How to get rid of your over-priced land phone service (with working DirecTV TiVo)

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

Hi All,

I have just done this at my house and it was a bit of a pain to get everything figured out, but once I got it all working, the process is relatively simple, so I thought I'd outline it here. The information is out there, but it's garbled in worthless information, or difficult to understand or piece together, so I've laid it out here as simply as I can. This may also work with non-DirecTV TiVo services, but I use DirecTV and can't vouch for this fix working on other services. Generic TiVo has an update that enables the USB ports to be used to connect to the service over your home network/broadband, but DirecTV won't do it (yet).

1: Get VoIP service from Speakeasy (preferred) or Vonage or any other broadband VoIP provider.

2: Cancel your land line provider service (Qwest, in my case)

3: Go out to your phone box (the one coming in from the service company to your house) and disconnect the incoming pair that provides land analog voice service. This can be a bit tricky, but not too bad. You want to disconnect only the incoming pair (or plug) that your analog voice lines used to use and not the b-channel that your DSL uses (if you use DSL -- if you use Cable, you still need to disconnect the correct pair, but disconnecting them both won't interrupt your Internet connection).

4: Plug the output from your VoIP box to the wall-jack of any working convenient wall-jack in your house.

5: Plug your phones into the remaining wall-jacks or use a cordless phone base to one wall jack and multiple handsets to the base.

6: * for TiVo * TiVo almost never makes its connection for its daily call or initial setup call over VoIP. Get a common external modem from eBay or elsewhere and an adapter cable that links the serial output from your TiVo to the 9-pin port on the modem (db9). In my case, my HD DirecTV TiVo has a 1/8th" phono plug for its serial output, so I needed to get a stereo to db9 adapter. The correct adapter is some times included in the cable pack bundled with your TiVo. If you don't want to mess with finding the parts locally or dealing with eBay, the parts are accessible, for more money, here: http://www.weaknees.com/modem_fix.php

A more thorough write-up on this part of the process can be found here: http://wiki.ehow.com/Make-Your-Directv-Tivo-work-with-Vonage-VOIP-service

7: Plug the adapter cable into your TiVo serial output on the back and the other end to the input of the external modem. Plug a working (dial-tone) line from one of your wall jacks into the correct modem jack of your external modem.

8: Now, go into the menu of your TiVo, in the setup/phone options, and leave everything normal, but go to the "dialing prefix" section and (whether you have stuff in there now or not) add: , # 3 1 9 (no spaces). On your remote you'll hit: [pause], [enter] (not select), [3], [1], [9], then hit [select] to save. This "tells" the TiVo to use its external serial port for the dial-up instead of the internal modem which can't sync' with the dial-up number.

9: Do a test call from within the TiVo menu.

10: Enjoy.

-HiAmp

Click to read more...

 

[bigwheel15 10+ year member]

Im only kidding, just felt like posting that. That looks pretty interesting. Now to wait for someone to do it.

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

crud... wrong area. Mods: would you mind please moving this to home audio/video? Thanks.

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

I moved it from Home Audio/Video, as it has more to do with telephony than audio or video...

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

x2

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

I moved it from Home Audio/Video, as it has more to do with telephony than audio or video...

It's mainly about TiVo non-functionality with VoIP, but I gotcha'.

Hope this can help someone. It sure would've saved me a lot of days of research and experimentation.

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

Mine was over $60/mo, with all the extra services and long distance capability (not incuding actual long distance charges). Now, I'm only paying $24/month and have free USA and many world-wide countries long distance, with even more extra features than I had before. For me, VoIP was a no-brainer, but my biggest problem so far, had been getting my TiVo units to work, hence the write-up.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

How did you disconnect your POTS without losing your DSL? What type of DSL do you have, vDSL, sDSL or raDSL?? I used to have qwest and they wouldnt let me lose just the POTS..I know their is no tech reason they cant do it...but before they wouldnt. Do you know if they will provision a DSL line without first having POTS now?

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

ADSL, there are 2 pair coming into the house. I disconnected the "a" pair (the main phone line pair) at the box, and left the other pair in-tact. The "b" pair carry my DSL service to the trunk. I didn't ask them if it was ok, I just did it. They are not providing local service to me at this stage, so if they cut me off at the C.O., I'd raise hellen with both Qwest and Covad who owns the DSL trunk. I'm not sure if anyone can provision the line for DSL without already having POTS active first, haven't looked into that. It would be a good thing to research -- of course every business segment of telco seems to handle things different from the others.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

ADSL, there are 2 pair coming into the house. I disconnected the "a" pair (the main phone line pair) at the box, and left the other pair in-tact. The "b" pair carry my DSL service to the trunk. I didn't ask them if it was ok, I just did it. They are not providing local service to me at this stage, so if they cut me off at the C.O., I'd raise hellen with both Qwest and Covad who owns the DSL trunk. I'm not sure if anyone can provision the line for DSL without already having POTS active first, haven't looked into that. It would be a good thing to research -- of course every business segment of telco seems to handle things different from the others.

I guess what surprised me was that qwest let you call them up and disconnect the POTS with out telling you you would also lose the DSL. But if your ISP is through covad then they must lease the copper to the CO directly from qwest, and hence couldnt touch it. So as of now you dont pay qwest anything? Go you! How about interleave...does qwest still refuse to turn that off at the CO?

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

I guess what surprised me was that qwest let you call them up and disconnect the POTS with out telling you you would also lose the DSL. But if your ISP is through covad then they must lease the copper to the CO directly from qwest, and hence couldnt touch it. So as of now you dont pay qwest anything? Go you! How about interleave...does qwest still refuse to turn that off at the CO?

According to Speakeasy Voice folks, it wasn't even an issue. They asked if I wanted to roll over and disconnect my land service the day of ordering VoIP. I went the safe route and kept both separate services running for a couple months before shutting down Qwest. In my hands, as we speak, is a check from Qwest for ~$14 for the over-payment of my last half-month of service with them.

Indeed, I am now Qwest-free baby!!! I've been looking forward to this for many years. Those punks have been taking advantage of me and everyone else for way too long, and they don't back it up with superb service, customer service, features, or anything else that can justify staying with them.

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

Also, I picked up one of these Hawking HBB1 buffer blocks to help when my wife's on the VoIP, and I'm either downloading something or playing an online game and it seems to work just dandy.

http://www.hardware-review.net/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=143

 

[MikeofTulsa Moderator]

rather than go through all that you could simply purchase the new Directv Plus dvr.....it runs off the directv software rather than the tivo software and doesnt requrie a phone line other than for ppv purchases from the remote.......

 

[HiAmplidude 10+ year member]

I'm not familiar with the DirecTV Plus unit but my $1000 HD TiVo in one room and Hughes DTV TiVo in the other, plus DTV HD receiver currently on the PC, will have to do for now. Is the DTV+ DVR out now and is there an HD version of it?

 

[phoneman 10+ year member]

ADSL, there are 2 pair coming into the house. I disconnected the "a" pair (the main phone line pair) at the box, and left the other pair in-tact. The "b" pair carry my DSL service to the trunk. I didn't ask them if it was ok, I just did it. They are not providing local service to me at this stage, so if they cut me off at the C.O., I'd raise hellen with both Qwest and Covad who owns the DSL trunk. I'm not sure if anyone can provision the line for DSL without already having POTS active first, haven't looked into that. It would be a good thing to research -- of course every business segment of telco seems to handle things different from the others.

no no, ADSL is 1 pair only. It is a digital signal that is over your reg pots line. if you have 2 pairs then you have 2 pots lines with one of them having DSL.

Most companies wont do a regular DSL line without Pots service already.