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You've Dropped Your Landline — Now What?
smurphmeister writes "My wife and I recently moved up to the world of cell phones, after taking our sweet time to make sure this whole newfangled technology was going to stick around. We moved the old landline phone number to her phone, so we're disconnected from the pole. Now the question is, what to do with the copper already in our house? My first thought was an intercom system, but that just seems so old school! So what ideas do you all have for what to do with the 4 little wires running to every room of my house?"
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Use it as a guide line for ethernet.
I know! You'll need to make a weapon. Look around; can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
1) If you got the budget, rip it out, replace with Cat6, if Fiber to the home comes to yours, you'll thank me later :-)
2) The intercom idea isn't bad, depends on the size of your house (what happened to "just yelling" sheesh)
3) Just yank out all the copper and sell it, few bucks anyways
At any rate I'd make sure you're real sure you like being away from your landline. Give that decision a 6 month wait period before you decide to recycle your wires one way or another.
...in bed
There's more important things to worry about.
Move on.
AT&ROFLMAO
Get one of these:
http://www.myxlink.com/index.aspx
And keep the legacy landline handsets in the house. This way, no matter where you are in the house, whether or not the cellphone is with you, you can still make/receive calls - leveraging your cell minutes.
You can probably integrate that with an Asterisk VoIP system and get additional things like intercom, room-to-room dialing, etc.
I suggest using them for a transmitter for Very Low Frequencies (VLF), so you can chat with u-boats and scuba diving friends.
Most likely the phone line is already Twisted Pair, so assuming it's CAT5, it's easy to change over to Ethernet. One idea I had was to install cameras at central points (doors, windows, etc) and set up tablet PC's with a simple web interface to pull up images from the cams.
Heard a noise at night? just go to the tablet on the wall, scan the cameras, and alert the authorities if necessary.
Morse code communication system.
Connect it to your computer for music everywhere.
Now a real thought. Do you have, or are you going to have kids. At some point you will have to let the communicate, and a cell phone may not be a good option. If this is the case you may wish in just a few years that you had left the phone lines alone.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Use the old wiring as a pull-rope to run Cat-6.
That probably won't work. The old wiring would be stapled in place.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
They might make good AM radio antennas. You know, the kind of radio where you can listen to ideas too far off in the ideological fringes to make it onto the Internet.
in-home telegraph system
imagine the envy and awe of your friends and neighbors as you show off a morse telegraph key in every room
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Rig up a some doorbell switches, D cell batteries and bulbs to use as a signalling device that you need another bottle of beer
DO NOT remove the wire. In this economy, it's hard enough selling your house as it is... If your nerd level is high enough, I recommend interfacing it all with a nerdkit... alarm clock in every room, irritating beeper that goes off every 15 minutes, lights that flash when you get a new email, maybe even "backup lighting" (preferably red) for when your main power goes down...
What is this "net"? Just use the first line as a telegraph line. Hook it up to a lightbulb or something.
Get a stand alone adaptor for Skype/ other VoIP system (SIP?) and hook in your old landline phones to that. Cheaper internet calls out, emergency and incoming calls to your mobiles. Best of everything. And fairly easy to convert back to being wired into the normal telephone network!
Get a cell phone docking station and plug your house wiring into the cell phone. There are several available: Dock-N-Talk, Cell Socket. Example: Cell Docking Station. Simply google "cell socket" to get more results.
AFAIK, phones only use CAT3.
Can you grab the few volts of electricity off of the line that the phone company is sending you for free?
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
Depending on which state you live in, the phone company may be required to provide a "soft dial tone" so that you can continue to make free 911 calls with a land line phone. In this case, it would be extremely foolish to remove or mess around with the phone lines. In an emergency, you may not be able to 100% rely on your cell phone to have a charged battery, get signal, etc. If your wife starts having a heart attack, you may not have time to run across the house and grab a charger if the battery is dead or reset the phone if it freezes.
Plug your old corded phone back in, so you can still call 911 in an emergency when the power is out and the cell towers are either down or jammed to capacity. AFAIK, all local phone companies in the US are required to still connect 911 calls, even if you're not paying for service.
Maybe you're doing most of your chatting on the cell but there's still some good reasons for a landline:
1) home fax machine
2) landline more likely to function in an emergency as cell systems usually overload and are unavailable
3) landline call to 911 is more likely to show your address to the dispatcher possibly saving your life with a faster response
4) landline will not be lost or misplaced
5) landline more likely to continue to function during an electrical power failure
6) landline can provide emergency dial-up internet service
7) landline will not expose you to uhf radiation
8) landline will not suffer from battery failure
9) landline will not suffer from poor signal quality
10 landline is legally much more difficult for authorities to eavesdrop on
It's only required to be Cat3, but it's possible (unlikely though) that he has Cat5 or higher run through his house, with only four of the eight wires terminated. Were I to build my own house, I'd go this route, myself, and this is what they did at a networking lab I used to work at instead of buying phone extension cables.
