On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Jax wrote:
> As a former Time-Warner Technical Support employee, I will have to say
> no, this can't be done with just the eMTA (that's the phone modem.) It
> is possible to get this working with additional hardware/software that
> others have suggested, but beware - Time-Warner will not troubleshoot
> this connection, since it is not an ordinary phone jack and therefor
> beyond their scope of work. If you had any problems getting this to
> work, or keeping it working ... the only place you could go for help
> is a forum - assuming others have tried this and succeeded.
I'm not all that interested in a "hard" solution. :-)
As a consumer, I think offering the ability to make calls on my home
number from my home phone, computer, or wifi phone would rock!!
> Also, in our division at least, the service goes out A LOT. It is not
> the most reliable to say the least ... You'd be amazed at how much we,
> as a culture, have come to assume that when you pick up the phone
> there will always be a dialtone. If you have gotten Digital Phone,
> please leave that notion at the door ... and try not to get too
> frustrated with Tech Support -- they're there to help ... If the service
> goes out too much for you to handle, then cancel it. No harm, no foul.
Which is exactly why I refused to drop Southwestern Bell/SBC/at&t for so
many years. When I lived in Florida we had a hurricane that took out our
electricity and cable TV (the power came back on days before CATV, that's
how I knew CATV went out) but good ole BellSouth kept our phones going.
My decision is strictly financial. Right now we have at&t telephone,
rabbit ears, and Road Runner. For LESS money we can have digital phone,
digital cable TV, and Road Runner. Even after the introductory pricing
it's still a small savings. I have called/emailed at&t practically
begging them to get DSL out this way. They have service literally three
streets over. I understand the technical barriers of DSL, but given we're
a somewhat affluent neighborhood, it seems like it'd be worth their while
to install the necessary equipment to get this section online. But 5
years have gone by ...
Since we all have cell phones, our home phone has become somewhat
superfluous.
> I know it sounds unrelated, but I am trying to do something similar
> but without phone service at all. I want to hook my computer, cell
> phone, and house phone (which has no dialtone) all to run off of
> Bluetooth technology, but I'm running into a lot of road blocks.
> Phreaking just isn't as easy as it used to be.
No it's not. I can think of a lot of projects I'd love to tackle, but
these days it can't be done (or the cost is too prohibitive).
John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
John Mayson (john@mayson.us)