Lisa,

Typically you can port most cellular numbers because each primary cellular carrier has points-of-presence everywhere in the country - even if you move from area code 101 to area code 202, your call will be carried over a cell carrier's private network to wherever your phone is now located.

As for land line numbers, you can typically port the number if you remain in the same area code. This web page at the FCC's web site tells more about Local Number Portability and gives tips as to how to go about the process. Certainly, a call to your new carrier will get you an answer as to whether that carrier has any limitations with porting numbers from MCI. (I believe that MCI is a trademark now being used by Verizon.)

Let us know what "MCI" tells you.

Dr. Telecom

Hi Tony,

I can't tell you why 48v DC is the standard for the PSTN. It's been that way for maybe 100 years or more. I can only tell you that the conventional telco Central Office used, and still uses, lead-acid batteries for the DC "talk battery" voltage that carries your voice on a regular landline "POTS" phone call. These tend to be made in multiples of 6v, e.g.12v car batteries. So maybe 48 v became a standard based on availability. Sorry I can't answer authoritatively.

Dr. Telecom

Hi rasm#bret,

Your docking station will not provide ethernet for the Polycom phone. It is possible that you can use the laptop as a router or a bridge to share the Internet connection with other ethernet equipment but I believe it would require a second NIC on the laptop and someone other than Dr. T would have to show you how to configure the Windows laptop.

The easier way would be to exchange your cellphone for one that acts as a WiFi hotspot. Typically, up to 5 WiFi devices can share its Internet connection. So one item would be the laptop (no more blasted tethering!) and the other would be a "WiFi client" or Bridge connected to your Polycom phone. In this article, at the very bottom, I provide a list of such items from 2009 - so today some will be on eBay used and others have been replaced with new models (check the mfrs).

This second method will be a LOT simpler and you could use your Polycom ANYWHERE there's WiFi, not just near your smartphone.

The "Late" Dr. T

I'm not sure what the capacitors are, Jean. Are these similar to the DSL filters you get on a DSL Line?

Does the gate have its own phone number that you call from your home then enter a code? Or is the gate control across your line listening for you to simply pick up the handset in your house and dial a code?

If the latter is true, perhaps U-Verse doesn't provide enough "battery" to power the tone decoder for the gate. The phone company sends out 48v but things like U-Verse, which create the dialtone, battery, and ringing voltage locally, may not do so. You may have to either supplement the battery voltage down at the gate or go back to a standard POTS landline.

Sorry that I'm not getting the whole picture.

Dr. Telecom

Bob:

The feature you want is sometimes called "directory name match(ing)" and I found very few phones with this feature online but there are a few. You might use ""directory name match" as a search term and see what you get that will meet your needs.

Le Medcin des Telefons

Hi,

Asterisk is a phone system. That's all. NOTHING can "duplicate" copper pairs, and that includes Asterisk.

What country are you in? Also, what phone system are you using?

Have you considered E1/T1 or PRI? It's silly to have 50 analog lines coming in to a business - once you get to that call density there are cheaper options.

Dr. Telecom

None, to my knowledge. The CallerID data that is presented to the party you are calling is determined by the carrier and is based on the cellular number assigned to your phone.

But you are asking about a phone that will control what the CALLER sees when they call YOU. Well, think about it - when you call anyone from any phone, all you see are the digits you dialed. If you see a name in the display, that text came from your own "phonebook" (your contacts). The person you are calling may be named Frankenstein, but if you dial 555-555-1212, and you have "Prince Charming" associated with that number in your contacts, you will see 555-555-1212 PRINCE CHARMING in your display. In other words, the person you are DIALING is never displayed on your phone based on data from the phone you are calling.

So, don't worry about the telemarketers. If they call you, they call you. And you can't change who they think you are because they got your number from a list. You can have your number opted-out by going to DoNotCall.gov and filling in the form. If you get a LOT of telemarketing calls, ask your carrier to change your phone number and then do the above. And, if you get a call with a CallerID display you don't recognize, or especially a plainly false one like 000-000-0000, just don't answer!

Doc

Thank you Dr Telecom.
May be i wrong place. Sorry about that.

Regard.
TT

Hi Toan,

You are way beyond any of us. UCAN, and this column, are primarily for consumer issues. We get a little technical a times, but only at the end-user level. Discussing cellular transmit power, Bit Error Rates, and dBm is totally beyond the intent and scope of this forum. I think you'll need to ask a professor or telecom engineer.

Dr. Telecom

Hi, Anonymous.

Your best bet to find out who is responsible for the wiring is to look at the governing documents of your condo. These documents should describe whose responsibility it is to maintain the wires. Your HOA should be able to provide with copies of the documents. If you are a San Diego resident and need more assistance, please fill out our telecom complaint form.

Hi Rebecca,

You talk about connecting your router, but I assume that it operates as a modem and router. AT&T has specific instructions for connecting the router to your system. You can find them here http://www.att.com/support_media/images/pdf/hsi/ATT_HSI_Self-Installation_Guide_All.pdf.

If those directions do not work then either AT&T is doing something to hinder your wireless router's connection or there is something wrong with the device. If there is something wrong with the device you can ask AT&T for an approved list of wireless routers and shop around for the best price. You never need to buy a router from them and often you can find used dsl equipment at low cost because of people no longer needing the equipment when they switch to another carrier such as cable.

Since I don't know where you are located I don't know what type of internet services options are available to you besides dsl. However if you have a cable provider or other service in the area often you can ask to speak to the retention department at AT&T and threaten to change services if they don't help you clear up the problem. It doesn't always work but companies have been know to cut deals on equipment in order to keep a customer.

Hope this helps if not feel free to write back and we will see if there is any other help we can give you.

Hi Crystal,

Technically, she's right. It's a basic rule of physics called Ohms law that states that if an electrical current runs through anything having electrical resistance, the voltage of that signal will drop across the resistance. Increasing the current of the signal will increase the voltage drop and increasing the resistance will also increase the voltage drop.

Ideally, the conducting wire in your phone cord would have no resistance but unless it's close to absolute zero in your apartment (in which case you should call your heating and airconditioning repair person!) the wire DOES have resistance and the longer the wire, the more resistance.

Now, if you already get a strong signal from your phone company because you're fairly close to the central office (where their equipment is) you might not notice the loss much over your hypothetical 200 ft wire. But it it's already low, it may drop beyond the threshold of comfort after it traverses your cable. To reduce the effects, you can either get thicker cable (which will have less resistance) or you can go wireless.

If you want the long wire because you like to wander all over the house while talking, consider a modern cordless (not necessarily cellular) phone. If you want the long wire because you want to use the phone in a different location than where the nearest jack is located, have a phone installer come out and see if they can install a jack where you need it.

Best Wishes,

Doctor Telecom

Stacy,

Simple. Of course, checking the bill is the best way and if there's more than one line at the house, just pick up one and call your cell phone to see the caller ID of that line, then match it with the bill.

The other way is to just pick up the phone and dial "0". Not "00" or anything else, just ZERO. Typically, when the operator (or a greeting at the Operators' Call Center) comes on, they will identify the carrier. If you're not clear, ask them.

You should then hang up and dial "00". This time you will get a person or greeting for the LONG DISTANCE vendor. It may be the same as the local carrier but it may not. Now you know both the local carrier (CLEC or ILEC) and the long distance carrier to call in order to cancel the accounts.

Hope I Got You On the Road To Answerville,

Dr. Telecom

Barbie,

It is not impossible to remotely access a landline, but it would not be easy for most of us to do. You should probably look into getting some help to resolve this one. If you are in California you can contact UCAN's fraud squad (Click on the Get Help Now button on the top of the page). If you are not in California you should see if your state has an agency that regulates utility and telephone companies and if so file a complaint with them. I am also concerned with the fact that someone else is opening an account in your name. This is an example of identity theft and you should take it seriously even if you think you know who it is. Our affiliate organization Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has a lot of information about identity theft and steps you should take if it happens to you. http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs17a.htm.

Hi Rao,

Please see my post below called digital landline and at&t landline which essentially says, "No, you don't get the same power fail support with cable or VoIP as you do with a POTS line" but there are ways to provide some support fort such an occurance.

Dr. Telecom

No. VoIP doesn't eliminate long distance. Often VoIP plans have good long distance rates partly because they use the Internet to carry the call much of the way instead of having to pay to use the resources of a traditional long distance carrier.

Also, at least at this point in its growth, VoIP isn't quite as reliable as the PSTN especially when you're using a residential Internet connection to carry the calls.

Be sure to compare the long distance rates you'll get with your VoIP service vs the traditional long distance carriers - remember that you don't have to use AT&T as your long distance carrier just because they're your local carrier. If you like AT&T's service but don't like their long distance rates, check out some other long distance carriers as well as VoIP service bundles.

As per UCAN's irreplacable Mike Scott, the prior business relationship overrides the DNC protection, but that prior relationship is not infinite and consumers can revoke approval during the first call. But if someone buys your phone number off a list, they do not have a prior business relationship with you. No one can just claim such a relationship. Consumers who receive unwanted calls should be asked to be placed on the caller's internal DNC list and should file a complaint with FCC, who has a specific complaint form for these types of issues. If it is a telemarketing call and the consumer can identify the business, they can also consider filing a small claims action as the TCPA allows for an individual, if found to have had their rights violated, to claim minimum damages of $500.

As I am sure you know, there are exceptions for certain types of calls such as charities, politicians, and debt collectors (what makes it OK for these categories of callers to bypass your privacy wishes while others may not is not clear) so its best that a consumer learn their rights before taking a specific action.

HTH,

Herr Doktor

First, for other readers, I'd like to explain the term "Emergency Tower" since I was not familiar with it.  Here's an example by Talk A Phone. It's a tall thin box that you can put in places like parking garages and common areas (like a college Quad) and it contains an analog phone that has no dialpad - when a person picks it up it auto-dials the police, campus security, etc. and often has a bright light that starts flashing so that responders can find it and the caller easily.

Since the Model 400 phone is analog and not VoIP, Mouse will need to convert its audio to digital. She says she has an "Adtran unit" and while Adtran, an very good company, makes all SORTS of telecom and networking "units," I am guessing it's an ATA (Analog Telephone Adaptor) like a Cisco 186 (converts 1 analog phone to SIP) or an IAD like the Adtran 908e or 924 (converts the VoIP coming in from the Internet to POTS for multiple analog phones and/or to T-1 format and/or to Internet connectivity).

Mouse, does your Adtran unit go between the Internet and your VoIP PBX? Does it have optional POTS ports on it to bypass the PBX? You could use one of them. If you simply want to connect the Tower phone to the Asterisk PBX you can buy an analog FXS card for it and use it for the Tower phone, fax, etc. The last option would be an external ATA like the famous Cisco 186 that makes the Tower phone essentially a SIP phone.

Senor el Doctor

This web site is one way of finding out what cell sites are close to you: http://www.cellreception.com/towers/ But just because a tower is close to you doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be strong. For example, if you're in a hilly area or are in a canyon, you can get more than one signal from the tower (this is called multipath) and while the actual strength of the radio waves might be high, the signal QUALITY (what really counts) can be low because the slight variations in time and phase of the signals can result in cancellation or distortion of the data modulated on the carrier wave.

Once answer is sometimes called a passive repeater. One places a directional, high gain antenna, on the roof or in a window, facing the cell tower. It picks up a higher ratio of direct signal to reflected signals. One then runs a length of good quality coaxial cable from it to a place in your home or business where you use your phone a lot and a less directional antenna is connected to the other end of the coax at that point. This system provides no signal "gain". In fact, it's quite lossy. But if the signal arriving at the outdoor, directional antenna is pretty strong, enough of it gets to the inside antenna to be radiated around that room and to your phone. I have seen this used at a campground in the mountains - you have to stand pretty close to the indoor antenna to get enough signal to your phone to be useful but since it's passive it works with all cellular carriers. You'll need to do some more web searching on this subject to find out how to construct one but it's not terribly complex or expensive.

There are also active repeaters for cell phones. These systems are like what I've just described but there's some electronics in the middle of that cable to amplify the signal. I often read about these units causing a great deal of interference because the installer has provided insufficient isolation between the outdoor and indoor antennas, thus causing feedback. This page says that, the Wilson products at least, are legal in the USA. I would ask the manufacturer to guarantee this fact before buying one so that you're not liable for an FCC fine. If you web search for "cell phone repeaters", "cell phone extenders", and "cell phone boosters" you will find various models. I have no experience with any of them. Please post your experiences here.

Another system is called a femtocell which is an actual, powered, miniature cell tower in your house. It connects to your cell carrier over the Internet and provides a clean, amplified signal in your home. This article of mine is a little out of date as regards the providers and capabilities (i.e. the new Verizon femtocell will provide data as well as calls) but explains the important concepts. In this article I discuss how UCAN's Michael Shames fared with his femtocell. Once advantage of a femtocell over a repeater is that, if the local cell tower gets really busy at certain times, with a femtocell you will not be affected by this cellular traffic jam.

Please describe how you found out that the cell tower near you is "a emergency only tower for 911 calls" because the concept seems absurd to me and I think you may have beem misinformed.

Thanks for your post.

Dr. Telecom

Hi and thanks for writing.

All of this is a matter of definition.  Technically, the phone service provided by ILECs like AT&T and Verizon Communications (and others including some CLECs) is a LANDLINE.  At one time, every single phone served by the Central Office (where the local equipment is located in each community) had a dedicated pair of wires running from it to each customer. This was/is "analog" phone service (aka POTS) and is essentially the same thing it was a hundred years ago - a huge battery at the C.O. providing 48v to each pair of wires to carry each individual conversation. The good old dial phone and touchtone phone at your home or office was PASSIVE in that it required no local power to operate. As you pointed out, a cordless phone does require power to operate the internal radio but it's still a POTS phone.

These days a fraction of these local lines use a digital "carrier" system to get the calsl to boxes out in the neighborhoods and then the calls are converted to analog for the last mile or 2. This is still considered a landline and the phone company still provides the "battery" though it's not necessarily coming from the C.O. any more and has a slightly better chance of not being present if a major power interruption occurred.

Since cable companies have their own "wires" running out from their "head ends" to provide cable, and now Internet, service for people in their areas, they thought "why not supply dialtone, too?". Since the cable company DOES NOT provide a unique pair of wires for each customer (they send a cable out to each neighborhood then tap off these feeder cables for each home) they had to have a different way of sending dedicated calls to each subscriber. They do this digitally - the calls come from the Head End as a data stream with an address embedded in each packet of data and only the cable box at the proper destination house will accept these phone call voice packets.  There's no "battery" coming from the head end; the cable box provides your analog phone with the "talk battery" voltage but if you lose power at your house, your cable box cannot provide the talk battery nor can it even decode the data packets - you're dead in the water.  Still, many people call this a landline because it certainly isn't a RADIO line; that is, this still uses wires and is thus not a wireless (cell phone) service.

