That's less than 10% BW. Piece of cake for an antenna.
Ok, but that's no problem to find out. In the boonies it is rather likely that the provider operates on always the same small sliver. At least that's how it is out here and we don't exactly live in a mountain enclave.
Yes, plus lots of people are in similar situations and found ways. When the iron curtain fell the phone "system" in former East Germany was in disarray. No surprise there. So lot of people who were finally allowed to open a business now that the commies were gone rigged up huge Yagi antennas, pointed to the next city past the former iron curtain.
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Have you considered buying one of those 'Magic Jacks'? I did a few weeks ago, to call someone I hadn't talked to in 25 years. It took me years to find him, because he has an unlisted phone number. I finally got in touch with the chief engineer at the TV station he used to work for and got a good lead. :)
Anywhere in the US or Canada is covered by the $20 a year fee.
--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
A friend of mine got the MagicJack and I must say I was not impressed with the service, at all. It sounded pretty bad, and had an ugly dialing interface. Usable, but not terribly friendly. In fairness, some of that degredation (perhaps most of it?) was due to her horribly unmaintained laptop (read: viruses?), and/or crappy Internet bandwidth.
Of course, the friend in question is pretty ditzy, and probably should not be allowed near any computer in the first place, but I digress. Then, she found out that both myself, and a mutual acquaintance, had signed up for Skype, absolutely loved it, and could use it from any computer without the little dongle thingie. And it sounded better to boot.
Undeterred, she tried to get her $20 back from MagicJack even though she was many months into the contract. Without success. Like I said -- ditzy.!!
I cringe now whenever she calls me with any computer problem. She's managed to forget every password to everything. And she'll have like 10 email accounts, check only 2, but not even the same 2 regularly.
Multiple lines, multiple long distance, multiple voice mail, multiple features.... all included for much less in Verizon fees. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
The Ground Zero Mosque IS Appropriate When Renamed...
The Obama Monument to American Impotence
The only thing I don't like is the 1/4 second or so latency. I plugged a cordless phone into it and can call from anywhere on my property. Since all of the US is considered local service, you have to dial the area code with every call. The audio quality is excellent. It is clean and a hell of a lot quieter than my Centurylink landline which has had intermittent problems since last November.
Skype is great if the person on the other end has a computer, it's turned on and has the program installed an running. All Magic Jack needs is a regular phone number to call. OTOH, most of the people I need to call either don't have a computer, or are rarely online. Some won't install the Skype software because someone told them it is infected, or spyware.
--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
I dumped the "right" to have long distance on my landline years ago. I can't use up the minutes on my wireless. Just the right to have long distance was about $20 a month.
Incidentally, AT&T isn't as bad as everyone says it is, at least regarding coverage. Dealing with the jerks is another story. The iphone users are a very vocal group, and they complain about dropped calls blah blah blah. But it is the crappy phone rather than AT&T.
I used to be a Verizon customer. I was out of town and had no coverage. Turns out I missed a payment and they wanted something ridiculous to restore service. I told Verizon to waive the fee or I'll dump them. Customer service had the nerve to say "You wil have to pay an activation fee to switch carriers", to which I replied "with please." They didn't budge and I dropped them.
The problem with Verizon is if you have to make a phone call, it is the best, but everything else about the company sucks. I can't tell you the number of times their voicemail screwed up. Messages would show up hours later. Their digital roaming was awful, but that may be a case of CDMA versus GSM. With GSM, there seems to be more discipline on how features are implemented. Not so on CDMA.
It got even worse with Verizon. They claimed I owed one more payment. Mind you no calls were made on that phone. I paid it and said don't come back for more. Terminate me. Well then came back for more. When I asked for someone hire up in customer service, I was told there was nobody higher to speak to. I said "send me to collections. I've paid you twice for no service." They sent me to collections, which I didn't care since I didn't need a loan. After I got collections off my case, things were fine until believe it or not, Verizon started to spam my email address to get me to switch back to them. Is it possible to have a dumber bunch of idiots running a company?
Have you looked at Ooma? Roughly the same idea, except it's the complete computer in a box (just plug in power and Ethernet) rather than being a USB dongle that requires a powered-up PC to operate.
