Telephony

As part of my response to Covid 19 I got our landline reconnected. Happily it is cheap and no one had to come to the house - but that is because Chris and I are both handy. And our friend Angela loaned us some handsets. 

UPDATE - We got the bill for the landline... not so cheap after all... a $68 + tax connection fee!!! The operator conveniently forgot to mention that little factoid!!! BASTARDS...

All reports were that the phone line was connected. But there was no dial tone. What’s up? Well, it’s actually not an old fashioned phone with the power and signal coming down the line. It’s a VOIP - voice over internet protocol or ‘cable phone’. In other words my phone signal is carried over the cable line, not the phone line. 

So that meant there had to be a connection between the cable wiring and the telephone wiring. And a ‘box’ to translate the data. Low and behold there was a box. It needs electricity. It was unplugged. Step one plug it in. Still no signal. Then I noticed another dangling line coming out of the box. 

The phone box needs to be connected to the cable line. Not possible because there was only one cable one coming in the house and it was occupied with our WIFI router. What to do? 

A quick trip to Canadian Tire for a splitter and bingo! Dial tone. The whole thing would have gone quite a bit faster if Northwestel folks had explained to me the fact that the phone signal is coming over my cable line.