If the cable phone service is a far better deal for you other than for the power problem, you could put a UPS on the cable box to keep it working for some time while the power is out. Time Warner cable, at least, says that their cable boxes have batteris in them to supply phone service - read here: http://www.timewarnercable.com/SoCal/support/policies/phonebatterybackup.html

Before you commit to this, ask the cable company to confirm whether their equipment out on the street has emergency power or not. I don't have an answer to this but I feel sure that most of this equipment has batteries; the question to ask is how long it typically lasts during a power failure.

The plus side of cable company telephone is that it is digital and may sound clearer than analog POTS phone service and this will be more evident the farther you live from the telco C.O.

Voice Over IP is digital phone service that uses a recognized standard called SIP to switch the calls. It requires Internet access. Though cable telephone is also digital, it uses its own protocol and does NOT involve the Internet. This means that the cable provider can guarantee that there's enough bandwidth (data resources) for their phone calls. VoIP providers cannot, typically, because they have no control over the Internet links involved. So VoIP calls from companies like Vonage and Magic Jack (among others) MAY have dropouts and delays that cable telephone and POTS calls will not have. Since the VoIP provider doesn't have to pay anyone for the connectivity from you to them (YOU pay for it with your Internet bill each month) they can have some pretty good rates. So unless you are sending your VoIP calls over an external WiFI Internet service, even a VoIP call can be seen as a "landline" service, though it's not referred to as such.

Businesses use VoIP but many of them pay more for it to providers who package a dedicated T-1 line with the monthly cost - a line they DO have control over so that they can prioritize voice data before other kinds.

At my home we have one POTS line (Mrs. Telecom likes having the emergency redundancy like you do) and two cell phones, the latter of which don't rely or ANY kind of wire - so if a backhoe nails a cable conduit in our neighborhood, killing POTS, cable, and VoIP phone services in one swell "foop" (that's a complex technical term), we can still make mobile calls.

Does that help?

Dr. T

What you are doing will work but you must order Call Forwarding from your carrier, first. It will be maybe $6/ month extra.

If you want to be able to turn it on and off from places other than where the physical phone is located, ask for Programmable Call Forwarding. Now, you can dial a special phone number you'll be given and you can enable and disable the Forwarding from anywhere in the world (subject to the cost of call the programming number).

Now, you can dial *72 (with most carriers), wait for the stuttered dialtone, then enter the number (with 1+AreaCode if applicable). You cancel Call Forwarding by dialing *73.

Dr. Telecom

Hey JP,

There's no direct connection between your cell phones and your Cablevision cable TV landline. There's always the possibility that there was a major power outage that affected outside equipment for both carriers. But I'm really grasping here. I haet to call things like this Co-inky-dinks but I think that's what happened.

If it ever happens again, it ain't a co-inky-dink. In that event, get your butt to Vegas pronto because you've got some major anti-random mojo going. And, before you head for the airport, please drop us another post and say whether there was ANY sound at all - even dialtone. In other words, could you hear stuff but not place calls or were all 3 phones graveyard-quiet?

Drop 5 on a Hardways Four for me, OK?

Dr. T

Dear Nony Mouse,

I reply within only partial confidence. It's my understanding that tracing a call using *57 works regardless of spoofed CallerID because the SS7 routing info that gets recorded is not dependent on the Carrier.

The sound of a dual dialtone (typically you will hear a phasing effect to the audio if both dialtones are not in phase) means that another phone line is in parallel with yours and this is not how a phone line is monitored by telco. You should report this to your carrier and asking them to confirm that your line isnt "crossed" or paralled with someone elses.

Please let me know what you find out.

Jessica,

Please define "ky".
Please specify the carrier.

Thanks

Hi There,

Both of the San Diego primary cable providers charge you for any of 3 distinct services you might buy: cable TV, analog phone service, and Internet. If you don't need the cable TV then you would still want the Internet and the phone service.

The Internet service can't be "bypassed" with anything but you don't have to use their wireless "access point" box. I don't know whether Cox offers an access point but you can go to any computer store and buy a simple WiFi access point (or you can buy a fancy one with a firewall in it, which is a good idea to consider) and you can connect it to the ethernet port on the Cox cable modem and now any wireless device within range can use your Internet. Brand names like Netgear, Dlink, LinkSys, Trendnet and Belkin all make units for the home or small-office user with pretty good instrutions, and some of them have free 24/7 installation support by phone.

I am assuming you are presently using AT&T DSL. What kind of speeds are you getting? You can check at http://www.speedtest.net where you should put your mouse over the spinning star and then pick SAN DIEGO, CA. Connect a computer directly to the DSL modem - don't use a wireless connection. If you are getting less than AT&T promised, ask them to check the line for you.

I ask because the fact that the wireless connection keeps dropping is probably not AT&T's fault.  Does the AT&T modem have WiFi antennas on it? If not, what model access point do you have connected to the DSL modem to feed the laptop?

Dr. Tee

Sorry to hear about the nuisance calls. Let's be clear here - though there have been (876) area code scams, including this one elsewhere on the UCAN website, you will not get billed for RECEIVING these calls. It's true - it's not illegal to simply get calls from anyone. But if they're nuisance calls, there are a few things that can be done.  If the calls are domestic, you can ask your phone company to bring in law enforcement. I don't think that will help with calls from Jamaica.

You say you have CallerID. You can add a service that blocks any calls without a CallerID; this would force these people to cause the phone number to be visible.  If you don't read it all (it's worth your time), see section 14 of this excellent article by UCAN's sister organization, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse about Unwanted or Harassing Phone Calls. Be sure to ask your provider if this feature will work with international calls.

I'm interested to know what these calls are about? Are they selling you something? Are they simply harassment calls (sexual or otherwise)? Please share with us, if you don't mind.

Daktari Telekom

It's true that data sent from fax machines and modems doesn't always work well when digitized. You might call Cox and ask if they can help but beyond that I have no help to offer. I AM surprised that slowing the data rate somewhat didn't help.

You might call Cox and ask if there's anything they can do to your voice circuit to make it data friendly.

Answer to your first question: yes, TECHNICALLY you can use the WiFi radio inside the phone to connect to the Internet anyplace there's a hotspot (some will cost money, many are free). In reality, most of the carriers now make you pay for a data plan whenever you buy a Smartphone from them when committing to a contract. You might be able to buy your own Smartphone and not pay for the data plan - ask the carrier.

Replying to your second question, keeping in mind the paragraph above, you might be able to share whatever data you get from either your carrier or WiFi, with your iPod Touch if there is a PDA.NET a USB client for the iPod touch, which does NOT appear to be the case. You might write to June Fabrics about this, here: http://www.junefabrics.com/support.php

Obviously, if you're in a location where there's WiFi for use with the Ally, it's also available for use with the iPod Touch so all of the above becomes moot - just connect directly to Internet using the iPod's WiFi client.

Some newer Smartphones like the Motorola Droid X or Droid 2 or the Samsung Fascinate have internal WiFi access points (VZW shows this as "3G Hotspot" in their product listings) inside which will repeat the cellular data connection you have on the phone to 5 WiFi-enabled devices within a short range. So, if you pay for a data plan from VZW, you could also use it on the iPod Touch and others with you could also use it.

