As a former Time-Warner Technical Support employee, I will have to say
> no, this can't be done with just the eMTA (that's the phone modem.) It
> is possible to get this working with additional hardware/software that
> others have suggested, but beware - Time-Warner will not troubleshoot
> this connection, since it is not an ordinary phone jack and therefor
> beyond their scope of work. If you had any problems getting this to
> work, or keeping it working ... the only place you could go for help
> is a forum - assuming others have tried this and succeeded.
I'm not all that interested in a "hard" solution. :-)
As a consumer, I think offering the ability to make calls on my home number from my home phone, computer, or wifi phone would rock!!
Also, in our division at least, the service goes out A LOT. It is not
> the most reliable to say the least ... You'd be amazed at how much we,
> as a culture, have come to assume that when you pick up the phone
> there will always be a dialtone. If you have gotten Digital Phone,
> please leave that notion at the door ... and try not to get too
> frustrated with Tech Support -- they're there to help ... If the service
> goes out too much for you to handle, then cancel it. No harm, no foul.
Which is exactly why I refused to drop Southwestern Bell/SBC/at&t for so many years. When I lived in Florida we had a hurricane that took out our electricity and cable TV (the power came back on days before CATV, that's how I knew CATV went out) but good ole BellSouth kept our phones going. My decision is strictly financial. Right now we have at&t telephone, rabbit ears, and Road Runner. For LESS money we can have digital phone, digital cable TV, and Road Runner. Even after the introductory pricing it's still a small savings. I have called/emailed at&t practically begging them to get DSL out this way. They have service literally three streets over. I understand the technical barriers of DSL, but given we're a somewhat affluent neighborhood, it seems like it'd be worth their while to install the necessary equipment to get this section online. But 5 years have gone by ...
Since we all have cell phones, our home phone has become somewhat superfluous.
I know it sounds unrelated, but I am trying to do something similar
> but without phone service at all. I want to hook my computer, cell
> phone, and house phone (which has no dialtone) all to run off of
> Bluetooth technology, but I'm running into a lot of road blocks.
> Phreaking just isn't as easy as it used to be.
No it's not. I can think of a lot of projects I'd love to tackle, but these days it can't be done (or the cost is too prohibitive).
John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA