Use A Regular Phone For Cellphone Calls

nizo writes "Not too long ago I decided to get rid of my landline, however I miss being able to make a call with a regular phone, especially long calls that might drain my battery. It would also be nice if I didn't have to hunt for my cellphone at home when it rings. Well, it looks like there is a simple solution with a Cell Socket, a cradle for your cellphone that can be used to attach your cell line to one or more regular phones." Even better, for those with a landline or VoIP phone, would be a system that automatically picks the cheapest route out for any given call.

Comments

psh, rotary beats that anyday

[biryokumaru]

stolen from hack-a-day:

a rotary cellphone

interesting

[blew_fantom]

with cell phone plans getting cheaper, this looks to be a viable alternative what with national call plans and competitive prices from all providers. the only thing of course, is that to have DSL, you need an actual phone number/line. unless everyone is going to run to cable, land lines are here to stay. that and many places don't even have cell towers anywhere near them so cell phones are useless in many areas anyway. in that respect, i don't see the land line market dying anytime soon.

Important Note for users with dialup internet

[Veovis]

For those of you who live in an area without high speed internet access, devices like these will not allow you to use your cellphone to make calls to analog (traditional) internet service providers. (Same applys to mobile/flea market merchants with credit card terminals that dial into their processing center) 99.9% of cellphones are on a digital network (CDMA/TDMA/iDEN/GSM/GPRS/etc) and can not provide the channel clarity needed for analog signals

I got one about a year ago. Here's my impression.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I got one of these about a year ago.

I recently built a vacation/retirement house in a remote area (where I could get a landline but can't get DSL or cable internet) and got cellphones to use during the construction project - then decided to try using them with a cell socket rather than installing a landline. Didn't work as well as I'd like.

My phone is an older Nokia model and the service AT&T (now Cingulair) wireless. That company is the only carrier available in the area - and no GSM, just TDMA (and maybe AMPS but I can't tell for sure).

The Cell Socket works reasonably well for voice calls.

It provides charging current when the cellphone is ON hook, but stops when the phone is engaged in a call. (Apparently the power brick is too small to power the cellphone and POTS-emulator line at the same time.)

The Cell Socket doesn't provide a dial tone. Instead (if you pick up the POTS phone when the cellphone is plugged in and ready) it provides a series of three beeps. Apparently these emulate the three beeps you get at the front of an intercept recording. My guess is that this is intended to keep people form trying to use modems and FAX machines with the Cell socket.

I tried programming a modem to use it (ignoring the wait-for-dialtone). But even at the lowest speed setting it would not work with the TDMA cellphone service.

(I hear you can get 1200 baud or so through an AMPS cellphone connection. Unfortunately, my phone was a Nokia with AT&T firmware, and (as far as I can tell) those (at AT&T's insistence) can not be forced to make an AMPS call when a digital carrier is available. So I couldn't test that.)

So it's good for:
- Making long distance calls on your cheep cell plans comfortably.
- Eliminating your long-distance carrier on your landline.
- Using your cellphone anywhere in a house when there's only a few good spots for the signal.
- Putting voice-only service into a remote location, where a landline would be expensive to run (or used too little to justify the expense when you already have a cellphone).

But it's not good for:
- Data
- FAX
- Long calls with little time between them to recharge the cellphone battery.

Simpler solution:

[man_ls]

Call-Forward your cell phone to your landline. It won't cost anything as long as you're forwarding to another local number (same area code)

for Verizon Wireless customers, this is

*72 + 10-Digit Number to Forward + SEND, wait for the tone, END. (to deactivate, *720 + SEND, wait, END)