Hi,

I need to be clear on this. You are a VoIP Carrier, right? You have customers who pay you for VoIP dialtone and you connect their PSTN calls via TelePacific, right?

2nd paragraph: you're saying that you got a bill from Telepacific for 30k more minutes than you are typically billed for and so you are assuming that someone - either one of your customers or someone who hacked into your system and used it without an account - used minutes that you did not see on your own billing software and thus were unable to either bill the customer for or else the minutes didn't even show up on your billing software. Do I have this right?

If Telepacific is billing you for calls that you think were not made by your customers, why are they billing you 9 months late? Why didn't you get a bill from TP in January or February? And why do think that TP thinks this is fraud? I'd think it would look to them like, simply, 30k minutes that you don't normally have and I think they'd think, "hey, good. This customer of ours has added more VoIP customers. Good for both of us!"

I'm a little confused so bear with my slug-speed brain.

The Doc

Porting any kind of phone number involves the carrier who was originally given the number (as part of a block of numbers), the carrier to whom the number is being "ported" and a 3rd party called the Number Portability Administration Center (www.npac.com). The Technical Issues section of this fine Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability) explains the essential dance that occurs when a ported number is dialed.

If the number was originally a Cox number - that is, it had not been ported even earlier but was part of a block of numbers assigned to your local Cox central office - and you were moving it to AT&T, then AT&T would have made the request to Cox. The FCC mandated a one-business-day turnaround so it would seem to me that AT&T has dropped the ball.

In the unlikely event that you have not handled this by now, I'd suggest starting over. Just cancel the U-verse order (assuming it isn't installed yet) then place the order again and tell the rep that you want her to stay on top of the port order because the last time it got mishandled.

You could complain to the FCC but I'd start out with the PUC. And, if you order new phone service involving a port, see if you can't make the new carrier responsible for it by telling them you won't pay your bill until the port is handled.

Doctah Tee

It might have been possible 10 years ago with an analog cell phone, and even then a real stretch, but not today. Modern PCS cell phones and towers use digital communications which, if audible thru a TV, would just sound like a buzzing noise because you need a digital circuit to demodulate it. Perhaps you're hearing a ham radio or CD operator.

Dr. T

The easiest way is to call someone local who has CallerID. All cell phones have CallerID so call your own, or someone else's, cell phone. If CallerID transmission is blocked on the line (because your landlord asked The Phone Company to do this) the called phone will probably display the text RESTRICTED. CallerID can be UNblocked on a per-call basis - just dial *82 then the number you wish to dial.

If you don't have access to a cell phone, call a regular landline number - ask the person you will call to confirm that they are paying for CallerID because RECEIVING CallerID is not a default service.

The last option is to call one of a couple of numbers that will read your number back to you. I offer this as a last option because we don't want a lot of people using these numbers if they can use CallerID instead. If you're an AT&T subscriber, just call their business office at 888.944.0447 or you can try 888-621-2903.

Le Bon Docteur

Stan, the Doctor is IN (WAAAAY In) and he prescribes an Android for you. Most Android and Windows Mobile Smartphones have WiFi in them so you could use your AT&T Internet service, if it has a WiFi Access Point in your house (I think that most of the U-verse "2Wire" brand terminals do) or if you're willing to add a simple Access Point to the existing cable modem / terminal unit. Most of these phones will do all the things you want like texting, accessing multiple email accounts, web surfing, acting as a GPS unit (sometimes with an additional fee), etc.

Apple has come out with a free case that is supposed to fix the iPhone antenna problems. Anyone I know with an iPhone loves it. I have been a Mac person since 1986 and, while not a Steve Jobs worshipper, I do like their products. If I was not a happy Verizon customer (where, at this time I cannot use an iPhone) and a persoh preferring a slideout keyboard, I would probably have one.

Michael Shames got a Motorola Droid and loves it. I reviewed the trial unit I had (last fall) elsewhere on this site. Just because different manufacturers keep coming out with their own hardware on which to run Google's ANDROID OS, doesn't mean you shouldn't buy one that's been out for awhile and has been thru Customer BETA Testing (we all should be paid for this).

If your friends sound lousy on AT&T maybe they have old phones. All those iPhone users have no problem with AT&T and the AT&T users I talk to sound fine. I wouldn't let this affect your opinion - if there's an AT&T phone you like, and if your Virgin account is prepaid or almost up, go to an AT&T store and try one. Do the same with Verizon and Sprint (both using Qualcomm's elegant CDMA technology). To my knowledge, all carriers have return policies.

If you're not using your Cox phone service, don't keep it. You can still use Cox for TV and Internet.

The Motorola DROID has an optional buffer/waxer available at an extra charge ;.)  You just lay it on your car, head down to Starbucks for a half hour, and come back to a clean car with all your email checked.

Dr. Tease

Hi Ron,

It appears that you are talking about what CallerID data your PHONE remembers as opposed to what data the phone company sends you.  A landline will send CallerID EVERY TIME the phone rings, just as a cellular provider will. If your particular brand of phone overwrites previous entries from the same caller, that's how the phone was designed. Maybe they decided that you only need to know about one call from the same person in order to know that you need to call them back AND that saving memory for calls from other people is more important than saving every call from the same person.

Dr. Telecom

Teddy:

I don't know, for a fact, that U-verse uses VoIP as its protocol. There are other schemes for sending phone calls over digital networks. Still, fax machines designed for analog connections often don't like signals that have been chopped up and digitized.

Please see the article farther down this page called Fax over VOIP where this very problem is discussed.

Dr. Telecom

Hiya 'nony,

The term full-duplex means that information can flow in both directions at a time. This is as opposed to what the ITU calls a half-duplex transmission (and what ANSI calls a simplex transmission) wherein information flows one way or the other at a time.

Older speakerphones used an electronic switch inside - it was either send or receive, nothing in between. If Caller A was louder than Caller B, then Caller A's mic would turn on and Caller B's speaker would turn on. When Caller A stopped talking and Caller B spoke (or if Caller B was more ticked off and, so, yelled louder than Caller A!) then the 2 ends would switch functions so that Caller B would be heard in Caller A's speaker. This was "OK" but made it possible for one person to dominate the conversation. Also, when Caller A is speaking, a sudden loud noise at Caller B's end could make the speaker and mic switch to TALK mode and, so, for a few seconds, Caller B would miss what Caller A was saying (assuming she was actually interested).

Eventually, Western Electric introduced a method using special audio transformers called a "hybrid" - a circuit that lets full duplex transmission occur over a single pair of wires (e.g. phone lines). It's no big deal to do this with two pairs of wires (one pair = talk, the other pair = listen) but, with one pair of wires, the hybrid must allow Caller A's speech to go out over the pair AND allow Caller B's speech to come in over the same pair while cancelling out Caller A's audio so it doesn't come back to Caller A, causing feedback ("is this thing on?" tap tap  wooooOOOOOO). They only got maybe 20dB of isolation like this so it wasn't the best system but it was far better than nothing for decades and was what talk shows used to use to let their callers opinions get on the air while letting the host's audio be heard by the caller, without feedback.

Today we use Electronic Hybrids and Digital Hybrids which do the cancellation electronically. They're much lighter, provide deeper nulling (isolation of the 2 parties) and are small enough to fit in a small phone.

