Is there an easy way to use a regular landline phone handset to make calls over public wifi witho...

[G+_Craig Phillips]

Is there an easy way to use a regular landline phone handset to make calls over public wifi without having to use a computer?

 

Here's my situation: We recently moved my parents into an assisted living facility. The facility has wifi throughout the building but no Ethernet jacks in the rooms. We would like to get my mother phone service in her room and would rather not pay to have a regular landline installed and hard wired to their room. It's possible that my parents may have to change rooms and I'd rather not have to pay to reinstall a landline. My mother has zero technical ability so it has to be easy and reliable.

 

I checked into MagicJack and Vonage, but it looks like they both require either a computer or an Ethernet connection. I thought about adding a wireless bridge, but I'm hoping to avoid adding that piece into the equation. Any suggestions?

 

As an added bonus, I'd actually prefer that the service NOT have 911 available. They have call buttons in the room that they need to use for an emergency.

[G+_DigitalMatrixIO (Eric L]

Obihai. It is a device that can have a wifi dongle attached and has a standard phone jack on it for a phone and you enter Google credentials for use with a Google Voice number.

[G+_Black Merc]

I my local walmart i have seen a device(s) that uses your mothers existing handset/cordless-phone and connects her call through a cellphone service(straighttalk is one). If you are wanting to skip the box of magic, thay do make a handset for cellphones that plug into the headphone jack. Any smartphone without cell service can use wifi to call and receive from google voice(may require constant charging to offset wifi power drain).

[G+_Jason Perry]

Eric Leone?'s suggestion is what I would go to. I personally have never used that particular product, let alone with a wifi dingle. The other option would be to buy a wireless bridge and either use one of the OBi products or a Cisco SPA device.

 

In the Web interface you can set dialing rules, on top of that, depending on the server you use you can set phone numbers as extensions, dial 1000 for Craig dial 1001 for (fill in next person here)

[G+_Srin]

If you are looking for a VOIP Service I can recommend Ooma, I have tried Vonage and Ooma works great 90% of the time. There are a few times when the service goes down but it comes back in 12 hours and they allow you to transfer calls to your cellphones so if the system goes down it can transfer calls to your cellphone.

[G+_Golden Retriever]

fi.google.com - Project Fi cell phone and simply transfer or forward the old number to it. Fi phones attempt to connect to WiFi first, failing that they hit the cellular network.

[G+_james robinson (radiati]

MagicJack is super easy.

[G+_Black Merc]

james robinson sorry ,but smoke crack much? I had the usb dongle.... Call out sure, call in no way. (Nat x2) required windows autologin and magicjack.exe running (no alt. OS support). Very little tech support/help to speak of.

[G+_james robinson (radiati]

I used one this way a few years ago. Not on wifi. Had it in the garage connected to a phone line( cat5 actually) to a phone in the kitchen about 25 feet away. Worked fine. People would not realize it was not POTS line.