Hi all!
I am planning on buying an Obi110 for my in-laws. It will only be used to call the Obi110 in my house via ObiTalk, in order to escape expensive international calls. The rest of the time I'd like it to behave as if its not there at all, no extra dialing etc when using their pots. They are in Mexico if this makes any difference.
Firstly is this possible? Secondly would the default settings need to be changed?
I'd like to set it up, then mail it to them, so they just need to plug it in and start using.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Welcome to the forum!
By default the OBi110 uses POTS for its Primary Line. This means no extra codes are needed to dial out to POTS. They would dial **9 followed by your OBi number to call you via OBiTALK.
The not so good news is that the DigitMaps are set to match North American defaults. If a number is not matched, it will be sent out to POTS, but the OBi will wait ten seconds to see if the user has finished dialling. This is obviously very bad news for emergency calls.
If you can supply some info on what your in-laws normally dial, then we can help to craft DigitMaps to suit. Tell us about emergency numbers, are local numbers seven digits starting with x, national calls are ten/eleven digits starting with xx, any special codes etc?
They could easily call you via ObiTalk by setting up an auto dial code for you and visa verse that way they will not have to dial **9.
If you configure both Obi in the same account you will be able to easily maintain their unit.
A caveat to be aware of: Recent OBi110 units no longer contain the relay that bridges the POTS line connected to the OBi to the phone (or phones if household wiring is used) connected to the OBi during a power outtage to the OBi unit. During a power outtage the OBi110 will need to be manually bypassed (by swapping phone wires around) to access the POTS line from the phone connected to the Obi110. This may not be so much an issue if there is more than one phone in the household connected directly to the same POTS line. This is not meant to discourage the purchase of an OBi110, just information that a user might need to know in case of an emergency.
You can tell right away if the OBi110 you end up with has a relay or not. Don't apply power to the OBi110, connect the LINE port to your POTS and the PHONE port to your phone. If you get a dial tone from the POTS line on the phone connected to the OBi then the unit has the relay.
If all the phones in the house are already cordless with no UPS on the base unit then they probably already don't work in a power outtage and all this can be ignored. LOL