So, the first thing I'd ask is whether you are SURE these are both full duplex speakerphones. Second, let me emphasize that the hybrids in the 2 phones are not connected together - I'm saying that they work independently of each other and they dont communicate their statuses. So, in a speakerphone conversation it's possible for one phone to be FD and the other to be half-duplex and thus the FD phone would still only have a HD conversation because the HD phone is the limiting factor. That sort of answers your last sentence - yes, both phones need to be FD to have a FD conversation.

Phones like Polycom's IP-550 use some special circuitry and protocols to increase the audio fidelity of the call (Polycom calls this "HDVoice").  Good quality phones can have better sounding audio than cheap ones with tiny speakers even without being truly "Wideband" or "Hi Def". Either way, I know of no reason why wideband and standard bandwidth calls should be incompatible - I just talked to Rainey at The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse - she on her Polycom IP-330 standard VoIP speakerphone and I on my IP-550 - and the conversation was pristine (and most pleasant, as usual).

As they say, "HTH"

The Doc

Hi Charles,

The limitation for a single run of ethernet (any category) is 100 meters, not 100 feet.  So unless it would take 328 ft of cable to get to the roommate, you're fine with the cable. Just so it's said: if it indeed took 328, or more, feet of cable to do the job, you'd have to put a simple 3 or 4 port ethernet switch in the middle of the run to regenerate the signal. It wouldn't materially affect the data rate to the roommate.

As far as the wireless is concerned, the 3 things that directly affect signal coverage and reliability are location, location, loc... OK, not funny. Actually, location does have something to do with it - the height of the antenna and how well it's kept away from large metal items that can block the signal affect coverage. Also, different WiFi Access Points have different output power; check the specs for the number of milliwatts or dBm. Maybe you can get one with more power. Another item is the antenna itself; a little rubber antenna has very little signal gain but, if your Access Point has removable antennas, you can connect a bigger one in place of the stock one.

Frankly, I wouldn't care to crawl around up there either - the rats more than the heat - but if you can get the AP up into the attic, it might have a pretty good shot at hitting the other part of the house. Otherwise, you'll have to pay someone to pull the cable and then you can stick another AP on the roomate's end so he can still have his wireless fix.

Last thought: LinkSys and other manufacturers make Range Enhancers which are simply WiFi repeaters. You'd put the AP at your end as high as possible then you'd put the repeater in the roommate's area as high as possible, too. In theory, the repeater will pick up enough signal that it can retransmit it for the roommate at full power. And since the repeater never moves, once you find a good place for it, you SHOULD get the same signal quality all the time. If you get a repeater or AP (or both) that can have an external antenna then you're in even better shape - just put the antenna(e) as high as possible and aim the two ends at each other.

Thanks for connecting with me on this!

El Doc

I phoned AT&T and learned that this is a charge initiated by the state of Arizona, which evidently was increased by them.

Lilia,

You can't get more "old school" than AT&T as they were here at the beginning. If you live in an area covered by AT&T, like CA or TX, pretty much all the wire and poles are owned by AT&T so even if you go with a third party, your calls are still going over AT&T's infrastructure.

Cox and Time Warner cable provide landline service but it's digital (why does your husband care whether the calls are analog or digital? Digital sounds better!).

You might try Telepacific Communications, Verizon Communications, and XO.

Eric,

I don't know how Ghanaian phone lines are "supervised" (ringing, dialtone, voltage, etc) so I can't say what PBXs might work there. One thing to consider would be a Voice Over IP PBX like San Diego's SwitchVox. Since VoIP is quasi-standard the world around, one of them should work in Ghana. What's more, since VoIP isn't limited withing geopolitical boundaries, you might find a carrier in Nigeria that suits your needs - all you need in Ghana is a decent Internet connection.

If you need to stick to POTS (analog) phone lines, most of the PBX manufacturers, both standard and VoIP, have POTS boards that will fit in them or you can buy a 3rd party, external, SIP-to-PSTN gateway (try Quintium & Cisco). Other products I know of are SBX by Vertical, Wave by Vertical, Schmoozecom, NBX by 3COM, Altigen, and Zultys, among many others. Find dealers in your area and start off by asking them to check with the mfr to see if they can support dialtone in Ghana (knowing the carrier's name will help).

I understand the same to be true. Since VoIP involves slicing the call up into chunks and then reconstructing them, perhaps with some data compression mixed in, while the human ear doesn't mind a little bit of distortion (we listen to pretty crummy sounding cellular calls all the time), the receiving fax machines do. There is essentially no data compression in G.711 codecs so try to force your VoIP phone equipment to stick to that - also, your voice calls will sound the best this way though they WILL use more bandwidth.

One thing you can try is to force your fax machine to send and receive at a lower maximum speed so the packetization of the fax data won't be as big an issue - start and 14.4kb/s and work down until you get good reliability. Also, this blog post http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-fax-over-voip-on-the-internet recommends turning off Error Correction. Let us know what you find.

I don't THINK the cellular carriers make the distinction of a business number vs a residential number. Landline carriers do because tariffs control how they bill for these 2 kinds of lines. I think you should read this article on the UCAN.org web site http://www.ucan.org/telecommunications/landline/portability_cell_phone_landline_phone_numbers and then just start the process. Report back, if you'd be so kind, and let us know how it went.

Be sure your business line isn't on a contract. For example, many AT&T bundles have yearly contracts and if you move the number elsewhere, you're essentially ending the contract - don't get burned with an early termination fee!

I've never seen it done but I see no reason why a Smartphone cannot connect to a printer either via its USB cable or via Bluetooth, or WiFi. At LEAST you should be able to save a document to the phone's memory card then move the memory card to your laptop and print from it. I think some printers have built in card readers thus skipping the laptop.

This product, called ActivePrint, might be a place to start: http://www.pocketpccentral.net/smartphone/software/printing.htm

Here's a related articel from SmartPhoneMag: http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/node/545

Check in with us and let us know what worked for you.

The way I see it, you can sell that Air Card to anyone you want, but you've still got a contract. If you can get $100 for the card, then the net cost to terminate early is $200 - $100 = $100 which might numb the pain a little.

Sorry to say it, but, no. The CallerID data comes from the phone company in between the first and second rings as a data burst. Once that happens and your phone reads the data, it's gone from your phone line. If it's not stored in your phone, it's gone.

Dana: I have no experience with Blackberrys but I can say that, typically, you will lose all your contacts when you do any kind of phone OS upgrade. At BlackberryOS.com they warn you to sync the phone first using Desktop Manager.

On a Windows mobile phone your contacts will remain on your PC via Active Sync; if you use MS Exchange then your mail, contacts, calendar, and tasks will all remain on the Exchange server and will resync easily. I would THINK that, given Blackberry's fame in the email and contacts dept., it would, like Exchange, keep your contacts on the Blackberry server but the onlky reference to such a feature I can find online is one from Verizon that lets you backup all this stuff to the web so it's available anyplace you have web access EVEN if your PC crashes.

If Sprint says the contacts are gone and are irretrievable, ask them, simply, to tell you how you should have backed up the contacts so you will know for next time.

Hi Mark,

It seems like we have 2 questions here - I'm getting questions about Internet at your home and also youre wondering about Verizon's coverage in Canada.