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And you don't have any doubt about the reliability of the cell system?
And in an emergency where POTS is the only functioning technology.
Mature systems that have been tested in dire situations, old fashioned switched telephones and HAM radios come to mind.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Not that any Slashdotter would know anyone that might get arrested.... Still one should be aware that in many places (like Texas) your "Phone Call" has to be a collect phone call through some third party (don't know the name of the third rate company in Texas), and they won't make a collect call to a cell phone.
So.... If the police show up at your daughter's apartment because of a domestic disturbance call, and she isn't entirely interested in letting them search the house (like she is studying for finals barefoot in her night gown after finally kicking out her very loud boyfriend) .... And the police are so worried that she is being held against her will and being beaten up by her boy friend that they throw her on the ground and beat her up and haul her to jail....
THEN when she tries to call you and you have no land line.... You will not be disturbed.
THEN she will get tossed barefoot on the streets at 4:30 am in her night gown in downtown Austin Texas and will finally give you a call when she borrows a phone from a construction worker....
AND you will be thankful that you got 45 extra minutes sleep.
I am not entirely clear why so many states like Texas have decided that it is a great idea to only give people the right to a COLLECT phone call to a LAND LINE ONLY in this day and age, but that is the way it is.
TRUE STORY.
Indeed, usually only 2x single pairs, hardly enough to be usable at all for any sort of Ethernet network.
Anyone who's stupid enough to start fucking with the copper in their house should be aware that they actually don't own the copper. I know here in Australia, if you touch that copper, even though it's inside your house, you are liable for quite hefty fines from ACMA (Australian Communication & Media Authority). There's also the issue that if you have destroyed the line to the telco's joint out the front you will have to drop between $5 000 and $20 000 from your house price (depending on the distance & local contractor rates) to have a new lead-in installed. Although I doubt you are actually not connected to the joint out the front, telcos usually won't do that unless they need the pair you're sitting on, they like to keep in-place services for future customers. So now you've got a set of 50v live wires that you want to play with? Not exactly dangerous, but I wouldn't be plugging anything into it that's not approved for telecoms use in your country. If you do disconnect this, it goes back to vandalism of telecommunications equipment, hefty fines, etc.
All in all this is one of the most monumentally stupid things I've heard of someone wanting to do. Leave well enough alone and install some Cat-V/Cat-VI cabling (I'd recommend Cat-VI so you can run a gbps network). It will improve, rather than degrade, your house price and you don't end up with huge fines.
Ideas for future Ask Slashdot articles:
In my state in the U.S., there is a box on the outside wall of the house. The copper on the house side of that box belongs to the customer. I don't know what the laws are in other states, but I think they are similar.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Along the lines of an intercom system, I'd try distribution of stereo music throughout the house. Not sure about resistance/quality issues. Have a set of speakers per room with an on/off switch, or carry the speakers with you and plug them in.
Anyone who's stupid enough to start fucking with the copper in their house should be aware that they actually don't own the copper. I know here in Australia...
I can't speak for Oz, but here in the US you own all the copper past the box. That's why they have different types of service plans. Some cover the line all the way to the phone (and even include the phone in some cases) while cheaper service plans only cover to the box. The phone company didn't pay for the copper to be put into the house, you did or the original owner of the house did initially. The cable company also tries to claim ownership over the coax in the wall too (which they don't own), but just try to get them to come an remove it if you use satellite.
911 service works even if you have no local provider.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
My brother's house is 5ish years old and had cat5 run to the phone jacks, BUT they still daisy chained the jacks instead of star topology.
In Ontario (and I presume throughout North America), the telco owns the wire up to the demarc location, which is usually wired as a regular phone jack. All of the phone lines in the house get connected to a single RJ12, which is then plugged into the demarc jack. If you have a problem with the phone lines, one of the first things the telco will tell you to do is plug a phone directly into the demarc jack. If it works, the trouble lies in the household wiring, and it's your problem to deal with. If it doesn't then the trouble is on the telco wiring and they'll deal with it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
http://www.amazon.com/RABBIT-VCR/dp/B001F87TWI :-P
Everyone in the house can watch you play Ultima V on your C64 or you can play old school VHS pr0n in EVERY ROOM!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
GPS isn't required, e911 IS. The providers can provide e911 data through triangulation. In fact indoors they often have to since GPS doesn't work well.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The problem with cell-phone 911 is that, while it does figure out where you are and connect you to the local emergency dispatcher (most of the time), it doesn't connect you to their 911 system, only to their non-emergency line. So the dispatcher can't really see your GPS information without involving the mobile carrier. And, as an added side effect, in big emergencies (e.g. floods, etc.) the dispatchers are more likely to ignore their non-emergency line in order to keep up with the calls coming into the 911 system, so you could effectively lose contact with them simply because you're on a mobile phone.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Plus, when you make a 911 call from a land line, your address pops up on the screen.
