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Old 20th May 2020, 3:41 pm   #15
hamid_1
Heptode
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: High Wycombe, Bucks. UK.
Posts: 811
Default Re: VOIP Phone line and my Bakelite telephones

That's right. Presumably your cordless phones were previously being used on a normal phone line and that when you changed, you simply unplugged the cordless phone base station from the wall socket and plugged it into a socket on the Sky router instead. As dsk says, unplug the cordless phone base station from the Sky hub. If there is an adaptor or a short wire coming out of the hub with a BT phone socket on the end, leave that in place. Plug your vintage phone into where your cordless phone base was plugged in, or into the adaptor if present. You should at least have a dialtone on your vintage phone, otherwise your cordless phone couldn't have worked. You may not be able to dial any numbers and / or your vintage phone's bell may not ring very loudly or at all. Those issues can be fixed. For example, if you hear a dial tone but it does not stop when you dial a number, it's most likely that Sky's VoIP router does not support pulse dialling. You can use a pulse to tone converter like the DialGizmo to overcome this.

You can connect your own VoIP analogue telephone adaptor (ATA) to your Sky broadband, but I'm pretty sure Sky will not allow you to use it with their Sky Talk VoIP service. You can still use one with another provider. Since 2007 I have been using Sipgate Basic https://sipgatebasic.co.uk
You can buy and use any SIP ATA including the Grandstream ones which support old pulse dialling phones. You can also choose your own UK phone number for free incoming calls. There is no monthly line rental, you only pay for outgoing calls. It's a LOT cheaper than Sky or other landline phone providers, and there's no ridiculous 23p connection charge per call, unlike Sky, BT etc.

If you go down the route of another ATA and a different provider, you will initially have a new additional phone number and a separate bill for it. You won't be able to use any inclusive minutes from your Sky Talk package if it has any. I believe it's possible to 'port' or transfer your existing Sky phone number to another company like Sipgate but I think this will result in your Sky Talk account being closed. You can of course keep both accounts going separately, each with their own phone number and bill. You can even use both at the same time. In the case of Sipgate, you can use it wherever there's an internet connection. It works abroad exactly the same as in the UK, with no roaming charges anywhere in the world. You can even have multiple ATAs at different locations. When an incoming call is received, all the ATAs will ring; you can answer the call on any one of them.

There are other ways to use old rotary dial phones, even without a phone line at all. You could obtain a used PBX which supports pulse dialling, such as Panasonic KX-T30810BE or KX-T61610BE - these sometimes come up for sale quite cheaply. You can connect a number of old phones to it and make free calls between them (handy for testing a phone). You can also connect it to a landline or your VoIP line. The Panasonic KX-T30810BE and KX-T61610BE can both convert pulse to tone, allowing your vintage phones to dial out to a VoIP line without needing an additional converter like the DialGizmo. Note that you need a Panasonic system phone to enable this setting on the PBX.

Another method is the X-Link BTTN http://www.myxlink.com
This box supports old rotary dial phones as well as new ones. It lets you connect the old dial phone to a landline or VoIP line and / or up to 3 mobile phones via Bluetooth. You can use your vintage phone to make or receive calls on any of the phones connected to the X-link box, either landline, VoIP line or mobile. Answer a mobile phone call on a vintage phone, or dial out from a vintage phone using your mobile's inclusive minutes. Great fun!
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