Long Distance Line of Sight Cordless Phone recommendations"

[ultrarunner]

My brother mentioned it would be nice to be able to have a line of sight cordless phone for the Christmas Tree Farm for about 6 weeks each year...

The Tree Farm has a long established dedicated number that gets as many a 60 calls right after Thanksgiving asking about trees.

I thought he could simply forward calls to a cell but coverage is spotty... thought about trenching a line but that 2,000 feet to the Santa Booth would only work in the booth...

Are there some good options for a cordless long distance phone to use around the property?

 

[speedbump]

Yes there are. It depends on the phone and the frequency it transmits and receives on. You can easily build an antenna that will extend it's signal greatly. There are far too many to mention and lots of variables. But extending your range by use of higher gain antennas is very doable.

 

[Gunny]

Some brands have repeaters, Panasonic comes to mind, that can extend the range. Exactly how far, I don't know and you'd have to have electricity available wherever the repeater sits.

 

[jymbee]

Was along time ago but I bought a phone from this EnGenius outfit:

My brother mentioned it would be nice to be able to have a line of sight cordless phone for the Christmas Tree Farm for about 6 weeks each year...

The Tree Farm has a long established dedicated number that gets as many a 60 calls right after Thanksgiving asking about trees.

I thought he could simply forward calls to a cell but coverage is spotty... thought about trenching a line but that 2,000 feet to the Santa Booth would only work in the booth...

Are there some good options for a cordless long distance phone to use around the property?

 

[Eldubya]

The Engenius system will work just fine for your application. They are designed to be used in large warehouse / workyard situations. Very tough and reliable, but that comes with a cost of course. I've used them around my 10 acre resort for over 10 years with no problems at all. My place is very heavily treed and I do not get line of sight most of the time. Not an issue.

 

[ultrarunner]

Been reading up and most reviews are positive...

Some on the negative are high repair cost...

It sounds like it would do the job and it and being able to answer the phone real time would improve sales as folks are not as likely to drive a distance without checking first and returning calls in the evening is often too late.

His phone is tied with Comcast and he thought he could get a second extension on the property but Comcast said can't do... only one account per address.

Years ago the set up with with Pacific Bell... and set up with a remote extension in that the line rings at two places although geographically separated all the time with no forwarding required.

They had about 80 nice cut trees left over... and 1400 sold... every night he would return calls and by that time it was too late... as in they only had that day for family tree shopping and made other arrangements...

I still think seasonal forwarding might work to his cell but he is a busy guy and needs to do more than spend the day the phone...

 

[k0ua]

The engenius is what we sold and what I always specified in engineering phone systems for business that needed that way out there one of (or few) of links back to either a PBX or Key system or even just on straight lines. It works well, and we never had much trouble with them. It seems to be a cut above the regular consumer product, of course the price is a "cut above" too, but you don't get something for nothing most of the time. I have been out of the engineering of phone/data systems for over 3 years now, and there may be something else just as good, but the engenius is what we always used.

 

[ultrarunner]

Seems to be about a $500 commitment...

Engenius Durafon1X

 

[k0ua]

Seems to be about a $500 commitment...

Engenius Durafon1X

Yes, of course as a large corporation, we got them for much less.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

His phone is tied with Comcast and he thought he could get a second extension on the property but Comcast said can't do... only one account per address.

Do you mean that he has a home number and a business number, and they won't do both?

Or are they telling him that he cannot have more than one actual phone on his line?


Neither makes sense. Do a quick search online - there are tons of VoIP services that offer multiple numbers. Not a problem. If Comcast won't do it, dump Comcast. Use them for Internet only and get your phone service elsewhere.


If they are telling him he can't have more than one physical phone on a line, again, baloney! The Comcast box that converts the Internet to phone simply provides a phone jack. At that point it is POTS, as we say in the business. Plain Old Telephone Service. Once it's POTS, you can do pretty much whatever you want to do, as long as you know what you are doing.

The problem may be that their VoIP box has a low REN. In that case, you can simply plug their box into a booster (like this one) and then hang as many phones as you want to off that booster.

 

[ultrarunner]

He has Comcast for everything... and Verizon for a family cell plan because Verizon is the only provider with a signal out on the farm.

He had Comcast come out to extend the line to the barn used for the Christmas Tree operation and was told it was not possible... so he said he wanted to have Comcast do a second install for the barn/farm shop and was told no possible...

Wasted a lot of time on this... plus had a supervisor come out who also said NO...

They all use Cell Phones and the Comcast Phone is part of their package and uses the same phone number the farm always had...

As mentioned... the previous owners had a number that rang at two separate locations... both the house and the barn with the connection made at the Telco Central Office... no stringing 2,000 feet of wire or more... just came down from the utility pole down the road.

If you answered the phone in the barn it was the same as answering it in the house.

The Barn is on the same 65 acre property but has it's own separate Electric Meter... with AG rates.

I would like to understand the phone issue because it seems it should be simple.

