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cordless phones. same question i had three years ago

Beezil

Member #Nay
NAXJA Member
Location
Indiana-Missouri
cordless phones....

need a bunch, like a dozen.

I asked a long while ago about this, and got some good feedback. I have to ask again because I am re-exploring.

My managers need phones to talk to each other while in the shop, have access to incoming phone calls, make out going phone calls, and access the paging system. A regular cordless phone fits the bill. Those nextel walkie-talkie thingys were too expensive, and didn't work.

we used 800mhz phones fopr a while, and later "upgraded" to 900....the 900's seem to work much better in an indoor "reflective" environment than the 2.4's...I dunno why. I have not tried the 5.8's yet.....

Our 900's are getting old and beat-up, and finding quality 900 cordless phones is difficult, seems like the only thing out there are 2.4's and 5.8's

I am wondering if there is something new out there that I can consider?

a couple years ago someone suggested something that was beyond a regular cordless phone, but NOT a nextel-like talkie thing......what was it?

I forgot.

thanks.
 
I don't have anything to offer on the cordless phone front. However several cell-phone providers are doing the walkie-talkie thing now. I believe Sprint and Verizon both have these services available. I don't know what the costs are like compared to Nextel, but it might be something to look into.

Ary
 
Safari Ary said:
I don't have anything to offer on the cordless phone front. However several cell-phone providers are doing the walkie-talkie thing now. I believe Sprint and Verizon both have these services available. I don't know what the costs are like compared to Nextel, but it might be something to look into.

Ary

walkie-talkie things don't work in a shop full of reflective metal objects and millions of pounds of steel.

I cannot access incoming calls on the land lines.

I cannot access the paging system

I cannot access office extensions

outgoing calls will be suject to minute usage.

thats why the answer cannot be anything "cellular"
 
10-4



















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Erickson

For home use we have a 4 phone wireless system by Uniden, phones are cell phone size , non folding, like the base motorola, nokia, audiovox cell phones. 2.5g, work well, about 400ft range outside from the house, all phones are fed from the base unit so the phones have to be 'registered' with the base, each phone is a speakerphone, can transfer calls from one handset to another, all the features most cell phones have in their software. Got it at BJ's wholesale or sams, $149 + $29 for the fourth handset/base charger. Uniden might have a bigger commercial system as I can see no reason for the four phone limit on ours other than to pretty much limit it to home users, translation being they probably have a larger capacity commercial system for more dollars thats just a bigger version of what we have, probably take a T1 feed w/up to 24 channels/phonelines but I have not looked in depth at this.
Erickson has simlar but far more expandable for handsets, I seem to remember seeing a 24 unit expandability but the base setup for base and two handsets was way more than I wanted to spend for the house at the time.
Motorola might have something too, they are pretty much into everything commo now a days..

Generally the higher the frequency the more prone it is to interference and reflection of signal...
 
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I have had great luck with Uniden 900MHz phones. Every 2.4 or 5.8 I have used would have better served as paper weights.

My local Sears usually has a decent selection of 900s as well as the paper weights. Might try there.
 
In an indoor / shop environment, 2.4 Ghz seems to be the golden frequency band.

A hub based system, with the hub centrally located, and up near the roof works best. If you have a metal roof, or steel joists, and they are not directly grounded, such as with a cider block, or "tilt-up" building, you may be hosed.

I do not know of any vendors other than Cisco, which is a VOIP based system, a custom "add-on", and may be more money and trouble than it's worth.

I had to construct my own system, which was alot of trouble...

Might check Motorola Biz Systems.

--ron
 
Okay, I didn't read all this crap, so I might be repeating somebody...

Digital phone system - do you have one? If so you're either going to have to get digital cordless phones (and possibly from the vendor of your phone system) or get some analog lines added onto the phone system. This is assuming you're going for more cordless phones than you currently have of course.

Aside from that... Nothing, I'll be nice and not call you any names.
 
Captain Ron said:
In an indoor / shop environment, 2.4 Ghz seems to be the golden frequency band.

A hub based system, with the hub centrally located, and up near the roof works best. If you have a metal roof, or steel joists, and they are not directly grounded, such as with a cider block, or "tilt-up" building, you may be hosed.