Since cell phone companies have been able to put off any attempt to actually make them implement E911 (which we are paying for, BTW), they won't have any friggin' clue where you are. This is especially bad in a place like Pennsylvania where you need to know what township you are in at all times if you make a 911 call from your cell phone.
Maybe put nice blank plates over the jacks if it bothers you that much. By "better" I'd say fishing cat 5, cat6, or structured wiring to each jack and then home running them somewhere. A loop is no good, you'll only make what's there worse with any other scheme.
The only thing worse than trying to un-fuck the wiring in a new place you just bought because the last owner did some "project" is being that home owner and trying to get it all unfucked on your own because an inspector told the potential buyers that the wiring is all screwed up. Trust me on this. Your wife will be a defcon 0 with the stress of moving. You'll be either paying two mortgages or dealing with the close on your new place, trying to get things timed just right. (And they never can time things "just right.") The new buyers will be ready to close yesterday, except for the list of stupid crap you need to fix and or explain. A contractor will want to tear up walls and fix it that way, for a couple grand (maybe more if they know you're bent over the table) and you'll have to re-clean the place with that lovely drywall dust just about everywhere... And it's going to be about 200 degrees in your attic where you cleverly "hid" most your dirty work... If you're there forever, then knock yourself out, but if you plan on selling the place, just realize that a lot of people still like to have phones in rooms and phone service (even Vonage or 8x8 or whatever can run over the old loop if you plug it in to the house instead of a phone)
Or maybe the new buyer will get a kick out of your "intercom" system or home brewed HPNA, with the speaker about 2 feet off the ground where the phone jack was... You never know.
I bet you can find those Farallon dongles on ebay for real cheap.
My mother in law still has an appletalk-ethernet gateway on her shelf.
If you're interested in embedded systems, a simple home sensor network would be a great project for getting started. It just so happens that RS-485 is a very simple serial interface to get working over existing phone cable. There are a number of (relatively) inexpensive off the shelf sensors that speak Modbus over RS-485 as well. Most of these sensors are for industrial control (SCADA) systems, but I'm sure you'd be able to find some interesting devices to play with in your home.
Good luck, and don't forget to disconnect your phone lines from the telco before playing with them!
I read this as "landmine".
I expected a story about a soldier placing land mines, dropping one, and being stuck in one of those "oh shit I can't move or I'll blow up" situations.
ladies and gentlemen:
/. and throughout the interwebs.
The previous message was brought to you by NORML. the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws. Make mary jane legal and you will see more of our thoughtful postings on
Leave it alone.
If you sell the house it will be there for the next person.
Really, why mess up perfectly operational systems just because you are not using it at the moment?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I know you can get cordless telephones with built in sim card support that supports up to 6 handsets around the home (Siemens Gigaset comes to mind) but no one as far as I know is making anything that interfaces the mobile provider to your normal telephones/copper, maybe this needs to be looked at ?
Turn your home into a giant wi-fi antenna. You could then either open it up to other to use, or keep it locked down, and brag to your friends that you can connect to the net from halfway accross the city. Or both.
Emergency lights At least thats what I've done in my home power goes out and I have a light in every room where there is a phone jack. I set it up with two 12 volt batteries in parallel and use LCD bulbs. Make sure you remove the drop end from the isolation block where the copper comes into the house as it is probably still running telco power through it
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
Or just run a network over the phone lines .
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
How about hooking up some low-power emergency lighting around the house - even LEDs would be useful to let you find your way around. You could also tap into the mains ring, so if power drops a small set of lights could come on. You might even be able to neatly recess some small bulbs into your skirting, or lower down in the wall. I'm sure it would break the rules on any service plan with your landline provider, and may even be illegal, but if done well it would be very cool and also pretty useful.
That's apparently a good one: Pairs with up to 3 cellular phones (plus a landline if you buy the appropriate model). Searches for a free trunk or lets you select the outgoing phone. Lets you switch between calls on different cellphones ala call-waiting. Forwards caller ID info to the POTS phones on incoming calls. Supports pulse dial as well as tone so you can use antique phones.
