How old is your phone ?

[gryffron]

Anything much over 40 years would be back into the era of pulse dialling. Is that even still supported now?

One can buy a convertor.

That’s a lot of dosh for such trivial electronics. I’m a bit shocked it doesn’t at least have a separate power supply for that cost. To cope with the much higher ring current that older phones often require. As we have already discussed, I doubt the small supply on your router can provide nearly as much power as a conventional phone line.

Gryff

[88V8]

One can buy a convertor.

That’s a lot of dosh for such trivial electronics. I’m a bit shocked it doesn’t at least have a separate power supply for that cost. To cope with the much higher ring current that older phones often require. As we have already discussed, I doubt the small supply on your router can provide nearly as much power as a conventional phone line.

Does it even support ringing? As you say, one might soon run out of REN. Good point, I'll ask before I buy one.

V8

[NomoneyNohoney]

My mobile phone signal strength has dropped a lot at home, which is pretty annoying. A couple of times, people have said they tried to phone, but no reply, and when I check the phone, it's showing no signal.(Signal strength app confirms low signal at home now.)

With our broadband package comes a landline telephone service, so I've dug out an old phone and connected it to the line. My thinking is, I can accept calls at no cost and with better reliability, than faffing around with signal boosters, external antennas etc. Within 15 minutes of connecting it up, I got my first sales call, from someone trying to flog medic-alert bracelets. That was why I gave up the landline in the first place - telesales outnumbered personal calls by a huge margin.

Feels odd having a landline phone again, but I guess I'll get used to it.

As an aside, I've coupled up a phone call recorder to it. It's just a cassette recorder, with the play and record buttons depressed, and it springs into life when I lift the handset and starts auto recording. Anyone else have one of these? I'm a bit interested in whether there's any detrimental effects of having the tape squeezed between the record head and the rubber roller for days, between phone calls. Am I worrying unnecessarily? The joys of old technology!

[Infrasonic]

My mobile phone signal strength has dropped a lot at home, which is pretty annoying. A couple of times, people have said they tried to phone, but no reply, and when I check the phone, it's showing no signal.(Signal strength app confirms low signal at home now)...

Have you not got wifi call capability on your mobiles/mobile network?

I've not tried it specifically with my two Pixels with regard to call screening (they are both pretty good at weeding out spammers/sales calls over the mobile network via caller display showing actual business names for non contacts and suspected spammer for actively monitored spoofed numbers). Might not be supported by all MVNO's but I think all the UK networks support it now.

I've been using it for a few years when out in the sticks with no mobile signal but local wifi available.

*Both my phones are Android 14 and still supported - so some of the more advanced call screening features might not work on older smartphones even if the network offers it...

[gryffron]

Just out of interest, I had a quick google round. The only reference I can find says that a (American) router provides a maximum of 0.9 REN. Which sounds about right to me given its power supply.

That doesn't matter for modern electronic phones, which are usually a miniscule fraction of 1 REN. Which is why the phone companies gave up talking about it. But it might matter for someone wanting to plug a very old phone into a router/VOIP interface.

Gryff

[Infrasonic]

Just out of interest, I had a quick google round. The only reference I can find says that a (American) router provides a maximum of 0.9 REN. Which sounds about right to me given its power supply.

That doesn't matter for modern electronic phones, which are usually a miniscule fraction of 1 REN. Which is why the phone companies gave up talking about it. But it might matter for someone wanting to plug a very old phone into a router/VOIP interface.

Gryff

I bet somewhere there is a cheap step up adapter.
USB or RJ45 PoE +/++ is a thing and will easily have more than enough juice - so another potential adapter route there for anyone that a*al about it...

[NomoneyNohoney]

Have you not got wifi call capability on your mobiles/mobile network?

Yes but not on payg ....

[Infrasonic]

Have you not got wifi call capability on your mobiles/mobile network?

Yes but not on payg ....

So you've got weak or no mobile signal at home and they don't do PAYG wifi calling. Why exactly are you giving them money?...
https://www.simsherpa.com/networks/best-wifi-calling

[NomoneyNohoney]

That is a really useful link: thank you.

Just for conversation, I've ordered sims from the remaining three big networks, to see who has the strongest signal at my home location. Once I know that then I'll use your link to find the cheapest MVNO. When I find the one that offers wifi calling, then I can decide accordingly. The good thing is, my mobile phone can have two sims, so maybe I'll have one sim for home use, with wifi calling, and the faithful O2 sim for when I'm out and about.

[Infrasonic]

That is a really useful link: thank you.

Just for conversation, I've ordered sims from the remaining three big networks, to see who has the strongest signal at my home location. Once I know that then I'll use your link to find the cheapest MVNO. When I find the one that offers wifi calling, then I can decide accordingly. The good thing is, my mobile phone can have two sims, so maybe I'll have one sim for home use, with wifi calling, and the faithful O2 sim for when I'm out and about.

I switched from a 3 SIM only monthly deal to Smarty (3 sub brand rather than MVNO) and Vodafone to Lebara - both unlimited data deals.

Smarty is cheaper and I've found that it isn't as good as Lebara for average available bandwidth. I'm actually load balanced across both networks now at home via a travel router...viewtopic.php?f=39&t=43557

3 and Vodafone are in talks to merge (they already mast share) and if and when it gets approval I'll probably switch the Smarty SIM over to an EE MVNO just so I have two independent networks for redundancy. I've noticed some network issues hitting 3 and Vod at the same time, so want to get away from that eventuality as it cancels out the failover benefits of two networks.

[NomoneyNohoney]

Isn't a Cellular Gateway Router just for internet provision, not phone conversations?