I do not know of any vendors other than Cisco, which is a VOIP based system, a custom "add-on", and may be more money and trouble than it's worth.

I had to construct my own system, which was alot of trouble...

Might check Motorola Biz Systems.

--ron


3Com makes the NBX system VoIP, linux based, box has 8 slots in it, one processor card, one 'feed' card for either a digital line like a T or analog lines then you can add other cards depending on feature set like multiple T's or special analog lines or analog phones. Has up to 120hours of voice mail. Plugs right into the network, gets it's own IP address, phones plug into the network and workstation and other devices plug into the phones for a pass thru.

Cisco is another option but not just cisco alone, depends on what you want to do, their aeronet stuff is nice but a just a tad pricey unless you want high quality stuff.

For JUST the phone side I proposed this system to a school in valley forge and it may be a go, my contact says it needs to be voted on by the board but otherwise it may keep me busy for a month. :D http://www.spectralink.com/products/netlink.html They work well and integrate into legacy PBX systems pretty well. I helped on a project in NJ at Rutgers and the New brunswick BoEucation where we used this setup.

At $35,000 you did not get taken too badly, I remember executone 108's and 228's that were going upwards of $50-$80 grand and that was uninstalled. Got that quote in writing for a 228 THEN told them I did not need them to install it, I did it myself but then I had gone to the 2 week school on them back in 96, they low balled on the hardware and planned on making it up on the install and programming :D
 
Beezil said:
whats a real phone system hinkley?

we have one, new as of five years.

project cost: $35,000


Something that usually costs 10s of thousands!

:D

hinkley

or just buy cheap crap each year, it is a lot cheaper!
 
In our fab shop we just went from our old 900 phone to a 5.8 cordless. I am not impressed to say the least. If I step outside and close the door, the range is probably 15 ft and then it starts loosing a signal. Our 900 could go at least 40ft. Let us know if you find something that works well in metal buildings and isn't stratosperic in price. My shop gets the hand me downs as it is.
 
I know that you had said you had tried nextels and they didn't work well, being serious tho, have you ever asked nextel if they would be interested in installing a mini tower on your building or property? The Building that I work in is mostly all concrete and steel, steel roof, full of tons of metal, we have a full fab shop and the garage is usually full of large metal pieces of construction equip among other items. Nextel came and put a tower on our roof, which is good for them and thier bussiness, and our nextels work everywhere in here, no cell phones work in here at all but the nextels always have a full pegged signal, and I believe that we are getting $ from nextel to allow them to have the tower on our property which helps eat some of the cost of having to buy these things and pay for the service.
 
Moto said:
I know that you had said you had tried nextels and they didn't work well, being serious tho, have you ever asked nextel if they would be interested in installing a mini tower on your building or property? The Building that I work in is mostly all concrete and steel, steel roof, full of tons of metal, we have a full fab shop and the garage is usually full of large metal pieces of construction equip among other items. Nextel came and put a tower on our roof, which is good for them and thier bussiness, and our nextels work everywhere in here, no cell phones work in here at all but the nextels always have a full pegged signal, and I believe that we are getting $ from nextel to allow them to have the tower on our property which helps eat some of the cost of having to buy these things and pay for the service.

BOY that will work and is a good deal if you can do it. ATT had a tower on the propery of Lucents building in liberty corner nj where I worked. Those cell phones worked everywhere in that building, even the elevators and annoyingly the bathroom stalls, two miles down the road however and it was verizon territory....
 
B, Just got a set of cordless phones for the house,
Two way "walkie talkie" from handset to handset, 2.4 gig, Exp. up tp 4 units, Blah Blah, Blah.
Uniden DCX640.
There was a model that could expand up to 10 or 12 handsets availible also.
 
Just waiting for the consulting fee check to clear before I jumped in........that's MR phone guy to you.......BTW, seen your front plate lately? Me neither.........

http://www.spectralink.com/products/netlink.html They work well and integrate into legacy PBX systems pretty well (good advice Rich) and can share a wireless data network as well. One options has push to talk, similar to Nextels..... BJ, check the Spectralink site and hit me with a PM if you want more feedback on the details of deploying this solution.
 
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