Just got my OBI110, and I loved how easy and painless it was the set it up for Google Voice.
There is something else I thought I would be able to achieve with it. Part of the reason why I kept my land line is in case there's a power/network outage, I'd still like to be able to fallback on it. Yet whenever I unplug the Obi, the line goes dead. And if I unplug the Ethernet cable to simulate a dead network, I still get a dial tone, but when I dial a number it just tells me there was no service.
Is there a way to accomplish fallback service when there's no power/network? I tried searching, but I'm still trying to learn all the terminology.
Older 110's worked that way. They removed the capability in newer ones.
To work around this, you could use a splitter adapter plugged into your Line port and do either or both of these things:
- Plug an extra line-only phone into one socket of the adapter.
- During power failure, plug the regular phone into the other socket of the adapter temporarily.
(http://brain.pan.e-merchant.com/9/2/15133829/g_15133829.jpg)
I plugged the router, the OBI110's and the base of my cordless phone to a 1500VA UPS so I could use the GV phone through the OBi's for the whole day during power outage.
Thank you all for your replies. I think removing this functionality was very short sighted, but perhaps there was a technical reason for it.
I still have one phone downstairs hooked up straight to the phone jack, but the backup power seems like a good idea. I just have to test if 911 calls fallback to the phone line when there's no network available.