Re: Does a cell phone forwarding to a land line product exist?

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

> And even if such a device were available I'd have real doubts about how
well
> it'd work.  The encoding/decoding of the voice signal would be choppy, at
> best.  Cell calls by themselves are often bad enough, introducing another
> encode/decode layer to the process would very likely make it considerably
> worse.  The echoing alone would probably be terrible.

That's true.  It's all a matter of tradeoffs.  Is it worth it to the OP to
tolerate potential bad quality in exchange for a wide, free calling area?
Only he can make that decision.

I like the box that Bruce R. pointed us to, but at $225, that's a lot of
prime time minutes.  Still, if the OP talks a lot, the tradeoff might be
worth it.

If the cellphone has a good "hands free" interface it might be possible to
hack that into a landline phone.  A long time ago RatShack sold a phone
forwarder for 2 lines.  Dial into one and it dialed out another number on
the other line and then conferenced them when the other line picked up.
Tonal quality and volume were awful, though.

The problem's made easier because the "slave" cell phone only has to answer
and make the landline phone go off hook.  That could be done a number of
ways.  Program a speed dial key to call the slave phone and then when the
landline goes on hook, dial the number you want to call from the cheaper
landline.  Hopefully the cell phone will ignore any further touch tones
because it's already connected but the landline's at the dial tone and will
complete the call.

I haven't quite figured out how to end the call and convince the landline to
go back on hook.  :-)   Probably some sort of monitor that could disconnect
upon lack of voice on the line or after hearing some special "end tone" from
the master cell phone.

--
Bobby G.