My Family Phone Mix

the retro end of my Personal Network Architecture.

In Barring Ton (2009- )

• ATT UVerse provides Cable Tv, phone, Broad Band
• supposed to work with any POTS phone jack, but phone wiring seems to be a mess in this house, so just have 1 Cordless Phone base station, shared by 4 handsets on 3 floors - if I go to the far side of the house (e.g. when talking to ADT and looking at their panel) the call drops
• note that ADT alarm signals go over that same line

May'2013: We have 4 Cell Phone-s using T-Mobile: I have HTC One S, The Wife has Nexus One, Number One Son has Galaxy S (having broken his Nexus One), and Number Two Son has a MyTouch-slider.

• Jun'2013: Number One Son switches to IPhone-5
• Sept'2013: The Wife switches to IPhone-5 (Number Two Son gets her Nexus One)
• Dec'2013: Number Two Son switches to IPhone-5c

old notes - ~2005

We have POTS service from ATT

• for local (~$40/month) and long-distance ($0.07/minute)

  • there are clearly cheaper choices for long-distance.

• we have 2 Cordless Phone-s each plugged into separate jacks

  • neither will work well from the opposite end of the apartment - the joys of heavy-duty NYC apartment construction

  • we also have a cheap Corded phone

    • in case of Black Out

    • for super-long calls where the Cordless Phone battery might not be great, and because the slightly clunkier phone is more comfortable to hold under your chin

We have Cell Phone service from Verizon

• a Family Share plan (~$110/month (total for 2 of us), best-case $82/month), under the theory that we save money when calling each other

  • in reality, we don't call cell-to-cell all that often - most of our phone calls involve an office phone on at least one side

• Jihi has an expensive World Phone so she can take it to Europe and the Far East, and call locally-there and back-here (home and office)

I haven't really played with VoIP yet.

• I have a Skype account, but I don't think I've ever used it

• I have a cheap little USB-handset

Late 2006 notes

I'm considering VoIP to replace our landlines, but then I have to worry about the Cordless Phone reception issue, since there's just a single place to have the cradle connected.

• although the Cable Modem is a bit closer to the rest of the house than the bedroom phone jack, so maybe if I get a Cordless Phone set that has multiple handsets for a single base-station, it will work...

• SIP hardware? http://www.siphardware.com/ - I think I want to deal with the SipPhone/Gizmo people.

• Could it be so simple as just buying a LinkSys PAP2? I need to ask someone online.

  • I see The PAP2 can be problematic to use with our service when bandwidth is low or variable on your Internet connection, because the only codecs that it has in common with calls to or from PSTN are the high-bandwidth G.711u and G.711a codecs. When those two codecs are the only codecs available for a call, the connection conditions must be very good or the result will be distorted audio or no audio. If you experience distorted audio on a consistent basis with the PAP2, the best thing to do is replace it with another adapter, such as a Grandstream HT-286, that has more codecs in common with our service. (They sell the HT486 which seems even nicer.)

I need to compare the call-out prices among the various carriers, and whether they support international, etc..

• SipPhone charges 2c in the US (I could have sworn it was half that this morning), up to 2.5c/min to places like Hong Kong.

  • call-in requires buying a "virtual number" for $35/year.

  • Gizmo, which I think of as the Open Source software arm of SipPhone, actually has its own set of rates (this morning it seems double the price in the US, but now they look the same). (They do have this cool free calling program, but you and the recipient have to be "active" Gizmo users, so that's probably too rare a match to be worth it.

  • This thread makes it sound like Gizmo Project is where the action is, and SipPhone users are being moved over. But that's an old thread...

• Skype has unlimited US/Canada call-out for $15/year, and roughly the same international rates at SipPhone.

  • for call-in you have to buy a Skype number for $40/yr.

• Vonage charges $15/mo which seems to cover unlimited call-in plus 500min of call-out within US/Canada (but then charge 3.9c/min for overage); they also have a premium for total $25/mo which gives you unlimited call-out within US/Canada (plus UK/Ireland, France, and Spain). Hong Kong is 4c/min.

I wonder whether JaJah has a role?

I was going to give Future Phone a try, but it's been closed down.

• there are still the "10-10" vendors - remember dialing all those extra digits before you dial the main number?

So I got a Gizmo name of "billseitz", and the echo-test-call confirms that (a) the software is working, and (b) my USB phone works.

Feb03: trying to set up Grand Stream HT486

• doesn't come with printed manual, so I downloaded it.

• connected from Grand Stream WAN port to one of the LAN ports on my D Link router/WiFi hub. Connected POTS corded phone to Phone jack. Plugged in power.

• red light on Grandstream is flashing red.

• MAC address is on bottom of unit.

• config D Link DHCP to set up static IP of 192.168.0.100 for that MAC, which it sees.

• I cannot ping it, nor will it respond to HTTP.

• when I dial '****' in the phone handset, it responds "dynamic IP 0" (I think it said).

• found this document, but concerned it might be Asterisk-specific. It also doesn't say anything about having the HT486 behind a hub/router/NAT.

• found this support document, which looks promising. But, again, can't talk to the thing in the first place.

• there's a config tool from Vox Illa for the HT, but I need to be able to get to the bloody thing.

  • this posting suggests attaching the HT486 directly after the Cable Modem, then attach my WiFi hub to the LAN port on the HT486.

    • when I try that, I can get the Lap Top to talk to the HT-486, but I can't get out to the Internet. And I still can't get the HT486 to get past having its flashing red light.

    • So I enter by hand some of the recommended settings for Vox Illa, etc., which doesn't seem to make a difference. Actually, I'm pretty sure I had a dial-tone before I started screwing around, and now I don't. (But since I hadn't entered any of the SIP settings, etc. I don't think that dial tone was going to do me any good.)

    • So I wired things back so I have net access. HT486 has flashing red light and no dial tone. Plus I blew away some of my WiFi hub's settings, though not others.

    • aha, but now I can ping it and get to its Admin interface at the DHCP address I'd set in the first place!

    • hey the red light is gone! And the dial-tone is back! So I try calling my Cell Phone, and it works! Success!

Next step - buy some additional Call Out money.

Aug'2007 update:

• I bought a multi-handset Cordless Phone set

• We're making a fair portion of our long-distance calls with it

• We still have our wired phone/service

  • our building's intercom (from doorman to apt) uses the wired phones - I don't think there's a good way to deal with this - not sure the doorman wants to have to make out-building-local calls to some apartments.

    • some folks, who bought the CableCo package, had this problem solved by the cable company guy doing something in the basement. Not sure how I'll get more details to figure out how much is applicable to me...

Oct'2009 update

• some time since putting in Time Capsule, the VoIP hardware hasn't been working right. I haven't had time to figure out whether that's a configuration issue or something else.