Hardwire Vonage to your house?

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 14, 2004 Posts: 6

I have a Motorola vt1005 box, and it does have 2 phone lines, but only 1 seems to work. I didn't see a way to enable or disable the second line, am I missing something?

But to the real question. I ran a line from my box to the house lines, so I can use the phone jacks in the house, instead of spending the money on a multihandset phone. I've heard this is not recommended, but people do it, and it does work.

Off the top of my head, the only reason I could think that this is not recommended is because each phone you connect draws 24 volts when it rings(or somewhere in that range). Do cordless phones do the same, since the handset usually rings, and not the base? Also, how many phones could I safely connect before it would be drawing too much power and wreck my box(if my assumptions are correct on why they don't recommend this)

Posts: 43 · Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 2:28 am Post subject:

I'm guessing there's no type of surge protector that you can place on the line in front of the box to safeguard against residual voltage?

My biggest problem is that I'm living in a set of townhouses and can't locate/access the NID box to disconnect the lines (I'm only here for a couple of months, I don't own a ladder, and I can't tell which box goes to my apt. so I'm not really inclined to go that route).

Because I'm impatient, I went ahead and tried the "plug it into a jack" thing and my box was ok...but I unplugged it after a minute or two. I don't want my phone company sending voltage to the lines and catching me with my pants down. I've heard that they will do that to discourage Voip users from using the pre-existing wiring (of course, it could just be a rumour, but you never know).

I suppose I'll just use my cordless. It's not that much of a hassle, considering how few calls I get.

Posts: 3 · Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:52 am Post subject: This worked for me...

Follow this link ---

http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

It explains how to "unplug" from the phone company box on your house and then plug the Vonage box into your home telephone wiring.

I did it a few hours ago and so far it has worked great. I will post here if it stops working.

Posts: 188 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Mar 07, 2004 Posts: 188

flossy21 wrote:

Follow this link ---

http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

It explains how to "unplug" from the phone company box on your house and then plug the Vonage box into your home telephone wiring.

I did it a few hours ago and so far it has worked great. I will post here if it stops working.

Outstanding Post.

Posts: 43 · Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 7:12 pm Post subject:

Moto wrote:

You took a helluva chance chammi
If there was voltage in that line, you would have cooked the moto box. Then you have no Vonage!
Unless you know for certain, I'd borrow a telco voltage tester to make certain your lines are clear before doing this again.

I know, and I never said it wasn't a dumb thing to do.. but when I called the utility company to set up service, I discovered that no one had been living here for several years (my neighbors were also using my parking spots and trashcan liberally when I moved in) Anway, I figured there was less of a chance that I'd be in for a nasty surprise... but remember-- I was still quick to unplug it.

Will do re: the voltage tester, if I ever decide to try it again. Thanks, Moto for the tip. You too, Flossy21.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 22, 2004 Posts: 3

I did this to my phone system today. This will work just fine provided you ensure that the wire going to the telco system is disconnected from the junction box and that you dont have any of the old style power supply wiring thats hooked up to 110 voltage via a transformer. (This was used to activate lights on the phone dial prior to 1975. Yes the old rotary dial and early keypads were lit this way.)

Anyway, now as a result my entire system functions like the old phone system and all my regular jacks are live. Saved me tons of work. I dont advise doing this if you dont understand how your old telco wiring works or whats hooked into it.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 26, 2004 Posts: 1

I noticed that the guide mentions nothing about polarity. While most telephone devices work fine with either polarity, some do not. Connecting the ATA directly to the wall with a standard phone cord will result in reversed polarity. Ways to correct this are

1) Connect two standard phone cords together using a coupler

2) Make your own phone cord, making sure that the wiring is the same on either end

3) Reverse the wiring in the phone jack.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 14, 2004 Posts: 2

being i wanted my adapter in my study and all phones in the house connected including the one in the study here is what i did.

I also have a new prewired house. I put a splitter on the adapter, one line from the splitter went to the phone here in the study. the other i connected to the connector in the wall that goes down to the central box. I unplugged the telco in connection to the central box first of course, then moved the patch cable that came from the study to the central box instead to the telco in connection so now all the house phones are connected. has been working great for about 2 weeks now.

Posts: 46 · Full Forum Member Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 46

Dagon wrote:

I noticed that the guide mentions nothing about polarity. While most telephone devices work fine with either polarity, some do not. Connecting the ATA directly to the wall with a standard phone cord will result in reversed polarity…

Actually not. The phone adapter is fully isolated and technically has no polarity. Even if it were, the Red (tip) would connect through a standard phone wire to the red and Green (ring) to green. No polarity problem. It's not going to work well with old style polarized phones and shouldn't be used with them anyway.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 09, 2004 Posts: 1

We have been using Vonage about 3 months now. Fantastic quality and super easy. I ran cable from cable modem to VT100 and then on to router. Network works fine. Connected VT100 phone jack to a phone jack in the wall using a splitter (after disconnecting BellSouth!! from the box outside) Now all of my phones around the house work fine..including caller ID etc.

Best of all Last month bill was $24.99 versus the $80.00+ I had been paying BellSouth for less service!!