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August 10, 2008

Bringing Telephone into the modern Age

One of the steps in deciding to move forward with (and self-finance) the kitchen was to do a quick review of our monthly expenses, and the only thing that really jumped out as proverbial low-hanging fruit was the nearly $50 a month we spend on the home phone line. We decided to take advantage of the fact that Dawnise's cel is now through T-Mobile and try out their T-Mobile @ Home offering.

Essentially for $50 (and a two year contract) you get a Linksys WRTU54G-TM router (w/ 802.11b and two SIM sockets) and $10/month all-you-can eat VoIP, including free long distance within the continental US. Add to the deal that signing up through the wireless boot at Costco waved the normal $35 activation fee (and dropped the router to $45) and it seemed like it was worth at least trying for the 14 day cooling off period.

I got the router home, fired it up, and discovered two things:

1. it doesn't have the ability to assign static DHCP leases - which I need, and
2. you can put it into "bridge mode" and have it just pass through traffic to another router on the network.

So I put it into bridge mode, wired it between my existing D-Link router/access point, and plugged a phone into one of the RJ-11 ports. Initial testing reveals that call quality is good on both ends and the router correctly shapes traffic to prioritize voice over data. So far no drops while talking and uploading or downloading large files.

If we continue to like it, we'll port our existing home number to the new service in a week or so, and stop giving Qwest month every month for a phone line we only use occasionally.

Posted by dberger at August 10, 2008 9:29 PM

Comments

Bear in mind Qwest is the only phone provider that didn't roll over for the government wiretapping program.

Posted by: Brad at August 11, 2008 2:48 AM

Also keep in mind that old school telephones work when the power is dead too. It's the reason I still have mine.

Posted by: Steve S. at August 14, 2008 3:12 PM