I think you can get Verizon even cheaper with a "contract".
My Verizon Plan Details for: 602-xxx-xxxx NATIONWIDE TALK 450 Contract: Month to Month Plan Details Monthly access charge: $39.99 Monthly allowance minutes: 450 general Per minute rate after allowance: $0.45 peak , $0.45 off-peak Promotion details
15 BONUS MINUTES N/C Included Features BUSY TRANSFER CALL DELIVERY NO ANSWER TRANSFER Unlimited Mobile to Mobile
3-WAY CALLING CALL WAITING Basic Voice Mail Additional Features STREAMLINE BILLING Caller ID NEW EVERY TWO TIERED
250 Messages MOBILE WEB NATIONALACCESS ROAM-MB DECLINED INSURANCE Call Forwarding Unlimited Night & Weekend Minutes GENERAL IP ADDRESS PAY AS YOU USE MEGABYTE DATA ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
The Ground Zero Mosque IS Appropriate When Renamed...
The Obama Monument to American Impotence
How on earth did you manage to pay this much for a land line? That would be my cost _including_ broadband Internet service.
Contract? Me? With phone service? No way.
That doesn't sound like such a bargain versus $56.
Ouch! In my line of work you'd be poor like a church mouse in no time. Let's say 25h/mo in client phone conferences and forget the rest. That would come to 1050 overage minutes on your plan, to the tune of $472.50. Per month. Yikes!
What is really dandy on a cell phone is when you are 3h into a tricky design review with a group a few thousand miles away and then .. bip ... bip ... beep ... a lo-bat warning pop up on the li'l LCD. My office phone doesn't do that :-)
But only inside the Verizon network, right?
Maybe you can convince the guys to do all design reviews at night, after they had some brewskys :-)
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
That's TWO land-lines, all bells and whistles: voice mail, call forwarding, call following, unlimited long distance, CID, CID-waiting...
Didn't figure you would ;-)
It duplicates everything I have on my cell phones.
So I'm looking to go cell phones only, and use one of those docking station systems so that, when I'm home, all the extensions function as easy to reach desk phones.
Some of us old farts know how to use Skype and GoToMeeting for "conferences". Allows showing schematics, etc.
My actual long distance usage is next to nil.
*PHUT*-in-mouth again ?:-)
Docking station doubles as charger.
I already have the house wireless phones on a UPS.
I only mobile-to-mobile to my wife.
If there is mobile-to-mobile, it'd simply be airtime... and I've never used, during my experiment, even half of my airtime allotment.
[snip
How can you design review via phone? I like pictures and schematics and screen doodles ;-) ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
The Ground Zero Mosque IS Appropriate When Renamed...
The Obama Monument to American Impotence
Now wait, this morning you said, quote "So I'm going to dump my land lines and save $122/month". Meaning your cell phone company pays you $66/month for the privilege of having you as a customer?
Has a zipper in the middle so it comes apart and provide two lines? If $39 month-to-month includes two phone and there are no large extra costs on each bill then you have indeed landed the deal of the century.
A friend did that. Since that time I can usually only leave voice messages. Once in a while he goes to the front door to return calls. Because it only works there after something changed in the RF path or whatever.
Problem is, my customers don't. They use Webex plus phone, or similar services. No matter how much I despise the quality level of some of their software, Adobe has a very nice conferencing service. So far I like that one the best. Praise where praise is due.
Bottomline is you get an email with a 1-800 number in there, an access code, and a clickable link. That's it. In my line of work you are then expected to be there, especially if you are the chief reviewer like I often am.
Not even calls to relatives in places like West Virginia? Man, that's hardcore :-)
Let's do that in more detail, shall we? Your 450min/mo allotment boils down to 7.5h. 25h usage then means 17.5h of that are overage. That's
1050 minutes. And with the price you stated that's $472.50. Plus taxes, fees, and whatnot.
Hint: My Virgin Mobile no-contract plan (on Sprint) charges only 18c/min and AFAIK you can buy as many minutes as you need.
