Sonic.net

So we need to place a Sonic Fusion ONT in the basement.
But we have only a cat6 cable to get Internet up to an apartment.

Is there a way to use the Sonic fusion voice line remotely from the ont?

Does your building have wiring for POTS (plain old telephone service) in the walls?

Will the ONT be located anywhere near the place in the basement where all the phone wires converge?

If so, you should be able to run the pair of wires from the ONT to the building's wiring panel for the POTS, which can be connected to the pair of wires going to your apartment. That would allow you to plug your phones into the wall the way it was done many years ago.

"Sonic does not allow to access the phone with a regular ATA."

I suppose one option is to purchase a low cost ATA like Oooma, and pay the $6 or so a month in fees. Surely Sonic can't block that. Is there any other way to reach the Sonic VOIP/ATA/Fusion Voice line other than old school analog methods?

The problem with putting a DECT cordless phone in the basement is interference. The range of those in a noisy urban environment is poor.

The Phonex PX-441 Wireless Jack gets poor reviews: it would extend the analog phone via powerline communication, and likely work even worse.

The DUALjack RTX3241S appears to be discontinued and company out of business.

virtualmike wrote:Does your building have wiring for POTS (plain old telephone service) in the walls?

Maybe.

If your building is more than 10 years old, most likely, somewhere in the basement, there is a "panel." It could be in a closet or other area with limited access (but your building manager should be able to give you temporary access). Odds are the fiber will go into the basement in roughly the same area.

Here's an example of the panel.

One one side is the building's internal wiring. Usually, there are two ore more pairs going to each apartment, often to multiple jacks within each one. All of the phone lines entering the building (usually wrapped into single cable) terminate on the other side. Phone company techs then "cross-cut" the incoming phone lines to the building's inside wiring so that each apartment gets its POTS service.

There can be challenges, however. If a former tenant used phone service from a cable company, they may have had the line(s) disconnected at the panel so that the line would not feed back to the AT&T network.

There's also a good chance that the panel doesn't clearly note which pair(s) goes to your apartment. Phone techs can identify them by using a tool that injects a signal into the pair of wires (plugged into a jack in the apartment) and a separate tool, at the panel, that finds the pair with that signal. This sounds more complicated than it is. Not counting the time to go between the apartment and the panel, it takes less than five minutes to identify the pair of wires and do the cross-connect.

If you know someone who does this, they may be willing to handle for a steak dinner or such. If not, I'd recommend asking Sonic's installer if they have any friends in the business who moonlight. Failing that, do a search for "phone systems installation and support" (years ago, I would have recommended checking the Yellow Pages ), but now you can do a web search.

Again, it's trivial for someone with the tools--the hardest part likely is getting access to the panel if it's behind a locked door.

Nice reply, thank you

You're welcome.

Another thought occurred to me... if you need to hire someone to manage the cross-connection, see if others in your building want the same thing. Perhaps if one of you arranges for a single visit, you can all contribute and lower the cost per person.