Can vonage use the existing house phone wiring

Posts: 65 · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 1:38 pm Post subject:

You are correct, each jack would be either Vonage or local telco. However, if you wanted you could wire the jack to support 2 incoming lines. You would then need a phone that supports 2 lines.

This is what I have done. I have a two line phone in my home office and one in the kitchen. This way I can make outbound calls on either line. In my family room and the bedrooms I have Vonage only.

In my case also, I use my telco line for outbound faxing and stuff like that. I have all of my calls that would go to my telco line forwarded to my Vonage line, so then I can take calls anywhere in the house.

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 03, 2004 Posts: 20

Went out to the side of the house and disconnected the telco wiring, then checked to be sure all the phones in the house were indeed dead (DON'T SKIP THIS STEP!). Plugged the MTA into a phone jack and now the whole house, including fax and alarm, is happy.

AAMOF the MTA seems to have considerably higher output that the telco did. Everything rings louder and handset volume is almost too loud.

Posts: 104 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 31, 2004 Posts: 104

The short answer to this question is YES -- done properly you can use the Cisco ATA device to power your house wiring allowing any telephone jack in your house to be used with the Vonage service.

The done properly is ensuring that any existing traditional telephone line is no longer connect to the house wiring.

Having done that, the next issue is to ensure you don't fry your Cisco or Motorola device. The normal voltage on a telephone line is -48 VDC. However, when you telephone rings (to get the bell to ring) it sends AC power (instead of DC power) down the line.

Each telephone connected in your house has REN (ringer equal number). The Cisco ATA can provide enough AC power for 5 REN. Look under each phone that you might have connected and add them up so you DO NOT exceed the 5! Otherwise you'll be stretching the power supply. A typical phone today using an electronic ringer has an REN of 1.5.

Thus if you have only 2-3 telephones in your house, you should be fine, but AGAIN add up the REN and DO NOT EXCEED the value of 5 otherwise you risk shorting out the ATA.

Guest

ckoehncke wrote:

A typical phone today using an electronic ringer has an REN of 1.5.

I agree with everything you said in your post, except that modern electronic phones usually have RENs that are less than 1. For example, my phones range from 0.2 to 0.7.

Posts: 65 · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 7:50 am Post subject:

I have two AT&T business phones in my office and they are both at .1 and my cordless phones are at 0.0.

Posts: 104 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jan 31, 2004 Posts: 104

As several folks have now posted, most modern analog consumer phone utilize electronic ringers which draw only a fraction of power and thus have a lowered labeled REN.

Central offices are generally designed to provide 5 REN to a typical household. Thus Cisco or the Motorola ATA supplying 5 REN is typically enough to power most phones in your house.

However, do check and add up the value of ALL phones and devices (Caller Line ID boxes, answering machines, modems) for the total REN and ensure it does not exceed 5 REN. I have several phones in my own home with REN values between 1 and 2 (these are high end business sets).

Finally, a word of caution, ringing voltage is quite painful so exercise care when working with any bare telephone wires - if the line rings at the right moment you're in for a special form of expresso kick Lol

Guest

i just hook up the mta to my house wiring! this works! i have first disconnected my telco wiring into the grey box then i hook up my mta to one of the jack. now all my phones work! this is awesome! i also immediately call to cancel my landline! yeah! thanks everyone

Guest

If your house has all 4 wires connected to the jacks, the no-wiring-needed way of hooking everything up would be getting a few of those line splitters from the local hardware store (It's an adapter that plugs ingo the wall and has 3 jacks in it labeled L1, L2, and L1+2) This way you can use L1 for the landline and L2 for the ATA. Of course, remember to disconnect the yellow and black wires outside first! (red/green is L1, yellow/black is L2)

lonewolf

Posts: 22 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 07, 2004 Posts: 22

One more thing for anyone using the in-wall wiring method.

If your network interface involves bare wires instead of the nicer RJ-11 plug interface, then you should remember to prevent the disconnected phone company wires from touching each other. Best thing is to cut off all of the bare wiring back to the insulation so that you don't cause a short-circuit on the lines.