We've been with Virgin Media since they took over NTL World. We've a land-Line socket in the hall, which we don't use, (which was installed by Cable & Wireless before they were taken over by NTL) to which, sockets in the lounge and my office upstairs are connected. The one upstairs is rarely used, but essential, If I'm out and the phone rings and my wife is upstairs, there's no way she could get downstairs to answer the one in the lounge before the caller thought we were out and rang off. The one in the lounge is near my wife's chair, it's a wireless phone which lives in its charger on the sideboard next to her chair. On 13 April, we're going fibre-optic. We've received an adapter into which we're supposed to plug the phone and the adapter into the Hub behind the TV in the far corner of the lounge. She only needs to put the phone in the charger at the end of the day. So the charger can sit on the TV stand and she can keep the phone next to her on the sideboard. "Simples" Not really, as then the phone upstairs won't work, nor any others we might have had in other rooms. I managed to get through to Virgin yesterday. Continually pressing the "hash key" and ignoring all the automated, "press, 1,2,3,4, we'll send an app to your mobile. etc.", can get you "a real person" sometimes and fortunately yesterday, it wasn't, "that nicely spoken but unintelligible lady in India who works from home and has a dog that barks." The guy I spoke too had no idea of how to resolve the problem, but said, "he knew a man who does." He'd arrange for someone to come out and sort it out. He'd phone me back with a date, but so far he can't have found one, as he hasn't phoned. As I see it, we'll need a long extension cable, plugged into the adapter and then the hub. The cable will then have to be run around two walls between the edge of the carpet and the skirting boards and then, with it and the cable from the phone plugged into a double adapter, plugged into the socket behind the sideboard. Then the phone upstairs "in theory" should work. But they can do that, I pay them enough each month. The "cost of this progress," is that where before, you might temporarily lose your, TV, internet, or phone connection, now if there's a problem with one, you'll lose all three at the same time. Apparently, all phone companies are going fibre-optic over the next two years.
Yes, change over has come. I still remember the smell of leaded gas. It took me a year to understand these new phones were not phones anymore but basically act like a cellphone. Once I found out there is an phone app for use on a cell phone I giggled and installed it because I started using them at work first and with 2 stores to cover it did help that I could be 2 places at once as far as anyone calling was concerned. I wonder at the need for a cable, as we have a wireless "hub" that I call a "router" but Vonage calls a "base". The actual shop phones link to it but they have a computer style IP address so now I can have 1 phone number but as many separate calls as we have phones, and that includes employees with the app on their phones as well as the phones I bought for the desks. A strange arrangement for me since I grew up with the old party lines where occasionally I picked up my phone and heard my neighbors speaking to someone. I actually prefer to keep my landline numbers on my cell as it travels with me and I like the backup of being able to use my cell system if the local wires get broken in a storm. I have in fact run the house on a generator while also logging in the hub to my cell phone hotspot so that our internet based TV services and computers worked as well. I had to be patient with myself, but learning how to use the two system was important because we have used the Hotspot backup trick for credit card processing at work and phone services at the stores when service was faulty and it worked out well. It is not the simplest thing but once I had it in my mind that they were just cb radios that had to be registered together then I began to understand how the devices linked up a little more. Breaker-Breaker Good Buddy! I do see that I spend 500% more on phones and TV than I did back when TV channels occupied the airwaves where cellphones now operate. Is this what they mean by the price of progress?
We now have a VOIP It means that when the power is cut, the internet is gone and so is the phone. We're in a terrible place for cellphone/mobile signal so we'll try not to need an ambulance when the power goes You mentioned CB radio Mr Mechanic, that might not be a bad idea in future, they usually run off 12 volt DC, which we have even when the main power is off, and unlike the internet, the government probably don't monitor it
I was entertained to learn that the signal on the cable run is a separate power source and if I could just supply power to the various boxes inside my home then we had signal. I did have one occasion during a hurricane that 6 or so power poles were blown over or broken and the cable ran on them so that was that and we were truly mobile for a few days.
