rent telephone adapter?

Most internet service providers (ISP) will rent the modem to you. But my VoIP provider "sells" the telephone adapter (TA) to you, and then the provider turns around and gives you "credit" for the cost. But obviously they are probably going to change for a replacement if the TA gets fried.

Why do you suppose they do it this way?

Reply to
Rick Merrill
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Most home installs are do-it-your-self projects and lightnng protection and proper grounding may not be done. The OP implied he was thinking about lighting damage so it may be a problem in his aera. Some protection devices may block the ADSL signal but newer devices don't. You can also isolate the modem and PC with transformers designed for comercial use for futher protection. Use of a wireless link to the PC is another form of protection. The eazy way out maybe to buy spare modems on ebay and use them as a fuse. Here Bellsouth offers a 10 day warranty on self installs and one year on pro installs. Ebay is less than $50 for modems with shipping and Bellsouth is $120.

Reply to
Stanley Reynolds

Reply to
Yaser Doleh

Well How many posts do you see asking how to unlock ATA/Phone Xyz so I can use another VOIP supplier? But still saying that some do, BT in the UK do as do/did many of the US based suppliers. Remember many VOIP companies are startups and dont have the capital to supply many ATA's at little cost and also no chance of getting them back.

Ian

Reply to
Ian

Because they don't want to be responsible when the customer tries to connect the ATA to their house's internal wiring, fries the adapter by not disconnecting the telco wiring.

Reply to
DevilsPGD

Let me rephrase that: why do they Give Away the TA instead of Renting it? In other words they have gone the capital intensive route.

Reply to
Rick Merrill

The why is simple: To replace your phoneline with a broadband phone service.

I've done this pretty much since the day I got VoIP for everyone in the house, not just me -- Rather then running phone cables from the ATA around the house to the various places we needed phone hookups, it's easier to place the ATA near a point where you can wire it into the house's wiring and use the house's wiring from there.

After that, the kids can plug their phones in using the jacks in their rooms, the phone in the living room automatically works, so does the one mounted on the wall in your kitchen.

It's not that hard to do if you have a bit of basic wiring skills, but you need to be damn sure that you disconnect the uplink to the telco even if the line is canceled and even if your telco doesn't provide voltage on disconnected lines.

Reply to
DevilsPGD

In message of Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Rick Merrill writes

I've never heard of that. Most ISPs sell the modem to you.

DF

Reply to
David Floyd

In message of Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Yaser Doleh writes

Exactly!! My point being that are an awful lot of people who think that everyone lives in the USA or people outside of USA don't count.

Reply to
David Floyd

re: existing phones: find out how many phones your TA will support (some support "one" and some "3") and how many REN you have presently.

If you are in a duplex or apartment house especially make sure to label the disconnected lines so no one else will reconnect them (for you)!

Reply to
Rick Merrill

And why (or even how) would anyone even want to do that..? Do you plug your table lamps into the phone socket..?

BTW here in the UK nobody gives away anything. You either rent things or buy them. Well some broadband providers have given away cheap USB modems but I don't count them as nobody with any sense uses them.

Ivor

Reply to
Ivor Jones

I am considering plugging my adaptor into the house phone wiring when I finally decide on a VOIP provider. Of course, I will disconnect the phone company's line where it enters the house. The reason for connecting that ATA to the home's phone wiring is to have a dial tone on existing phones instead of purchasing a half dozen wireless phones. As for the how, that is relatively easy. You would just connect the ATA with to a wall jack with an extension cord. You could also just unplug the phone company's line from the service entry point box and plug in a line from the ATA.

Reply to
Vox Humana

I don't live in a multi-unit dwelling so the reconnection issue shouldn't be a problem. Since I am new to this, I'm not sure I understand your point about how many phones the adapter will support. I keep reading that most have two jacks. I assumed (maybe incorrectly?) that a unique phone number could be assigned to each jack, not that the adapter would support only two phones. I hadn't thought of looking at the RENS. I see that the closest ones say 0.0B, 0.1B. 0.7B. What is the "B" all about?

Also, I called the VOIP provider that I was most interested in and they said that they could assign as many number as I wanted to a single ATA. I guess I don't understand how that works. Since I am only interested in two numbers - my local number being ported over and a 800 number, I didn't press the issue.

