the '30s or so:


A Western Electric 5302 (old-style 302 set with a 500-like housing fitted around its innards) next to a Northern Electric 500F party line set, both from the '50s:


Three European touchtone phones from the '70s:


A Western Electric 354 wall phone from the early '50s:


A Western Electric "Americana" replica wood wall phone from their early '80s "Design Line":

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  #70  
Old 06-17-2023, 11:08 PM
ARC Tech-109 ARC Tech-109 is offline
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That is a very nice collection of pioneer era phones, too bad the 600 ohm POTS loop has all but disappeared. I used to do a lot with the dedicated lines be it dry pairs or MUX'd during my 2-way radio days. Old systems relied on 20ma DC loops that often spanned 20+ wire miles and for voice they sounded great. More modern stuff was tone controlled running -16 dbm for things like SpectraTAC receivers voters and base stations, if you knew what to listen for you could tell if it was a dry pair just by the audio quality. Now it's all digital and sounds like vocoder crap.
Growing up our home telephone number prefix was PArkway-4 which was the name of the office, we still had a live operator through the mid-70s.
Where I'm at now I can't get a copper pair to save my life. We have Century Link and it's all overpriced fiber, the alternative is MIDCO and they're just as pricey. Yeah progress is wonderful but I do miss the sound of my punchdown tool on a virgin 66-block.
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  #71  
Old 06-20-2023, 10:11 AM
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Telecolor 3007 Telecolor 3007 is offline
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Nice one that bakelite phone.
In Romania, V.o.I.P. only allows tone mode, so you need an adaptor for pulse mode.
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