How to Connect Landline Phones / Extensions to VOIP on Fibre Internet
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- Опубліковано 21 січ 2022
- If you have moved over to Fibre (Fiber) Internet then you may have had all your existing house phones disconnected. In this video we run some tests and get the house phones working again in a property that now has a VOIP only phone connection. We try out various different things to see what works.
I hope you enjoy it.
Vince 👍
We lost power for a couple of two week periods here in Florida in 2004 when we had 4 hurricanes come through in less than a 6 week period. No power means no cell towers, no internet, no VOIP. The only reliable communications that we had were my vintage Moss green Western Electric model 500 set from 1959 and my Western Electric 302 from 1939. Both rang and dialed just fine. Still do as a matter of fact. I dread the day when we lose our twisted pair. I suspect I'm probably the only person on my street still clinging to it. It's almost a sin to let one of the 20th centuries greatest engineering feats lay rotting in the ground because it's insufficiently profitable for the telecoms.
I HATE that we can no longer use true landline phones. I want the old system back so that if power goes out we can still call.
An easy way to achieve this is to go on an auction site and pick up a small office pbx that accepts pulse dialling. You then set the exchange line output to tone dialling and wire the wall sockets as extensions. Takes care of both the REN and conversion problems. Mine cost me £20.
Now throw in an extra 2 fax machines, a landline pay terminal, a person emergency alarm, an alarm system and an external gong and have yourself a great headscratching afternoon.
For years the advice has been to keep a landline phone in case of emergency. During a power failure could well be the time when a call to the emergency services, or for other help, is needed. I'm sticking with "traditional" broadband over a proper phone line for as long as possible!
All you need is a BT to BT patch lead & disconnect the incoming copper pair at the master socket. Some BT sockets even have a switch to do this! (SOGEA VRI Isolation Plate, looks like a MK4 but with a green shutter on the extensions socket. BT (or Openreach) should be doing this anyway, and they really don't care if you remove redundant copper cabling from their network.
Useful information Vince =D I really worry that if we swap from landlines to VOIP - it's all at risk of denial of service and internet outages.
Only thing worth mentioning is in the UK, once you've ported your number to Voip, many of the control codes and emergency numbers are no longer recognised. But you can take your ported number abroad and call (and receive) any UK number as if you were in the UK 👍🏻🇬🇧
Just had Vodafone Fibre Router fitted. Pity I didn't find this earlier. The fitters didn't know anything about using old phones. FFS!"
Wow, did BT ever make it difficult. I’m with Telus in the province of Alberta, Canada, and have fibre to the house. Copper was never used in my neighborhood as it was built ten years ago. With my setup, the optical network terminal splits up the fiber signal and sends data where it needs to go and voice to the standard telephone cabling. As it’s running a landline telephone, it comes with a battery backup to support the ONT and ATA. You wouldn’t know it was VOIP as faxes (when I had to send them) and phone calls work perfectly. I could plug any landline phone into a socket and you’d never know.
Vince, flippin brilliant video! Had a bt engineer round who swore it couldn't be done. All i needed to do was disconnect the old bt copper cables off the extension wiring around the house and plug the output to the hub. That's it. Extremely grateful.
It's always satisfying to see well managed cables. Nice work.
Good to see after all these years you still know your stuff about telephone lines 👌
Thank you for another excellent video.
how cool! my mum's got alzheimers, and working modern phones is becoming a problem for her now. This could be a complete game changer -- thank you!
Hi Vince thank you so much for making this video. It has been very useful as I have an alarm that dials me when it is activated, I’ve rigged it all up and wired it into the alarm system and it works perfect, rings my mobile when the alarm is activated. Many thanks 🙂👍🙏
This is really good and informative.... BT told me just this week that "there was no way" I could have a bell on my new proposed VOIP install!.... Now if I can transfer your excellent "how to" into my own BT install is another matter 😉😂
Thank you very much for this instructional video Vince. It gave me the information and confidence to successfully reactivate the extension sockets in my house, after switch over to VoIP or Digital Voice. Tremendous video.
Thanks Vince. We just had fttp installed, are researching voip phones, but would still like to keep our lovely old bakelite ringers sweet bell singing! Brilliant description and details of the bits n pieces, cheers!
Most interesting. When I had fibre installed to the house two engineers told me that it was not possible to connect an old style phone (also the blurb that come from BT says that old analogue phones will not work). However I was not convinced so I did what you did. It works! I.have noticed that strangely the old phone rings slightly before the voip phones! What is important to stress - as you mentioned - no power no phone. So in case of emergencies a charger mobile always needs to be available. Thanks again - I am reassured that I am not the only geek!