I will only rely on the customer to install the ATA if they are going to
plug a cordless base into it, no house wiring. Otherwise, they will forget
to disconnect the POTS line at the NID.
Most people have a cordless phone system, but they may also have an old
princess phone somewhere in the house, first try to convince them to ditch
the corded phones and not use the house wiring. Failing that, have your
installer tell them the router and ATA have to go near a phone jack.
If they insist on putting the ATA in a room with no phone jack and still
using the house wiring to reach corded phones, the professional way is
probably to install a surface mount jack and wire it like a phone guy would,
and charge them labor & materials.
If they have an old 900/2.4/5.8 cordless phone, you probably want them to
replace it with a new DECT system anyway, you can get systems with a whole
bunch of cordless handsets for not much money.
Perhaps people can be convinced by comparing to WiFi. It used to be people
would run Ethernet to every room to plug in their computers, no one does
this anymore, they want all their devices to be portable and use WiFi. Same
with phones, if you pick up the phone, you want to be able to move to
another room or even outside and take the phone with you.
If they really cannot go cordless or have the Internet installed to a room
with a phone jack, then charge them for installing a phone jack. It does
mean a few more parts an installer needs to carry. If you don't want to
carry RJ11 keystone jacks and surface mount boxes, there are cheap boxes
with screw terminals or I like the ones with 110 punchdown terminals. And
you definitely need red and yellow Scotchloks, those are what kill me, no
matter how many I buy, I can't find where I put them, so I end up buying
more. I must have thousands of Scothloks squirreled away by now, I think
they go to the land of missing socks.
-----Original Message-----
From: Nate Burke via Af
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2014 11:28 AM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: [AFMUG] Physically Hooking up Voip Lines
I'm interested in how people are doing physical Residential VoIP
Installs. Do you just provide the ATA and let the customer figure it
out, or do you physically hook it into the house wiring for them? We're
doing more and more, and it seems like it takes almost as much time to
do the Wireless install as it does to install the ATA. By the time you
track down the house wires, disconnect them from the PSTN, run a wire
from the ATA to where you can tie into the house wiring (not always
close by), and then wire the ATA in. The one's we're converting all
seem to have several corded phones they still want to use.
Also, how do you cover the crossover time between installation and
Number port. Business customer are one thing, I have them setup the
call forwarding feature at the ILEC, and forward calls to a temporary
DID until the port happens. But trying to get an older person to call
the ILEC and understand what they need to ask for (and not get sucked
into a new contract) is much more difficult.
I'm not sure how Vonage does it, do they walk people through tracing
down cables over the phone? Or once the number port happens, they
presume the ILEC port is dead, so then they just have the customer plug
it in to any wall jack?
Nate
