Sky With UPC Phone?

Teclo

I currently have the full UPC package - tv, internet, phone. I want to move from their always breaking up tv service to Sky. As Sky needs a phone line (for reasons unknown to moi) I am wondering will the UPC phone be a problem?

John mac

a phone line is NOT required for sky!!

unless you want multiroom.

Kells...

Sky does not need a phone line.Don't let them convince you that it is needed.

ZOLTAN28

I have heard it is incompatible with UPC but I don't know how true that is - does anyone know whether it works with UPC phone line regardlss of whether Sky need a phone line or not?

Kensington

It does work with UPC.

Damien360

Kensington wrote: »

It does work with UPC.

How did you get it working. I contacted sky and they said it will not work with VOIP phones which is what you get with UPC.

To OP. You need a phone for first contact by the box dialling out when your box is connected. But, to get around this, the installer can ring sky and get them to activate the account when he is there. Lazy installers will insist on phone line but you can so this yourself if he could'nt be bothered.

After this, you do not need a phone at all unless you get multiroom. It is discounted when you have a phone connected as they can confirm the presence of 2 boxes at the one address. Otherwise they will charge full price for the second subsription also. This was the case when I enquired 3 years ago about multiroom and I doubt much has changed since. It is there to stop people using the second box at another location such as their holiday home (remember those in the heady boom days ) while paying for one subsrciption.

ZOLTAN28

This is what I was told - I have multiroom and wanted to switch from Eircom to UPC for phone/broadband - it was UPC that told me that Sky would not work through their phone system - I suspected at the time they were just trying to sell me the whole package.

Cantona's Collars

There's a thread already discussing this topic-UPC phone will work with Sky for multiroom.It just needs to be adjusted at the router.

TangoVictor 31

I asked this very question on here a couple of weeks back most replies i got said it would work through UPC phone but UPC e-mailed me to say it wouldn't work. So i ain't chancing it in case i'm stuck in a contract with UPC for a year with SKY not ringing back through it and SKY charging me full whack for multiroom.

Damien360

I found the thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055330370&page=2

I tried that setup tonight using my cisco router and it refused to dial out. I tried with and without a DSL filter, with and without the phone line connected, with and without router reboots between changes. It will not work.

Sky will not work for me using a standard UPC Cisco router. The last page looks like my router and they do not have their phone line connected, just the sky box. Cannot see how they got this working.

Kensington

Try connecting only one sky box straight into the cisco's telephone port #1 - it MUST be port 1 by the way, port 2 is not activated so will not work!
Don't use splitters, filters, extensions - plain RJ11 phone cord from sky box to cisco.

Do a callback.

Teclo

I've had Sky installed. The callback didn't work but the engineer said that everything would be set up within 24 hours. I rang UPC and they told me that the Sky box should be connected to the first port tel1 with a splitter. Apparently tel2 will not work. Everything worked fine with the splitter.

Brian017

Teclo wrote: »

I've had Sky installed. The callback didn't work but the engineer said that everything would be set up within 24 hours. I rang UPC and they told me that the Sky box should be connected to the first port tel1 with a splitter. Apparently tel2 will not work. Everything worked fine with the splitter.

Where online can I get my hands on a Irish phone line splitter?

steveon

Maplin or most electrical stores sell RJ11 Irish telephone splitters but dont bother trying it with UPC if you are in the Limerick area as it does not work.

Solair

It's nothing to do with the wiring / splitters or anything else physical.

The problem is that the Sky Digibox has a standard high-speed voice-band modem, the same as we used to use to dial-up to access the internet over a telephone line.

UPC uses VoIP to deliver telephone service. This sounds perfect for voice and will work very well as a phone line. However, it's a very different way of encoding audio to a traditional digital telephone line which uses TDM (time division multiplexing) and a codec (method of encoding audio into a digital form) called A-Law.

The result is that the modem's signals get somewhat garbled by the VoIP line and it will not be able to communicate correctly.

Slow modems, e.g. those on a monitored alarm or even a fax machine are more likely to be able to function on VoIP as they use a much narrower range of tones. They were designed to work over old-fashioned electromechanical telephone networks in the 1960s/70s and they can cope with just about anything as long as they can be heard at the other end of the line.

However, high speed modems will simply not work properly on VoIP or over a mobile phone line as the way the audio is processed is quite different to a traditional digital telephone line i.e. the type eircom use.

bk

Solair you are correct, however the Sky modem does work with UPC's phone service.

Solair

bk wrote: »

Solair you are correct, however the Sky modem does work with UPC's phone service.

I'd say it could actually depend on the age of the Sky box. I've heard the newer ones are fine, but the older ones get confused. Perhaps Sky have specified a modem that can drop back to slower speeds to cope with VoIP it's becoming a lot more common in both their UK and Irish markets.

KoolKid

UPC tell everyone their phone lines aren't compatible, they say SKY wont work & monitored alarms etc won't work.
They do!!;)
If you already have phone points around the house from Eircom or Vodafone just disconnect the external pair of the line coming in. Get an RJ11 to RJ11 lead . Connect this from the line out of your modem & into an existing phone socket.
This will enable all other phone sockets you had previously.

Crackity Jones

KoolKid wrote: »

disconnect the external pair of the line coming in. Get an RJ11 to RJ11 lead . Connect this from the line out of your modem & into an existing phone socket.