Here's another one (only two lines): Cell2Tel
A third one is Dock-n-Talk which can be connected either by wire or bluetooth (with an extra-cost adapter).
There are also both handset company and aftermarket docking cradles for some phones (example: Cell Socket). Unlike a bluetooth types (which pretends to be a headset as far as the phone is concerned) the direct-connect types are only for a particular cellphone model so you lose your investment when you switch handsets.
= = = = =
NO FAX / modems / satellite pay-per-view uplink:
Note that cellphones, with or without POTS adapters, will NOT carry high-speed modem signals. No FAX, 56K modems, satellite pay-per-view connections, etc. (Those require the full 64K-equivalent DS0 signal to carry their bandwidth, while the cellphones use a lower bit rate and run a voice-optimized CODEC.)
Same is true of VoIP adapters (i.e. Magic Jack), but for a different reason: While the software and POTS card/dongle could convert to/from DS0 byte streams with A-law or u-law CODEC, the high-speed modems also require a very accurate (Stratum-III) clock synchronized with the phone system's clocking. While your DSL or whatever may use this clocking for its hop to the net, it isn't forwarded to your computer. (Maybe once Synchronous Ethernet is deployed this will change.) Even IEEE-1588 isn't good enough for this timing.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Anyone who's stupid enough to start fucking with the copper in their house should be aware that they actually don't own the copper. I know here in Australia...
I can't speak for Oz, but here in the US you own all the copper past the box. That's why they have different types of service plans. Some cover the line all the way to the phone (and even include the phone in some cases) while cheaper service plans only cover to the box. The phone company didn't pay for the copper to be put into the house, you did or the original owner of the house did initially. The cable company also tries to claim ownership over the coax in the wall too (which they don't own), but just try to get them to come an remove it if you use satellite.
In the USA the telco's and cable companies do not own the copper in your house passed the initial connection spot (the gray box on the side of your house for telcos, and the main connection to the coax splitter for cable companies) unless you have a maintenance contract, even then they do not own it per se, they just request that you DO NOT touch it, as they have techs that are for that purpose. This can vary from state to state, but that is the general governing 'laws' of who owns what in the US.
Old bell labs hand here.
When AT&T was a monopoly they owned everything right up to and including the phone.
You only rented.
They would install and maintain the wire in your house.
The equipment was designed to last 100 years. No joke, that was the requirement.
You could beat the burglar senseless with your phone, they were heavy, it would hurt.
Then you could use it to call the police.
The recommended fix for a bad carbon microphone in the handset was to bang it on a table.
A phone today will break if you drop it.
Commissioner Anabell Brumford: Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to introduce a most special American. Tonight, he is being honoured for his 1000th drug-dealer killed.
Lt. Frank Drebin: [to applause] Thank you. But, in all honesty, the last three I backed over with my car. Luckily, they turned out to be drug-dealers.
http://notanumber.net/
Just leave it alone.
In particular: Removing it may lower your house resale value. Keep it in place.
(See other posts below about things like cellphone adapters to make it live so ordinary phone instruments or antique phones will work in the house.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Leave the wires alone. You may need them again.
That said, feel free to mod this off topic if you like, but the question in the title made some of the voices in my head yell stuff at me that makes sense, of a sort.
The author of TFA went to cellular phone only, dropping wired service. In most cases/comparisons cell service costs more than wired service. That comes with benefits, primarily portability, but the fact remains.
I used to install home TV antennae for my dad's TV shop. For $200 or less a home could get 5 to 10 years of service picking up signals broadcast over the air. Portable TVs could with rabbit ears and loops could, in our area, pick up the same 10 stations (VHF and UHF) as the big rig fed to the house. For that matter even larger TVs came with rabbit ears back then, making the rooftop gear unnecessary. Then along came cable and direct satellite, and we get our TV fed to us by wire and/or receiver boxes, and pay a good deal for the feed.
In the first case we trade hard wired for unwired, and we pay more. In the second we trade soft- or unwired for hardwired, and we pay more. As I said, it makes sense of a sort, but some of the voices keep saying "huh?".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
A phone today will break if you drop it.
At which point you run down to the store and pick from one of the several thousand phones that are available without having to resort to perpetual financing options. Or, even more horrific, you hook up a modem. Without asking permission.
