VOIP Novice Questions

Good Afternoon All

Apologies if some of my questions on here are very basic but I have some queries which my googling hasn't been able to answer. I am thinking of switching us over to VOIP as we're in the fortunate position of having FTTP but our copper landline is abysmal and still required on occasion. I want to switch us over to VOIP for quality and stability reasons but I wonder if someone can answer the following questions:

1. If I move my number to VOIP, I believe I cannot move back. Is this likely to change in the future when the PSTN network is turned off (i.e if I move from BT who don't offer VOIP to residential customers now, is it likely they will in the future?)

2. Our house is old and the BT phone extension wiring is fairly new. Is there a VOIP service which would allow me to plug an ATA into the 'master' socket and use normal phones through the extension wiring?

3. If someone is on the phone (as with a traditional landline) and someone picks up another VOIP phone, will they hear the conversation as now or not?

Thanks all!

Felix

1. Once you move a number to VOIP why would you want to move back? When the PSTN is turned off - BT will by then, I believe, be offering a service to residential customers. I moved BT ISDN to BT Copper to BT Business VOIP to Third Party VOIP and my final will move as soon as FTTP arrives here.

2. Some ATAs have a wired PSTN output, so by use of te right adapters you could connect that to a slave socket and from that use the existing wiring. However, why not move to DECT? My copper feeds into a multi-function ATA with 1xPSTN and 4xVOIP - from there I have 4 DECT handsets.

3. No, if using DECT then it is not possible unless you actually "invite" another handset into a conference.

Thank you MHC. That's useful. Regarding your answers, yes, I wouldn't want to move back but I want to be sure I can move back to one of the 'main' providers if I need to.

Do you know of any adapters that would let me do this? I haven't been able to find any so far. We have a DECT phone (I believe this is just the term for cordless handset?) system already so wouldn't want to replace that unecessarily as it works fine.

I see, I presume that goes too for if we used the old cordless PTSN phones via VOIP too?

Which do you have?

It maybe that there is an ATA that is compatible with your existing handsets.

I don't knw of any ATA with a standard analogue output - only because I have never needed one.

The Cisco SPA112 ATA has a couple of analogue outputs I think. I guess you could wire some short extensions onto these, but you'd probably want to change the master socket to a slave and make sure the old incoming line is disconnected.

Most ATAs (Cisco SPA112 or SPA-191, Grandstream etc) have RJ-11 phone sockets because that’s how they do things in the US. But find a spare BT to RJ-11 cable from an old ADSL router and run it from the ATA to a phone socket. You’d need to disconnect your internal wiring from the incoming line (by taking off the faceplate and removing the wires).

If you want VOIP to sound and behave like a UK phone, google ‘regional settings’ and ‘dialplan’ for your chosen ATA.

The SPA112 and 122 went End-of-life on 1st June. So availability could be limited although it may also mean they are cheap!

Amazon new are £41, Amazon warehouse/recon/refurb/return are £36 whereas some sellers are up at £98

In reply to a post by MHC:

The SPA112 and 122 went End-of-life on 1st June. So availability could be limited although it may also mean they are cheap!

Replaced with the ATA 191 and ATA 192

Post deleted by MHC

Thank you Nick. That's actually very useful. Should it 'just work' with the extension wiring if I remove the main phone line connection to the master socket? The more I look into this however I wonder if it's just a lot less hassle to buy some Dect phones!