If the wireless Internet is fast enough, just keep it and dump your landline and use your cell phone for all calls. If you need faster Internet, try AT&T DSL (high speed broadband) with which you typically get a "POTS" (Plain Old Telephone Service) line whether you like it or not. If you are happy w/ AT&T's Internet then that sorta seals it for you - use the AT&T POTS line you get (like it or not) and AT&T DSL. Another answer is, of course, Cox or Roadrunner cable for your Internet and I find Roadrunner to be nice and snappy (but it depends a lot on how heavily subscribed your neighborhood is) but it probably costs less or the same as AT&T DSL. You might try it and see how it performs.

As for cell coverage, you will pay 69 cents/minute for roaming in Canada (with the typical Verizon Wireless Nationwide, America's Choice, or Friends and Family) plan. Once you've made more than he break-even point of calls from Canada (about 30 minutes/mo) you're better off switching to Verizon's Nationwide Plus Canada Plan (here's the coverage map) which gives you 900 minutes per month (good in the US and Canada) for $20 more than the similar single-line plan for US-only. When in The Frozen North you do not get Free Nights/Weekends or Free Mobile-to-Mobile. You do get free Long Distance both ways.

Hope this is of some help.

Khial,

I don't understand your question. The closest thing I can think of is PPPoE which is how SOME, but not most, ADSL circuits authenticate with the DSLAM. It sounds like you're asking about something related to phone service and I can't think of anything.

Stephen,

Sorry for the 7 month delay in getting something to you. Your post kinda slipped thru the cracks.  Have you come to a solution? If so, please let us know what you did by replying here.

I am surprised that the Verizon “Aircard” (what you call a USB modem) didn’t work for you. Anyone I know who has one loves ‘em and I wish I could afford one. When I need mobile Internet, I use my Verizon smart phone to act as an AirCard (this is called "tethering"). Another suggestion would be something like a Novatel "MiFi" which essentially has the AirCard AND a WiFi router built in. It connects to your Verizon data account, then repeats the data via WiFi to anything (including your WiFi cell phone and WiFi laptop) in range – you can share your Verizon data connection this way. Click here to see my posting on this subject. Sprint and AT&T have AirCards too.

Let us know what worked.

Dr. Telecom

I purchased a data package from Verizon that allows for unlimited data usage in the DR. I use one of the new droid phones from htc. I still haven't found a way around the $1.99 per min charge. I had a $1,000 usd phone bill this month.

Hi Elizabeth,

The first and obvious idea that comes to mind is simply to get an unlimited calling plan for the out-of-state phone. Then you have to check the economy of such a step. If that costs you $25 per month and you have on average two 15 minute calls per day coming from this remote phone to the local phone, that's about 900 minutes per month which would mean you are paying (assuming my atrocious math is right) 36¢ per minute which is terrible. If your remote phone called the local one for 9000 minute per month, then you're better off at 3.6¢ per minute.

If you don't really need a physical phone there, i.e. you just want the number but you don't ever use it for outgoing calls, you could reduce the monthly cost by switching the physical line to a Remote Call Forwarding number (RCF) which is essentially an inbound number with no phone that simply forwards all calls to another location all the time. You'd still have to get a cheap LD plan but the RCF idea might reduce your fixed costs.

Another idea would be to get rid of the remote landline as you did with the local one and make it a cellphone, also. If on the same carrier as the local one, you would pay nothing (mobile-to-mobile minutes are free with any carrier I know of) and might even reduce the monthly fixed cost at the remote location - if you're not there often, then get a basic plan for like $25/mo (be sure it has m-to-m!) and just be judicious about your use when you're there.

You could get rid of the remote landline and switch to a VoIP provider like Lingo or Vonage which has cheap long distance and lower monthly fees.

Finally, you could try Google Voice. This was originally called Grand Central. It's an account that provides you with a local phone number, voicemail, and other features and lets you have incoming calls to this number call various other phones simultaneously. You could give out the Google Voice number at the remote location to everyone and not use the actual landline number there. People would call your GV number and it would try you, for free, at both the remote and the local numbers and even a cell phone or work phone.  You could also invert this evil plan of mine and just have the remote phone forward all calls to your GV number in that town - if the GV number is within the local calling area (Zones 1 - 3) then each forwarded call would be free to the GV number which would then forward the call (again - a double hop, in essence) for free, to the local number.

The down side to the GV idea is that they're not letting just anyone sign up. It's "by invitation". I don't know what this entails. Drop them an email and see!

Jer Mar,

What you're looking for is called Interactive Voice Response or IVR which, in essence, gives data "a voice". People can enter digits in response to prompts. The system sends the digits to a back-end database which looks up information and then does something with it such as read back an account balance or, as you wish, simply confirms the data as valid.

Some phone systems include IVR systems. Some that I know of are SwitchVox, Zultys, Interactive Intelligence, Altigen, and TeleVantage.

You can write your own standalone IVR applications, run them on a computer, and interface that computer with an existing phone system or make it a standalone phone box. I have used an application called VBVoice and found it fairly easy to use. There are many others for various computer platforms.

Lastly, you could use a hosted solution. This is where the phone lines and computer are all "out there" somewhere and you don't have to do anything except to program the application, publish the phone number, and pay a monthly fee. Try Googling "hosted ivr solutions" for some providers to talk to.

And, please let us know what method you decided on and how it worked out for you.

PBX systems can be extremely costly in that you have very stringent contractual obligations and are basically responsible for anything that happens whether you're at fault or not.  If anyone hacks into your system, you pay.  PBX systems have caused a lot of business owners a lot of money and grief.  There are other options and feel free to write Dr. Telecom on our site.

Please see my article on this very subject here.  If you have hand your phone over to someone other than a close friend or a cellular store employee, your it's POSSIBLE that they could have installed some tracking software. It's unlikely.

The best thing to do is to run a FULL RESET on the phone (which would clear any apps not provided by the manufacturer) then don't install any other 3rd party programs. Also, check with your provider and see if there are any firmware/OS updates for the phone and load them if there are since this would doubly ensure that EVERYTHING on the phone came from the carrier.

Turn off your bluetooth if you don't use it. If you do, ensure that it's not "discoverable". If the phone has Internet (broadband), turn it off when not in use.

To actually test it, I'd suggest going to the carrier's store and ask for a data person.

I can't imagine what difference it would make whether your TV was coming from fiber, over the air, on copper (AT&T), or coaxial cable (traditional cable company), or satellite. It's all the same format. Maybe there's a problem with your STB (set top box)?

Can you send me a picture of the damage? And who is the carrier? Sprint FIOS? Verizon? Time Warner?

Thanks

Dr T

Dear 'Nony, Yes. This is done quite often. I've never heard the term you used but, essentially, if the firewall or router has 1) a CardBus or USB connector for an "air card" and 2) has the ability to aggregate bandwidth between mulitple WAN sources, then you can both increase your speed to something close to the sum of the two (a T-1 and an EVDO-RevA card would sum to just shy of 1500+ 1500 = 3000 kb/s) AND you get redundancy via failover. A good idea all around if you can justify the cost of the network product, since you already have the air card. Also, see what companies like Novatel, Zyxel, and Cradlepoint have to offer in the way of a box that will let you share your air card when your with a small group of people and may also feed the router even if it has no USB/CardBus slot.

Dr. T

Me too, Don. Too many Jethro Tull concerts. Try this Google search:and you will find a number of sources for amplified landline (aka POTS) phones. Let me know if any do the trick for her and still work OK for you.  Also, some phones are hearing aid compatible. They inductively couple the audio straight into the hearint aid.