How do I know the 'external pair'? or will that be obvious if I open socket. We have line split to enable alarm monitoring. Calls out work fine but can't get calls in. It rings once then goes dead.

KoolKid

Goto your external box. There will be only one pair connected.

Crackity Jones

KoolKid wrote: »

Goto your external box. There will be only one pair connected.

had a look. seems to be more than one pair but not sure what I'm looking at! will do some googling. thanks!

KoolKid

If its the external phone line in the outside box it will be a black cable with the cores joined onto a whit phone cable going into the house. It would usually be joined on the Blue/White Blue pair.

staker

Usually the blue pair onto the incoming orange/white cores.

Who owns the gear in that external box? Eircom or the houseowner?

Crackity Jones

KoolKid wrote: »

If its the external phone line in the outside box it will be a black cable with the cores joined onto a whit phone cable going into the house. It would usually be joined on the Blue/White Blue pair.

Oh yea that's it exactly so you are saying disconnect that blue white pair?

KoolKid

Disconnect that pair .All phone points in the house are paralleled. So when you patch UPC line into a socket it will feed them all.

homelink

Crackity Jones wrote: »

How do I know the 'external pair'? or will that be obvious if I open socket. We have line split to enable alarm monitoring. Calls out work fine but can't get calls in. It rings once then goes dead.

If your alarm is monitored on the eircom line, you will need to get your alarm co. out to re- wire the circuit as the alarm needs to have priority on the line. The idea is that if your alarm tries to dial out it should cut off all other sockets while it is dialling and then restore them when it's done.

Solair

Normally the alarm is wired like this :

<line> ======= <alarm>=======<phone sockets>

You'll need to get an alarm installer to modify this as there are temper-proof boxes and connectors that will cause the alarm to go off if you open them on most installations.

Also, the feed from the UPC box would have to pass through the alarm correctly, you can't feed it through from a socket.

I don't think it should be a huge problem as eircom phonewatch allowed people to use the Eircom Plug & Play ISDN terminals with their alarms. These were basically an ISDN terminal combined with an analogue terminal adaptor, which is basically the ISDN equivalent of a VoIP terminal adapter box i.e. it needed local power to work.

If you want to guarantee that everything stays up and running, you should really install the phone line in a secure place with a UPS like this : http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=8723 this will ensure that even if the power is switched off / during a power cut, that your equipment will still have access to power for several hours. The alarm panel itself should have its own UPS built-in.

Just make sure that it is well ventilated and not likely to overheat.


For normal phone lines (without alarms):


All your phone sockets are either wired in a star shape from one central point, or may be daisy-chained.

If you have just got normal phone sockets, and don't have an alarm, you can simply find and disconnect the incoming eircom line. This is usually, but not always, at the first phone socket.

In many installations, the phone line terminates on a small junction box about the size of a bar of soap. You will see a thicker eircom cable coming into one side and regular internal phone wiring coming out the other.

This box could be located in your hallway, or in your attic, sometimes it's located beside the fuse box, it really totally depends on the house and how it was wired. Usually, it's fairly obvious as you will be able to find the place where the phone line enters the house outside and trace it from there.

In other installations, the phone line will terminate directly onto an telephone socket. In this case, you'll need to disconnect it there.

The original beige sockets are simple enough to access, just remove the single screw on the front, identify the incoming line and disconnect it.

The newer white sockets have a face plate which must be removed, then you remove 2 screws behind that and you will be able to access the terminals where the line is terminated.

Once your eircom phoneline is completely disconnected, you can simply get any standard Irish phone cable and connect the UPC telephone port directly to any phone socket in your home. This will give you dial tone across all the phone sockets in the house.

This is very important:

Eircom do not usually disconnect the power to a phone line. It will remain connected to the exchange, even if you've ported to UPC and closed your account. In some cases the exchange will send a dial tone (but you won't be able to dial anything), in others it may just leave the power on.

This allows them to re-activate the line without any major fuss if you ever come back to eircom or another provider that uses their infrastructure. i.e. they can re-connect you with a few mouse clicks once they setup the account.

If you connect your UPC box to a live eircom line, you could damage it. So be 100% sure that the internal wiring is totally disconnected from the eircom line before attempting to connect the UPC output to it.

You can also safely

Crackity Jones

Comprehensive reply Solair thanks! I also found another thread from 2007 with similar good information from yourself. Not sure what way the alarm was wired but it's not phonewatch and was done after the phone installation. We've actually had the UPC router plugged into a phone socket for the last year and alarm dials out as does the UPC phone. Bit wary about disconnecting the eircom supply as per earlier advice now as don't want to set off the alarm. Will probably just leave as is. Noone that matters really rings on the landline anyway!

KoolKid

Great post Solair. I wasn't getting onto the monitored alarm too much as the OP was about connection to Sky. A good point re a PSU,however also note if electricity is down in the area there is a good chance UPC will also be down.

jakenny

Teclo wrote: »

I currently have the full UPC package - tv, internet, phone. I want to move from their always breaking up tv service to Sky. As Sky needs a phone line (for reasons unknown to moi) I am wondering will the UPC phone be a problem?

That phone line thing is a load of bull.I got sky in 2007 without it.