 

[k0ua]

He has Comcast for everything... and Verizon for a family cell plan because Verizon is the only provider with a signal out on the farm.

He had Comcast come out to extend the line to the barn used for the Christmas Tree operation and was told it was not possible... so he said he wanted to have Comcast do a second install for the barn/farm shop and was told no possible...

Wasted a lot of time on this... plus had a supervisor come out who also said NO...

They all use Cell Phones and the Comcast Phone is part of their package and uses the same phone number the farm always had...

As mentioned... the previous owners had a number that rang at two separate locations... both the house and the barn with the connection made at the Telco Central Office... no stringing 2,000 feet of wire or more... just came down from the utility pole down the road.

If you answered the phone in the barn it was the same as answering it in the house.

The Barn is on the same 65 acre property but has it's own separate Electric Meter... with AG rates.

I would like to understand the phone issue because it seems it should be simple.

Dual or bridged service should be easy.. Perhaps we don't understand something. Is there any internet service in the barn area?

 

[ultrarunner]

Not from him... he has a neighbor that has allowed Internet Access to use a tablet to ring up sales...

The neighbor's WiFi is surprisingly good... but not the WiFi from the my brother's home.

The main thing was to have a working phone in the barn so the Christmas Tree calls could be answered real time instead of spending a couple of hours each night returning calls...

One day there were 57 new messages and most just wanted to make sure a certain type/size tree was available should they decide to make the drive out.

I still don't know why he doesn't want to forward to his Verizon Cell... but I do know with teenagers they go through a tremendous amount of Data each month...

 

[EarPlug]

As mentioned... the previous owners had a number that rang at two separate locations... both the house and the barn with the connection made at the Telco Central Office... no stringing 2,000 feet of wire or more... just came down from the utility pole down the road.

If you answered the phone in the barn it was the same as answering it in the house.

The Barn is on the same 65 acre property but has it's own separate Electric Meter... with AG rates.

I would like to understand the phone issue because it seems it should be simple.

IN THE OLD DAYS - There WAS 2000 feet of cable between the 2 locations. The telco just tapped off the same pair of wires that ran past both locations to provide the phone service.

NOW - it sounds like Comcast is providing service via a coax cable to the home location. A "phone number" travels on the coax as data that is then decoded at the equipment at the house. In simple terms you cannot have the same "phone" data decoded at 2 different locations.

The old telco copper is still probably in place. Maybe someone could bridge the service from the Comcast jack and backfeed it to the old telco connection at the house. Maybe the phone at the barn just might ring.

 

[n3ckf]

i would do this with a pair of the ubiquity nanostation local M5 units (this is a wifi "bridge" you just plug your ethernet connected voip phone box to the one in the field and you plug the other one into the wired network in the house). You *might* be able to get away with having just one (they have directional antennas so you want to aim them at each other).

These will bring full ethernet out to the remote location at 20-50Mb/second depending on how far you are away. They work well and i've tested them in pairs out to about a half mile with not issues. (should work further than that).

You can also use them just individually (put one int he field and set it up to be a client of your wifi network, since they have higher power/better antennas they often work further than a device will).

You'd need to use a voip phone with these but those are pretty cheap these days.

 

[ultrarunner]

Lots of good suggestions...

I'm intrigued by the chance there could still be a pair running from the barn to the house out along the poles...

It is something I will need to check... and embarrassed to say I have never plugged in an analog phone into any of the ATT Jacks...

The VOIP sounds interest too...

A couple of years ago he stated walking and did the "Can you hear me now" as he headed toward the barn... didn't get very far before the signal started to fade.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

The VOIP sounds interest too...

VoIP is what Comcast is providing. As Earplug noted above, Comcast is delivering that to the house, and there it is. They don't want to spend the money to run something to your barn - that's your problem.

Since he has the Comcast Internet to his home, he can get VoIP service from hundreds of different companies - it's all over his Internet connection. But any other company will leave him in the same boat - no phone service without Internet.

 

[n3ckf]

VoIP is what Comcast is providing. As Earplug noted above, Comcast is delivering that to the house, and there it is. They don't want to spend the money to run something to your barn - that's your problem.

Since he has the Comcast Internet to his home, he can get VoIP service from hundreds of different companies - it's all over his Internet connection. But any other company will leave him in the same boat - no phone service without Internet.

right. You could in theory, take the comcast VOIP box (if it separate from the cablemodem itself) and just move it to the outbuilding if you did the ubiquity wifi bridge thing and it wouldn't know the difference, it'll look like its on the house network.

I use a vonage VOIP line which is its own little box rather than the comcast VOIP service and so you can move that around to different locations as long as there's a path to the internet from wherever you plug it in.

The ubiquiti stuff comes in a 2.4ghz and a 5ghz flavor (the 2.4 flavor will generally work over longer distances unless yo have a lot of 2.4 networks (or microwave ovens) around. The 5ghz one is more resistant to interference because many fewer people use 5ghz. the "local" version of the ubquiti stuff is lower power than the "non-local" version (but the local might be enough for your application).