Reply to
Vox Humana

Vox Humana wrote: .... Since I am new to this, I'm not sure I understand your point

The telephone adapter (TA) can only drive so many loads, usually fewer phones than the POTS (plain old telephone system) line could drive. Ask the prospective VoIP providers what REN they support and they probably do not know! They are told (usually) to tell you to buy a cordless phone with multiple handsets (i.e. have the TA drive one phone base).

The VoIP providers can have several lines (phone numbers) go to a single TA.

The two jacks are the equivalent of a two-line house: each drives one phone number to one (sometimes more) phones.

Bottom line: choose a provider; disconnect ALL your incoming lines; attach a single phone to the AT (or ATA) and get it going; then you can hook it to your house hold wiring.

Reply to
Rick Merrill

The B is for Bell. Analog phones lines increase the current to trigger the ringer. The ringer used to be a physical bell. Your 0.0B is most likely a cordless phone which uses house power to run, so doesn't have a power draw when ringing. Also, if you turn off the ringer on a phone, you can disregard the REN. I used to use a 3Com ISDN TA for voice and it would only power 4 ringing phones. Adding a 5th phone would cause them all to not ring. Switching off the ringer on the 5th phone fixed the problem. It had a REN of 3, but some of my phones had a REN of below 1.

Reply to
BerkHolz, Steven

That's right. As another mentioned, you can also turn off ringers.

Sounds good.

Reply to
Rick Merrill

Well, it's not so much a giveaway in many cases. They've actually followed a route very similar to US cell phone companies, where the equipment is actually subsidized to the user, and it just seems like it was given away.

Take for instance, Packet8. They will give you a "free" router in the mail, but you must pay for shipping (the cost of which is heavily padded) and about $20 for "activation," which could have been justified back in the day when humans actually had to do manual labor to get phone service set up for an end user, but considering that in the age of VoIP, the end user is now doing the installation of the device AS WELL AS inputting all of the account info in a web form and activating the account themselves over the web, this fee is really all profit and no labor for the VoIP provider.

Add to this the notion that in Packet8's case, the end user has effectively agreed to commit to a year of service (it used to be six months), or else they get charged a $59 termination fee when the account is closed. You can bet this fee is to recoup the "loss" of their device, and that they presume that after one year of paid service they have garnered enough income to offset the cost of the equipment.

Other providers do things a bit differently. Vonage's retail operation charges $50 for the adapter, but offers a $50 rebate. Vonage, just like any other company that offers discounts through mail-in rebates, knows that the actual follow-through rate of such rebate programs is very low. While us savvy bargain hunters have no problems clipping UPC labels and filling out forms *just so* such that they're not deemed ineligible, most of the general public will either forget about the rebate, not follow the instructions and get disqualified, or decide it's too much work. And for those of us that DO claim our rebates (or orders online directly through Vonage), Vonage still catches us with the activation fee (which is again, free money).

In short, I wouldn't worry too much about VoIP providers going out of business by giving away adapaters. Most of them partially recoup the cost right away through other startup fees, and the rest is recovered in the profits obtained through the monthly service fee over time (probably about 3-5 months in reality).

Reply to
Isaiah Beard

Some are now supportuing a REN of up to 5, such as the Linksys PAP2.

Reply to
Isaiah Beard

There appears to be a disconnect (pardon the pun)between you and the VoIP provider over semantics. A "number" in VoIP doesn't necessarily have to have its own separate phone line to operate.

What the VoIP provider is talking about are virtual numbers. Think of these as numbers with a permanent call fowarding setting to your "real" phone number. They don't have lines of their own and you can't call out from one of these numbers, but if someone calls such a number, they will cause your "real" phone line to ring.

What you are probably talking about are actual phone lines, each assinged one number (and one only) and through which outgoing calls can be made from. Generally, most ATA I've seen support only one or two real phone lines.

You should be fine then. You'll have a phone line with the phone number you're porting, and then the 800 number will "ring to" that same line.

Reply to
Isaiah Beard

Thanks. I looked at the documentation for the Lynksys ATA used by Teliax and it says it has a REN of 5. Can I assume that if I add up the RENS of all my phones, they need to be under 5? My plan is to get an 800 number and get everything working. Then, I will have the home number ported over, disconnect the phone company line where it enters the house, and replace it with a line from the ATA.

Reply to
Vox Humana

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