No, HP calculator in hand.
That _is_ hardcore :-)
In case that ever changes make sure there's no pics stored on the phone :-)
Seriously, it happened to someone I know. Then it was like in an Italian movie, things that are normally stationary became airborne ...
Ok, you don't do board level designs. In that world things are very, very different WRT telephone usage. It got to the point where I had to swallow my pride and buy a headset so I can do measurements while talking and sending over scope plots or HPGL stuff. I could holler across into the speaker phone but when the UPS man comes all my client engineers would here is Rottweiler, Shepard and Labrador.
T'is why my speaker phone sits right next to the computation machine :-)
And if you don't use a web meeting service or software this is why schematics have these sidebars A, B, C ... and 1, 2, 3. "The transformer T21 at Charlie 6 could saturate if ..."
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
No wonder you have software problems, you have comprehension problems :-)
Presently...
Two land lines costs me $122
Two cell phones cost me $97
Both systems with all bells/whistles, taxes included in the totals.
I'm considering dumping the land lines due to redundancy... I never use both at once.
[incomprehension deleted :-]
Certainly wasn't Verizon... I've found only one place in the US where I had no signal... Franklin, WV, high up in the middle of the George Washington National Forest... more cows and pigs than people :-)
Young people with old minds ?:-)
I only have three relatives still alive on the East Coast... a (PITA) sister in Cincinnati, an aunt in Franklin, WV, and an uncle in Baltimore.
I don't call any of them. I send a Christmas card... sometimes ;-)
Nope. I'm happily married! I probably have more sexual activity than you... you always seem to be tired and/or with a headache :-)
I use headphones for Skype AND for the land-lines AND for radio/TV (I'm up early for Germany, while the wife sleeps).
Handsets get tiresome.
Skype can handle screen video just as easy as GoToMeeting, and it's FREE ;-) ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
The Ground Zero Mosque IS Appropriate When Renamed...
The Obama Monument to American Impotence
When I was in VT, our land lines cost $48/mo. each. That was including the max minutes, which wasn't much. We traded one of those lines in on a cable modem ($40/mo.) and eventually the other in on two cell phones ($60/mo.) which included long distance. My mother was alive and we did a lot of long distance calling.
We pay something like $65/mo. for our two cell phones now, but the contract expired over a year ago. They keep bugging us to get new phones.
The VT rate was $.10/min peak, $.005/min off-peak, IIRC. Peak ran 7:00AM to
10:00PM.
Keep it plugged into the charger.
My Verizon deal is "free" to any US phone.
That'll either speed things up or slow them *way* down. ;-)
That's what you said initially. Then, at 12:47pm you said $56 was for two lines. Now it's back to $122. Strange, even $56 times two doesn't compute to $122. Ok, according to some CA politicians it would. Can you elucidate?
Remember when I wrote that $56 for one landline is outrageous? Because it is :-)
That's high. I pay $5 for one cell phone.
Same here but I prefer the land line over cell.
Ahm, see above and elucidate :-)
I don't remember but I heard that up there (Placerville) that happens to others as well. It's steep terrain, a multipath nightmare.
Why? It woiks.
Ok, that's very different out here. Friends and clients all over the country, and overseas. The overseas billing alone is often two pages long. But at 0.5c to 2c/min the total charges are in the noise.
[...]
When was my last headache? Can't remember ...
That reminds me, I need new pads for my Sennheiser HD-414. But first I have to find some.
I like the speakerphone. The office is at the other end of the house so I can close a total of three doors between the bedroom and the office.
I know. But as I said, none of my current clients uses it. If that ever changes I'll sign up. Right now there ain't anyone I could talk to on Skype. Ok, I could call you there :-)
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
So, I went and looked at the most recent bill. Land line with AT&T, including any and all (a gazillion line items) worth of fees which are in essence taxes ... drum roll please ...
$24.09
That's it.
Because they want you locked in another two years.
[...]
Li-Ions don't necessarily like that MO for too long.
You mean you guys have an infinite number of minutes? Now that would be sweet.
[...]
--
Regards, Joerg
http://www.analogconsultants.com/
"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
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