Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @papahuhu

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@jamespa 

if it was just me I’d ditch the home phone altogether, but the oldies like to use a landline. Although my father was a telephone engineer, at 89 he just can’t navigate through a mobile phone. 

TBH I find it difficult to deny that this is the logical conclusion. 

I worked in (fairly cutting edge) telecoms for nearly 30 years, am generally pretty IT literate, and can certainly navigate a mobile phone, and I consider myself reasonably logical.  But I still, for some largely inexplicable reason, like a landline and at £1.60 pcm (I already have all the hardware) its not much of a hardship.

Conclusion - Im not as logical as I like to think!

 

Pah!

Nothing illogical about recognising your own subjective preferences.

@jamespa I still use my dads GPO tools to this day, he left just as telephone exchanges were digitalising and closing. I have fond memories of being about 11 years old and going into the directory enquiries floors with scores of young ladies wearing tight jumpers and headsets and inviting me to sit on their laps!

@majordennisbloodnok yes, I’ve decided you are correct. We only make a handful of outgoing landline calls so it makes sense to PAYG. The cheapest inclusive ( but limited) VOIP bundle I can find is about £6 a month and I’m sure we can do it for £2-£3 instead on that A and A service. I just need to get my analogue head around the necessary compatible hardware and what to plug in where!

Posted by: @papahuhu

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going into the directory enquiries floors with scores of young ladies wearing tight jumpers and headsets and inviting me to sit on their laps!

I think that these days it might be deemed that you had been subjected to sexual abuse.

Posted by: @papahuhu

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@majordennisbloodnok yes, I’ve decided you are correct. We only make a handful of outgoing landline calls so it makes sense to PAYG. The cheapest inclusive ( but limited) VOIP bundle I can find is about £6 a month and I’m sure we can do it for £2-£3 instead on that A and A service. I just need to get my analogue head around the necessary compatible hardware and what to plug in where!

Yes, I've also had a look at A&A and it seems it'll cost either £1.56 or £1.80 per month after an initial £12 setup fee. There are PAYG providers that are completely free but I haven't seen on so far that I'd be confident in using so that minimal monthly fee seems a pretty good compromise.

As it happens, I've just made the decision to port across to it, so I've put my money where my mouth is too.

We kept the landline for as long as it provided resilience as it not dependent on electricity, broadband nor mobile networks.

But when Virgin pushed to change it to VOIP, we used that "chance" to take it over. I cannot remember exactly where this is (!) but it is less than £2 a month, maybe localphone. I then setup redirection to the new number and plugged the DECT phone based onto the virgin modem/hub. Just to make it simple to keep the handsets around the house working...

For mobile voip, we use localphone for over a decade. Surely not got anywhere close to @jamespa experience, but I too spent some time working in the telco industry... Localphone´s app is okish, but I kept some generic voip clients like Zoiper and SipGo configured on some of the iphones over the years.

Recently we changed broadband provider and I have not yet recovered our “landline”. Great to get suggestions from RHH, @papahuhu ! Will need to look at Yealink or Fritzbox.

Posted by: @papahuhu

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I think my plan is to go with a IP phone, I think I need to change my VM hub to be a modem and then connect my own wifi6 mesh network to that modem. I’m not entirely  sure if I need to have one of the mesh routers to be hardwired to the modem or not and I’m not sure if the IP phone connects by WPS to the modem or to the mesh router or wether I need to hardwire it to the modem.

...

You're right that you'll need an RJ45 socket somewhere so you can plug your IP phone into the network with a network cable. If your VM hub doesn't have one, yes, you'll have to either replace it with something that does and can also act as a router or add something to your network that can provide that socket and then route through your VM hub to the Internet.

Personally, I'm biased and so will refrain from commenting on where I would go with your setup since I don't know your preferences and, constraints and general situation well enough.

@jamespa I can’t remember complaining, my dad had to execute the wire taps which were in a restricted area of the exchange so he’d leave me with the ladies.

But not so great when it was male teachers though, I remember at the time thinking it odd that the chemistry master would join the boys in the showers after rugby, even though he wasn’t on the field with us. The other staff never uttered a word. 

Posted by: @papahuhu

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@jamespa I still use my dads GPO tools to this day, he left just as telephone exchanges were digitalising and closing. I have fond memories of being about 11 years old and going into the directory enquiries floors with scores of young ladies wearing tight jumpers and headsets and inviting me to sit on their laps!

That may be the simple and absolute truth, @papahuhu, but my recollections from a similar stage in my life in vaguely similar situations weren't nearly so appealing. The ladies in question certainly had tight jumpers but that wasn't a function of the design of the jumpers. Similarly, the stylised image of the male workers (young, muscular, hard hat, Levis jeans and trendy boots) was covering up the more likely reality of grubby cords, stubble, beer bellies and copies of The Sun tucked into back pockets or worse.

This is not to say I have any problem with anyone who is not body perfect. What I do admit, however, is that at 11 years old I tended to do a lot of squinting to kid myself various imperfections didn't exist really. These days, of course, I happily accept the imperfections of others as much as I try to accept them in myself. The squinting remains, but is purely related to aging eyesight.

Posted by: @jamespa

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All of the above is just cover for the real answer which is of course age!

One of the certainties of life..

I also do not like throwing away old working kit. 

The simplest solution for us to keep the DECT phones working would be a SIP to analog box.. Which is proving difficult to find.

@majordennisbloodnok 

Thanks, so in summary.

1. Switch the VM hub to be in modem mode.

2. Connect the Ethernet cable from the IP phone into the RJ-45 Jack on theVM mode. (I’m assuming an  RJ45 port is a synonym for an Ethernet port).

3. Then I’m struggling, because my understanding is that when you switch the VM hub to act as a modem, it disables all but one Ethernet port. With the port now occupied by my IP phone. 
So does that mean then that I need to connect the mesh router to the one Ethernet  port of the modem and connect the IP phone to the ethernet port of the mesh router instead please. Or, because the mesh router is a router and not a modem, I can then connect the IP phone wirelessly to the router instead  (as opposed to connecting it via the Ethernet port of the router) ? I’m confusing myself now, I’m the Frank Spencer of electrical matters. 

I’ve just ordered my AANet too, along with a number port and a couple of handsets, thanks for the tip @jamespa.

Posted by: @batpred

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Posted by: @jamespa

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All of the above is just cover for the real answer which is of course age!

One of the certainties of life..

I also do not like throwing away old working kit. 

The simplest solution for us to keep the DECT phones working would be a SIP to analog box.. Which is proving difficult to find.

 

Indeed, I believe BT supply them when you are forced onto VOIP, or several routers have the functionality built in,  Alternatively a DECT base station that will terminate VOIP, like the Gigaset N300 IP I have just decommissioned.