GRANDSTREAM HandyTone HT814 4X FXS with Gigabit NAT Router

Plays nicley with a rotatome equipped antique phone but couldn't get the pulse dial to work

At some level it works... a) can answer a call b) can hear dialtone if attempting to make a call but the following doesn't work for me c) can't hear other person d) other person can't hear me e) can't make calls but SIP apps on smartphone and PC work... time to ditch old handsets anyway I guess

Value for money

Works great

Parfait

Um Mißverständnissen vorzubeugen: Nein, die Grandstream hat keinen S0 Anschluß. Bei mir hängen an der ISDN Eumex aber ohnehin nur Analogtelefone und Fax dran. Davon allerdings 4 Stück bei nur einem TAE Anschluß der Fritzbox 7590 AX. Die Grandstream ist etwas fummelig zu Programmieren, man fühlt sich hier in die 2000 er Jahre zurückversetzt, funktioniert aber über den Browser zuverlässig und es gibt Anleitungen im Internet für die Einstellungen - das sind aber gefühlt 100 Parameter oder mehr. Am langen Ende zählt das Ergebnis und die alten Telefone funktionieren weiter.

My traditional copper home phone line went down last month. So I put in a repair request with Verizon to have it fixed. A few days later, Verizon's response was: "we are no longer repairing our copper lines in your area, you'll need to move to FIOS". Well, I have been planning for this eventuality on and off for about two years now. My plan was that at the point Verizon would no longer repair the copper, I was then going to migrate my phone number to a VOIP service and save the premium Verizon was charging for the traditional copper line. My reasoning being that if I had to move to a service that only remained active for the length of time that the backup battery can power it, I might as well do that myself and save a lot of monthly expense in the process. And so began the search for an ATA to which to bring my in house copper wiring back online, but without the $50/month expense Verizon was charging. I looked at several ATA's (the Cisco and Linksys models as well as this one) and there were two reasons that I went with this model. Reason one, it had four FXS ports (I had four traditional phones connected to the Verizon line) while all of the Cisco/Linksys units were two port units. Reason number two, and the reason that became the final reason why I chose this Grandstream model, was discovering within the documentation for the device a setting to enable pulse dialing support in the ATA. One of the four phones I had connected to Verizon is an old western electric rotary dial pulse phone (the old tanks that simply never die) and so this Grandstream ATA's support for pulse dialing meant I did not also have to spend an additional $50 on a pulse to tone adapter for the old tank. As well, I can confirm that the device does indeed support pulse dial phones, because the old Western Electric pulse dial phone is working with the unit just fine. Everything I found related to the Cisco/Linksys ATA's indicated that they do not, and never have, supported pulse dial, so this fact tipped the scale in favor of the Grandstream unit. The ATA has now been connected to my in house wiring for about a week and a half, and it has performed perfectly up to my expectations. It has always worked when I have made a call, and it has always remained registered with the voip service (Voip.ms in case anyone wants to know) that I had already picked out to use as part of my pre-planning for Verizon's eventual refusal to repair their old copper wiring. Voice sound quality (I'm using the PCMU codec) sounds identical to how voice quality sounded when the phones were connected to Verizon's switch, and I have had zero issues with stutter and/or echo while using the unit to make calls. There is also one extra feature I now have that I did not anticipate. Because the FXS ports on the Grandstream are independent of each other, instead of my internal wiring being "party-line" style (all phones connect to the same phone "signal") I now have four independent "extensions" that can each be making calls at the same time. I can also make calls from one "extension" to another within my home to communicate between rooms via the phones, something I could not do before (this is a feature of Voip.ms's system where one can setup internal "extension" numbers for each phone adapter port to use to make/take calls between them). As for another review of this unit pointing out that the configuration is confusing, I can understand their viewpoint. If one purchases this device with zero background knowledge of VOIP terminology, the configuration of the device may appear a little daunting and confusing. However, this is not so much the fault of the device as it is simply lack of necessary knowledge by the purchaser who is attempting to setup the device. As I had been planning for this move for some time, I had already become familiar with much of the VOIP and SIP terminology and so I found the configuration and setup of the device to be quite straightforward overall. I suspect, however, that any ATA will fall into this issue, there will be some level of assumed knowledge required to understand how to configure and set it up, and the ease with which one finds the setup to be will be determined by how much of that necessary background knowledge one has. All in all, I am very pleased, and this unit is going to well pay for itself in only a few short months, as I have transitioned from paying Verizon $50/month to paying (estimated, as I've not used a full month yet) about $3-$5/month to Voip.ms for VOIP service.