[chicha]

How does the remote call-in bridging capabilities on the 3000 work? Specifically, my understanding is that a line from the FXO/PSTN port needs to be connected to a telco outlet in the home. If you leave your house intending to use the ATA's bridging capabilities remotely, do you plug it into the telco outlet at that time? Bear with me. I don't quite understand how you could have it connected all the time AND at the same time still have use of telco dialing - if you have only one telco outlet in your house! Do people that use the 3000 pay to install 2 separate telco lines in their home? One for their conventional telco-connected phone and the other for their 3000's FXO/PSTN "bridging" port? I've tried to explain this the best I can. I hope someone can clarify this.

[ArgMeMatey]

The FXO port is a bidirectional port, meaning it can handle incoming and outgoing calls in the ways you program it, within its technical limits. You can program the SPA3000 to answer incoming calls via the FXO. At the same time, you can program it to send some outgoing calls to the FXO and some to VoIP. There is a lot of flexibility.

Regarding only having one "outlet," based on your subsequent comment, it sounds like you mean "line". You only need one line but if you want to take incoming calls from the FXO port and, without reprogramming, send some calls to VoIP, you need to choose an appropriate answering option.

If I am missing the point, maybe you could outline an example of what you want to do.

[chicha]

Originally Posted by ArgMeMatey

The FXO port is a bidirectional port, meaning it can handle incoming and outgoing calls in the ways you program it, within its technical limits. You can program the SPA3000 to answer incoming calls via the FXO. At the same time, you can program it to send some outgoing calls to the FXO and some to VoIP. There is a lot of flexibility.

Regarding only having one "outlet," based on your subsequent comment, it sounds like you mean "line". You only need one line but if you want to take incoming calls from the FXO port and, without reprogramming, send some calls to VoIP, you need to choose an appropriate answering option.

If I am missing the point, maybe you could outline an example of what you want to do.

Let's say I have two phones in the house. One is for receiving/dialing PSTN/telco calls ONLY. The other phone is connected to a Gateway ATA. And let's say I have only one telco outlet in the house. You can't use a splitter to connect the two phones to the one outlet(?)! If you receive a telco call, how will the line know which phone to ring, since both phones are connected to one outlet via a splitter? Or will they both ring?

[PhoneBoy]

They will both ring.

If one of the phones is plugged into the telco line directly and the other is plugged into the SPA3000, the phone attached to the SPA3000 will ring after 5 seconds. This is because it needs to read the Caller ID information before presenting it to your problem.

[ArgMeMatey]

You can also set PSTN Ring Thru Delay to zero to ring the FXS port immediately if you don't have caller ID on the POTS line. There is still a slight delay but in my experience it is less than two seconds.

Also regardless of whether you have Caller ID on the POTS line, you can set a PSTN CID Number Prefix and PSTN CID Name Prefix to tell you that the call is coming from the POTS line.