Dr. T

Simply turn the tables and send a CMRRR to them telling them that you have moved and are demanding the service canceled without cost to you or you will take them to small claims court.

give them 10 days and then actually do it. they will drop it. i had to do it with ATT, T-Mobile and All-Tell but my complaint was due to poor service. I won all because they never showed up in court, they simply did what i asked.

Stephen

I forgot to say that the number when you call it says "number not in service"

send them a CMRRR with your demands and note that if they breech their contract one more time you'll send in another CMRRR stating you want service canceled without cost to you.
And note that if they don't do this for you, you will proceed to small claims court. But you can't say it and not do it.

They will comply if you are serious. I've done it with ATT, T-Mobil and All-Tell

Stephen

send them a CMRRR with your demands and note that if they breech their contract one more time you'll send in another CMRRR stating you want service canceled without cost to you.
And note that if they don't do this for you, you will proceed to small claims court. But you can't say it and not do it.

They will comply if you are serious. I've done it with ATT, T-Mobil and All-Tell

Stephen

Hi,

This question is really beyond this scope of this forum which is about telcommunications tools and services for consumers and the SMB market. Your question is a circuit design problem. I have to say that it sounds like you want me to do your work for you! Isn't that what you get paid for?

I'm not an EE but I see a few basic problems you need to address before you go to someone for help. First, you need to be clearer about what are you trying to do. Why would you want to cancel the mobile signal in a specific area? Do you mean you want to make it unavailable on a specific phone or you want to make it unavailable to all phones (jamming).

Second, the mobile signal received can't just come down the antenna, thru a capacitor and to an opamp to generate a signal - where's the tuner? The way you describe it, every bit of noise and every other radio signal in the world will hit the input of that opamp.

What's the opamp doing? Being a switch or being an amp? If the former, then feeding the current from it thru a cap to the 555 won't work - it's DC.

Thirdly, I don't think a 555 is the chip of choice. It's really just a timer. I don't have the specs on it but I'm sure it can't create a signal of high enough frequency to come close to the cellular bands. If used as a free-running oscillator (monstable multivibrator) it would just create a relatively low rate pulse train and, if you distorted it enough to make noise, it would make wideband noise that would effect everything nearby - not friendly!

I'm guessing English isn't your first language. Consider running this by a translator before you go to an electrical engineer for advice so she'll have a better idea what you need.

Good luck.

Yeah, it sucks. They waste your time because they think their income is more important than your privacy. People like these give capitalists a bad name.

Of course, you can, first, ensure that you're still listed (accurately) on the National Do Not Call List run by the Federal Trade Commission. If you are not confirmed by THIS LIST then you should go to http://www.donotcall.gov and register or re-register.

How does The List work? RESPONSIBLE telemarketers (a possible oxymoron?) get a free copy of this list. They then feed it to the computer that maintains their database of prey, er, prospects, and the database manager removes these names from the list. I know - seems like a great way to get free leads! But that's how it works.

And, of course, certain lobbies are excepted including POLITICIANS (imagine that). Here's the actual text of the Q&A:

Because of limitations in the jurisdiction of the FTC and FCC, calls from or on behalf of political organizations, charities, and telephone surveyors would still be permitted

And none of this applies to businesses - if you're a business you have to accept all of it.

So, beside the legally excepted callers, legit telemarketers won't call you once registered (it can take a few weeks for your number to get delisted). But the butt heads don't care. And when you say to them "Why are you calling me? I'm on the Do Not Call List!" they always say "Oh, we're sorry, we'll take you off our list" which is BS because you would never have been there in the first place if they'd played fair.

So, what to do? First, report them to the FTC at the FILE A COMPLAINT page.

If you want to do more there are web sites out there where you can find out who they are (google their caller ID) and post your experience.

If it's really bad, you can always change your phone number.

Other than that, welcome to the modern world of spam, junk mail, and telemarketers.

I contacted 3 VoIP ITSPs (Bandwidth.com. Broadvoice, and CentricVoice - companies providing dialtone via VoIP) about what the concerns are and how they secure their accounts and data streams and, of them, only CentricVoice's (http://www.centricvoice.com) DJ Belieny replied:

1) We don't encrypt anything at this level we do like everyone else. CPE hardware to support encryption is cost prohibitive for use in small to medium customers while if a large customer requires we can setup secure tunnels between their location and ours.

2) An attacker would not be able to brute force their way in basically because we follow a very unorthodox user/password scheme where our passwords are randomly generated based on a very specific seed for each sip agent and the username (extension) also have a very specific forming rule. Also every call has to be authenticated correctly before it's even accepted by our server farm, which helps prevent unauthorized calls and malicious SIP packets.

Another important part of our system is the revision and correction of security holes within our codebase, Asterisk applications and the Linux operating system itself.

Here's an article of common sense, saying "Don't Panic" and that IP Phone networks can be just as secure as traditional wirelines if done right. http://www.voip-news.com/feature/voip-security-common-sense-032608/ And this article, http://www.voip-news.com/feature/is-someone-listening-022208/, also from VoIP-News, summarizes how to secure.

So. it mostly boils down to 1) your own network's security 2) your account security and 3) whether you are using a VPN tunnel or a dedicated circuit (MPLS or Frame Relay or dedicated T-1) between the endpoints. The bottom line is, though, that for residential VoIP users, unless the datastream is already encrypted (a la Skype), someone can, conceivably yet unlikely, monitor your conversation. Until the ITSPs start building in encryption to the data or start allowing us users to connect to them with tunnels, there will always be some possibility of your call being monitored and even your account & password being sniffed.

I hope this helps.

Dear 'Nony,

I'll be glad to work up a summary of VoIP security issues. And, yes, as it stands, unencrypted VoIP can be intercepted like anything else going across the Internet. But you have to ask yourself an important question - are you worth their time? Thieves as well as non-malicious hackers have a limited amount of time to do what they do. They're going to spend their time hacking things that benefit them in some way. Certainly, it's possible that someone could stumble upon your VoIP traffic or your unsecured email traffic, etc., by chance, but there's a lot of traffic out there beside yours. Also, assuming you've no malware on your PC already that's sending copies of whatever you send to the Internet to some bad person someplace, you have to ask yourself where the typical hacker is going to get access to your data stream.

So, as I look into this I'd ask people who are considering using Voice Over IP for phone service not to discard it out of hand just because it's not encrypted.

Now the other aspect of VoIP security is whether someone can breach your equipment or network using VoIP. I'm reading about people hacking ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Providers) and hacking VoIP phones to give them access to the rest of the a network, not NECESSARILY to let them listen to your calls. I'm reading about Vishing - which is Phishing directed at voice communications - where people are tricked into calling VoIP numbers, or even PSTN phone numbers, that aren't what they seem and, in the process, they give up personal information. I think these are bigger issues than that of people monitoring your calls.

My involvement in telephony has been more in the arena of connectivity, switching, features, mobility, and less in security. You've got me thinking more deeply about this aspect of communications. I'm not willing to let hackers scare me away from BENEFICIAL new technology but I do want to know what steps you and I need to take to be reasonably secure - and that's the key because if users are so worried that they aren't willing to take a 1-in-a-million chance then they also won't ever cross the street for fear of getting mugged. But knowing HOW to cross the street, when to do so, what not to be wearing (like a huge rock on your finger, etc). means they're less likely a target.

