Wireless Joey, are they all the same?

[Almighty1]

Most of us older people do

Does it require a real landline or can that landline be delivered by current methods like a ATA Adaptor? If so, just get a Obihai and use Google Voice and you will still get a landline for free, that's how I send faxes and make voice calls.

 

[RTCDude]

Does it require a real landline or can that landline be delivered by current methods like a ATA Adaptor? If so, just get a Obihai and use Google Voice and you will still get a landline for free, that's how I send faxes and make voice calls.

That's what I do. I have the phone output from my VOIP adapter in my service closet connected to the old phone lines that go throughout the house. So the VOIP adapter acts just the old POTS phone service we use to have and got rid of.

The VOIP companies tell you that their adapters don't have enough power multiple phones. But that assumes you're still using an old Bell 300 style phones with a real electromechanical ringer. All modern electronic phones use only a tiny fraction of power that the Bell 300 phones did. So a VOIP adapter can easily power a dozen or more phones. However, really long wiring in a big house can be a problem.

And so long as the VOIP adapter supports Caller ID (like mine. Almost all of them do), Caller ID on the Hopper works just fine.

One caveat, there is a chance that faxing may not work with this arrangement. Some VOIP companies restrict the bandwidth on their voice channels that makes fax not work. However, VOIP companies almost always have "fax" additional lines (for a bit more money) that do let faxing work. In my case, the regular voice works just fine for faxing even though the VOIP company cautioned that it "might" not work. Just test it out and see.

If you actually need an extra bandwidth fax line, but only want one VOIP line, just use the "fax" line for all your voice needs also.

 

[Almighty1]

That's what I do. I have the phone output from my VOIP adapter in my service closet connected to the old phone lines that go throughout the house. So the VOIP adapter acts just the old POTS phone service we use to have and got rid of.

The VOIP companies tell you that their adapters don't have enough power multiple phones. But that assumes you're still using an old Bell 300 style phones with a real electromechanical ringer. All modern electronic phones use only a tiny fraction of power that the Bell 300 phones did. So a VOIP adapter can easily power a dozen or more phones. However, really long wiring in a big house can be a problem.

And so long as the VOIP adapter supports Caller ID (like mine. Almost all of them do), Caller ID on the Hopper works just fine.

One caveat, there is a chance that faxing may not work with this arrangement. Some VOIP companies restrict the bandwidth on their voice channels that makes fax not work. However, VOIP companies almost always have "fax" additional lines (for a bit more money) that do let faxing work. In my case, the regular voice works just fine for faxing even though the VOIP company cautioned that it "might" not work. Just test it out and see.

If you actually need an extra bandwidth fax line, but only want one VOIP line, just use the "fax" line for all your voice needs also.

You can use thicker guage wire like I do as I am using Belden MediaTwist Cat6+ Crescent shaped cable. Faxing depends on the quality of the phone lines on the other side. Some work at up to 14.4Kbps while some only reliably work at 2400bps. It depends on the modem used since I can do up to 33.6kbps faxes but haven't found someone that supports it yet on the other end. Usually the paid VoIP services are better for this, my free Google Voice has the problems I had mentioned. Broadvoice supposedly works for all faxes for example since it supports T.38 which Google Voice doesn't but Google Voice is free and the problems are usually it will finish the first cover page and then disconnect or it will fax a few pages and then disconnect, not finishing the page but that could be WinFax Pro on Windows XP 32bit SP3 as it also buffer underruns on a external USRobotics Dual Standard v.everything modem with fax and a Multitech World USB FaxModem. Any good VoIP providers that work well for fax with low prices?