Yeah. I remember those days too. :P
Oh please! As a former heavy smoker of the doobie the only posts you'll get from potheads is along the lines of "I'm hungry. Have you got any cookies?" or "cartoons are cool". Pot heads are about as much of a menace to society as a care bear. The only thing that needs to fear a pot head is the fridge.
if you want fun and excitement, try dealing with a cranker for awhile. It can be quite...uhhh... interesting to sit there and watch as one empties his 9mm(they just love firearms and are quite paranoid...what a combination!) over and over into a tree because he is sure the FBI has a camera in it. meanwhile all the pothead wants to know is if there is anything good on TV and if there is any leftover pizza.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah sure...
http://80211n.com/80211n-speed.html
Site is run by Broadcom, they make and sell 802.11 chipsets. They say real world throughput is about 160Mbps (link speed means about as much as a politician's word). Real world speed on my wired LAN is ~980Mbps. In what world is 160Mbps "almost as fast" as 900+Mbps?
Simple physics, wireless simply can't compete with wired for speed. Wired is also switched, wireless is shared. More than one stream on the network and they all suffer.
Yes, the first thing I want to do if I hear a noise at night is put my face up to a wall, highlight my silhouette, ruin my night vision, and fiddle with some electronics.
Correction, I'll go downstairs with a bat, or gun, and a really bright flashlight to blind any intruder with before I bat them. And if it's a miscreant child, blind them and scare the shit out of them so they'll stop sneaking out at night.
I certainly do not intend to wait for authorities after putting myself at a serious disadvantage first.
Question everything
It's not that they own it, it's that in Australia you have to have a cabling license, a registration to install cabling in order to install, terminate, connect, disconnect any kind of data cabling for telephone, computers, alarms, etc.
Oh, and you can't install your own Cat5 to run your home LAN either, same rules apply, you've got to get an electrician.
But it's not just existing cabling you can't change, you can't install new cabling either.
Generally the first jack (closest jack to the outside box), and everything before it is what the telco is responsible for. The "Network Boundary Point", and everything on their side is their responsibility; sometimes that may be on the outside the building.
You own everything else, you just aren't allowed to touch it yourself.
If you're willing to pay, you can get a licensed cabling installer to disconnect the jack at the NBP from your other jacks and to re-terminate your existing cabling in a manner that permits you to plug Ethernet devices into it (provided it's Cat5)
Of course, this is not free... and when you get the bill, you may wish you had just gotten a new install of Cat6 cabling done, while you were paying.......
In New Zealand it is standard practice to use cat5e or cat6 when wiring new houses for phone. Some sparkies daisy chain but when I wire houses I star it from a central point.
Since 100baseT ethernet only uses pairs 2 and 3 (orange/white and green/white), you could punch down pairs 2 and 3 on an RJ45 jack and pair 1 (blue/white) on a phone jack.
Better would be to just run 2 cat6 cables to each location, then you can use GigE.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
or possibly a 'First Post!' as the final post
That's for sure. I use those "ancient" jacks to access high-speed internet. Although not having telephone jacks would not stop me from buying a house, it would drop my offer a few thousand dollars since I have to deal with the hassle of re-installing the lines.
Also I like having old-fashioned phones in my house, because in an electrical outage, they are the only things that still work.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
In New Zealand you can do your own wiring (eg install a new power socket or light fitting) provided it's your home and you follow NZ ECP 50 (Electrical Code of Practice).
You may not do anything inside the switchboard - that requires a registered electrician.
You may not do any of the above for reward (own home or near relative is fine).
You ARE allowed to do any ELV (extra low voltage) wiring yourself. ELV wiring is not regulated. ELV in NZ is defined as below 50V AC or below 120V DC.
Telephone networks in NZ operate at ELV, so you can legally do whatever you like, but Telcos reserve the right not to connect your dodgy work to their own network.
Data cabling and AV cabling is all ELV.
The wiring standard, AS/NZS 3000, requires segregation between your ELV wiring and mains voltage wiring.
In this post, ELV has nothing to do with rugby.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Although not having telephone jacks would not stop me from buying a house, it would drop my offer a few thousand dollars since I have to deal with the hassle of re-installing the lines.
Wow, I thought BT (UK phone company) were bad when they charged me £100 to install a line to my house.
Connect all the copper to a alarm in each room, and have it go off every 108 minutes. Then rig up a console where you can type in a code to reset it.
We have considered changing over to something like magic jack, because it can cut the price on a service we never use, but I have my reservations due to the way they do 911.
Anyway, the odds of this being relevant to you are low, but the point is that whatever plan you go with, try to make it future-proof. Some things to consider are:
FWIW...
Lost electricity, cell phones ran out of juice. Before that, though, the emergency responders had allocated or saturated the cell capacity.
Land lines stayed up for a month while we had no appreciable cell service or electricity.
Unfortunately, Verizon has started using the home owners electricity to "power" the land lines.
What a cluster....