Hello,
I am trying to convince a family member to switch to get broadband and switch to VoIP for phone service. Right now the road block is concerns for E911. I suggested just having an gps-enabled inactive cell phone around the house as you can call 911 without a service plan. Their concern is that they wouldn't be able to easily grab the cell phone from another room of their house or feel confident about fumbling with it during an emergency, when they are used to their various extension phones around the house. (Yes, I rolled my eyes too.)
Anyway, I have a gadget that allows you to "dock" the cell phone and provides a dial-tone with a regular RJ-11 jack out the back that you can hook up regular phones to. You have to dial # after the number, which this gadget deems equlivant to pressing the send key. So, instead of just "911" you would have to dial "911#" in order for it to place the call.
I am wondering... I know there are SIP adapters that have hookup to plug into your existing POTS phone line so that when 911 is dialed it would use the normal line instead of the VoIP. I previously always thought the idea was lame because if I have VoIP why would I keep paying for the land line?! Well anyway, it occurred to me that maybe I could hook the cellular POTS adapter up to this POTS jack on the back of the device so that 911 calls would be made through the cell phone instead of the VoIP, while still not needing a real land line.
Does anybody know if any of these devices can be configured to recognize the user dialing "911" and then place a call to "911#" off that lifeline port on the back? That is, can you configure it to add the trailing # sign after you dial "911"? What if you dial "911#"? Would the # confuse the device such that it doesn't try to use the land line port?
Thanks,
J-Man