Extending Telephone Line

johnfás

Can anyone recommend a good method of extending our home telephone line out to a free standing home office which is roughly 20 metres from the house in the garden? Is it possible to buy heavy duty telephone cable for this sort of job or is it just better ringing Eircom - I wonder what they might charge.

eoghan.geraghty

Eircom won't do additional points, some external phone cable will cost about 1 euro per metre. Temple in Broomhill Ind Est, Tallaght stock it.
Good luck

Dummy

JohnFás - I did something similar but decided against running a cable. I use a dect phone to capture calls for the family phone in the house. Then I installed a wireless network in the house (reaches my home office in garden). With the wireless network in place, I then setup VOIP out there. Now I have a seperate number for the homeoffice with fax and an online answering service.

No wires and no fuss and for me, it works a treat. Check out the VOIP section in Boards. Great info and advice to be got up there.

Alun

For the phone side of things, a normal DECT phone would probably be OK over that distance. You can also get DECT repeaters, including outside mountable waterproof ones, and also special long distance (1km or more) DECT base stations. See http://www.cordless-phones.uk.com/cordless-phones/ for examples of both.

Stoner

the distance is fine for a cable, as eoghan.geraghty said an external polly polly cable is available and will do the job just fine, also if you are turning your shed into an office and running a cable in, you might consider an alarm cable out to there too if you don't already have one.

lucernarian

eoghan.geraghty wrote:

Eircom won't do additional points, some external phone cable will cost about 1 euro per metre. Temple in Broomhill Ind Est, Tallaght stock it.
Good luck

Eircom are meant to do internal wiring as part of their USO telecommunications licence - it just costs a lot. Over €100 is the minimum price, and the extension would most likely be on rent to you, for a couple of euro per month.

See this document: http://www.eircom.ie/About/Activities/sn1_pt1.pdf

In particular, look near the bottom of page 3.

johnfás

Thanks guys, this has been a fantastic help. We already have a DECT phone out there but it can be a bit dodgy in terms of pick up . Part of the reason to get a phoneline out there is to install an alarm system with an autodialler. I have seen in Maplin a thing that you plug into your phone socket and then you plug another outside and it basically gives you a phoneline up to 25 metres away - does anyone know of anything like this with a better range?

10-10-20

There is a fairly good chance that a dialler unit on an alarm will not operate over an electronic extender like the Maplin one. These are usually only for voice.

Stoner

I'm no expert on this johnfás, but i doubt that an alarm digi dialer would work over this type of connection.
I always considered that they dont work over a voice over IP phone line either but someone pointed out some kit that would do the job last week, but it was new kit and not a new alarm panel.
TBH if it was me I'd just install the cable and be done with it, with some of these things you get them they just about work and then you are stuck with them because you spent so much money on them in the first place, the cable will work, to be honest you could even clip a standard phone cable to a wall or something if it worked out well for you, it will last for years (for example will this maplins device still wortk in 5 years?)

But the OS polly polly cable is the right one to get.

the only thing to watch with this is that of it is hardwired someone could snip it and drop off your alarm notification line.
Also note that most digi dialers work best when they are are connected to your incoming cable before it services any phones etc.

lucernarian

If you don't want to run the phone cable...

There are GSM diallers out there, I know it can be used with eircom phonewatch, but at a higher cost. I'd say there's a few diallers out there.

Vodafone did data-only SIMs but I'm not sure what the story is, or pricing etc. Give them a call perhaps.