AT&T fiber with home phone service?

[Justinh]

My understanding is that when you have home phone service with AT&T fiber Internet, you ditch the outside copper connection and the house phone system uses wireless to communicate with the gateway. Does this wireless connection depend on the Wi-Fi system (that every other device in the house uses), or is it some dedicated wireless connection to the gateway?

If I get AT&T fiber, I want to put their gateway in bridged mode and use my router for Wi-Fi, but I don't want the phone system going thru the router.

 

[degrub]

Nope. i have ATT 1Gbit service and POTS ( it's the only thing alive during a hurricane after a day).

 

[Justinh]

You mean you had a choice to keep the POTS? An ATT tech and my neighbor who is getting it installed said that the POTS is no longer used when the fiber is connected - all VOIP.

 

[degrub]

If you already have POTS, then you can keep it until ATT refuses to service it (cable failures for example). You will pay for it. 75-90 $/mo. You also have to have a wired phone - such as an old rotary dial or princess push button phone. Portable phones will not last as they are battery powered.
Other options include medical needs that require an active line during power outages, DSL service, etc. If you don't have POTS, then ATT will refuse to connect to house.

IF you have a generator at the house and fiber, you may be able to stay on line as long as ATT does. But a normal PC UPS etc, will not last very long. ATT has generators at each of their boxes supporting fiber and DSL in our older neighborhood. They run on natural gas. Same at the switching station. Their network availability had to meet federal requirements of four or five 9's as i recall. Backup power was the only way to do that.

 

[sfx2000]

My understanding is that when you have home phone service with AT&T fiber Internet, you ditch the outside copper connection and the house phone system uses wireless to communicate with the gateway. Does this wireless connection depend on the Wi-Fi system (that every other device in the house uses), or is it some dedicated wireless connection to the gateway?

If I get AT&T fiber, I want to put their gateway in bridged mode and use my router for Wi-Fi, but I don't want the phone system going thru the router.

If you are getting dialtone/POTS services from ATT Fiber, you have to use their RG, simply put...

You will not be able to put the RG into any kind of bridged mode with a internet/dialtone combo, just cannot be done.

In lieu of bridging, ATT has DMZ+ so if you are truly bent on using a personal router, that's the path. I would suggest giving the RG services a try before replacing it with a personal router/AP setup, as the newer RG's are quite good...

BTW - the POTS service is actually based on IMS (the core of VoLTE/VoWiFi calling)

 

[Justinh]

Okay, but what about the wireless connection from the phone system to the RG - is it just the household Wi-Fi or something special?

 

[sfx2000]

Okay, but what about the wireless connection from the phone system to the RG - is it just the household Wi-Fi or something special?

The RG should have an RJ11 port on it for POTS that you plug your landline phone...

Remember, with ATT fiber - you get the service box (ONT) and the gateway (RG) - the connection between the two is ethernet (aka the "home run" for installer jargon)

FWIW - there are color codes that ATT uses for cables and ports...

On the ONT - the green is the GPON port, the red is the home run port to the RG

On the RG - Red is the input from the ONT, and on the other side you have yellow for LAN ports, and grey for POTS/Dialtone - some RG's have a green port, which isn't used these days, and a USB port which isn't useful for anything.

Depending on the age of the RG, and which region you're in, there might be a coax port for TV/u-verse services...

The RG will have VLAN's depending on the services provisioned - one for broadband/internet and one for POTS, and possibly a third for TV...

This is why ATT did their DMZ+ feature - mostly intended to relieve the end-user of complicated VLAN configs (and to reduce customer care calls because of this) - back in the day, it was the better compromise...

 

[Justinh]

The RG and ONT are all in one unit now, so the tech said, with a fiber splice at the outside wall. I think I'd get a BGW320, which has a "Phone" RJ11 jack on it. Maybe I can plug that into the 3-port wall plate like my DSL modem does now to supply phone service to the house.

 

[Justinh]

So, it sounds like what I said above will be the case - the RG will feed the house phone system just like my DSL modem. After talking to 1 installer, 1 neighbor, and 1 sales rep, I got ahold of tech support for that answer.

Now, the sales guy recommended not getting the 300Mbps tier because it is "shared". He couldn't really explain what that meant in detail but is sounded like the cable internet paradigm where performance can slow down during peak times in the 'hood. Maybe it was just an up-sell effort ...

 

[sfx2000]

The RG and ONT are all in one unit now, so the tech said, with a fiber splice at the outside wall. I think I'd get a BGW320, which has a "Phone" RJ11 jack on it. Maybe I can plug that into the 3-port wall plate like my DSL modem does now to supply phone service to the house.

Interesting - might be FTTN vs FTTP - all depends on the WAN arch deployed - performance is similar, and they all like DSL, a dedicated line...

 

[Justinh]

Follow-up: The RG has a dedicated phone system connection built into it. The tech plugged the house phone system into it (just like the old modem was) and it worked. No changes or special config needed.