One important thing to start off with is a good firewall for your home or business network. The typical consumer firewall doing Stateful Inspection isn't smart enough to watch for trickier, higher level intrusions and malware. If you want to keep your network, and thus your computers, more secure, consider one doing Unified Threat Management from companies like Watchguard, SonicWALL, Fortinet, Secure Computing, etc. And one thing you can do with a product like this, when connecting a VoIP phone from the outside to a business VoIP phone system, is to use a VPN tunnel to secure both your voice content from monitoring and the endpoints from hacking. But a VPN doesn't help you when connecting to ITSPs like Packet8 or Vonage.

BTW, I listened to 1/2 hour of the Zimmerman video and skimmed the rest. He's concerned about privacy, not hacking. His whole story is based on the classic man-in-the-middle attack but for someone to be there without our knowing it - to actually intercept the voice packets of our conversation - he has to plant malware on one or both of our computers so he can redirect the packets. It's not like he's cutting a phone line and sticking his equipment in the middle. It's just as possible for the hacker to intercept our email - not by physically being in between us but by compromising a computer somewhere in the packets' path. Thus, the onus is on all parties to be extra vigilant, to know what not to download, to have current anti-malware software, and to have a good firewall that's watching not only for incoming mischief but also for this amiss outgoing. It’s also on the ITSPs to protect their own networks AND watch their customers’ packets for signs of tampering. And, when packet-switched VoIP becomes sufficiently ubiquitous that the judges and prosecutors he used as examples are using VoIP because the current PSTN paradigm has gone the way of spark gap radio transmissions, people will be buying specialized VoIP phones with encryption like he proposes or with VPNs built in and dedicated for your carrier of choice. This is a real threat and it's not currently a big enough one to worry about. Yet.

So thanks for the good swift kick and I'll see what I can come up with and digest it for the casual reader. I’ll leave you with this succinct article on VoIP Security from voip-news.com: http://www.voip-news.com/feature/essential-guide-voip-security-033108 As I learn more so you will you.

Dr. T
http://www.ucan.org/internet_media/broadband_isps/ask_dr_telecom_the_com...

Hey Charles,

Not being one of the “younger audience” (compared to the average, anyway), I have to say that I’m kinda with you on the Social Networking. I don’t understand why anyone wants to let other people know what they’re doing at any given time, nor why others care. But, it’s obviously a generational thing and we sure had the same problem when I was young – my parents couldn’t understand why I needed an FM radio in my car or why we spent so much time on the phone. So, I won’t knock it, I’ll just say it ain’t for me.

See the current run of Doonesbury comics as Garry Trudeau has Roland Hedley Tweeting more than reporting: http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20090302

First, Charles, there’s no reason why you have to do any of this Tweeting and posting from a smart phone. Being, All Thumbs myself, I only use my smartphone for occasional short emails. But it IS a good idea to have such a phone so you can tell how the web pages are going to render on a small screen (and don’t get me going on the lousy web browser included with my Treo).

Be careful of the Texting. Many plans don’t include text message minutes so you can get nickled and dimed (literally) to death. If you’re going to pay for Internet access anyway, just use email to send your posts, Tweets, whatever. A Gmail or Yahoo mail account won’t cost you anything.

If you ARE going to actually type from your smartphone, a great deal consider a USB keyboard that lets you type rather than “thumb”. Here’s an example:
http://www.freedominput.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

Internet from a cell phone can get expensive without warning. Your plan may have a limit over which you’ll be charged extra, but if you’re just sending text and viewing web pages, you should be OK. Some services let you track usage via their web site so you can see if you’re about to go over.

As for the future of this stuff, all I can say is that while I love technology, I’m not good at guessing human behavior. Example: around 2000 I bought Apple Computer stock at around $25 because I thought the new OS X operating system would really give Micro$oft Windows some competition. I sold the stock a year or so later for about what I paid for it. Meanwhile, I’d been hearing about this “iPod” thing. “Ha!”, I scoffed, “another MP3 player, as if there aren’t enough already. Who really needs one of these things?” iPods sent the stock price to well over a buck.

So, YES, Charles, you should get a smart phone, if for no other reason that it's convenient to be able to see how things look on a small screen and to be able to get email, directions, phone numbers, and crossword puzzle answers from anywhere.

With deregulation of the telecom industry under the auspices of "market competition", many companies merged. The result has been few company choices for consumers. In addition to these mergers like SBC-AT&T, Verizon-MCI, etc. the companies appear to have territories. There are lots of plan and technology choices, but the company names are basically the same depending on the area. There are areas in San Diego where customers have only one company choice with multiple package plan options from that company. If one uses one company for land line phones, another for wireless, another for Internet and another for TV, the cost is much higher per month than if one accepts a bundled package plan.

The answer to your question is you don't have much choice. Check to see what other company is in your area and compare the costs for phone and Internet bundled plans.

Consumers all over the country are asking where all of the increased taxes, fees and surcharges are going and their purpose. The answers are basically the same. The major telecom companies are allowed to add costs that go into their pockets. Another set of charges are federal and some fund the public purpose programs for low-income customers. We pay for the worthwhile E911 so it's funded.

For New York, please go to http://www.dps.state.ny.us/TelecomTaxesSurcharges.html to see a breakdown of these charges on your phone bill. In addition, you might want to call, write or email the NY Public Service Commission at Phone:
(518) 474-7080
Fax: (518) 474-0421

Mailing Address:

New York State Public Service Commission
Empire State Plaza
Agency Building 3
Albany, NY 12223-1350

Email Address: Web_Questions@dps.state.ny.us

Please look on the following link to see what is charged in NY and for what purpose: http://www.dps.state.ny.us/TelecomTaxesSurcharges.html

The MTA you specifically asked about is found in the link above under b - Rate or Range of Rates and states:

b. Rate or Range of Rates: State Sales Tax rate is 4%; county sales tax rates are capped at 3%, but counties can seek legislative approval for higher rates. City school taxes are allowable up to 3%. An additional 0.375% MTA Tax Surcharge applies in the New York Metropolitan area and may be bundled with the State or Local Sales Tax. Calls to entertainment and information services, such as those dialed using 500, 700, 800 or 900 telephone numbers, are taxed at an additional 5%.

The only way to determine the cheapest price is to compare. Usually the cheapest prices will be where you have bundled package plans with a carrier that include phone, Internet and other services with that company.

One site I found that shows cheap to high prices is http://www.dsl-availability.com/. A site that compares costs is http://www.dslshoppingguide.com/. You might want to see what your existing provider's next lowest price is as long as you have other services with AT&T.

When you either purchase a phone, sign up for service and pay a discounted price for a phone, or get a discount on a phone to renew with a company, you have a contractual amount of time to return that phone. You need to look at the contract where you purchased the equipment to determine the return time. T-Mobile's return time is 14 days. Each time you get a replacement phone, you have another 14 days. At some point, you might want to write a dispute letter to the company stating the problem and the reason you want out of your contract, if applicable. Another option is to file a small claims action after making sure your state does not honor any mandated arbitration.

The satellite and cable companies are not regulated unless they are part of a bundled phone plan, purchased as a package from the phone company. You may have received a tiny insert in one of your billing statements or even received a separate insert in one of the ads sent to customers to upgrade. Look at the contract you were issued and/or the terms and conditions on the company website. In addition, you could write a dispute letter to the company sent certified return receipt requested stating changes were made to your account that were not authorized by you. Make sure you are brief and specific to the issue and that you want a written response by a date certain. You can also go to the company website and contact the company by email. You will save the mailing costs and still have written documentation.