Thursday

Oneforall Wireless Telephone Extender

Spending sixty pounds for a telephone extension takes a bit of thinking about but after a couple of years dithering it was time to realise that life is too short for that kind of silly. People need phone sockets for their Sky box near the TV. My need was to get the telephone answering machine where it was needed. The fact that it's a DECT wireless system you can use anywhere made the need to spend £60 just a touch bizarre.
The 'One for All' Telephone Extender puts a phone socket where it's needed by sending telephone juice through the mains cabling. You can then pick up the phone signal at another mains outlet. Numerous reports from those with Sky Boxes were very positive but for straight forward phoning the solution was very hit or miss. First impressions of its two white boxes with mains leads and plugs suggested it's a lot of wires for a wireless solution. Recent units however improve on this by making the boxes with an integral plug. In use you do need to choose your sockets carefully because for a couple of days we'd missed half our calls and getting a line was a touch hit or miss. By day three, when it was clear that caller ID was not working over the link, the unit was on its way back to the shop. The small print on the OFA support web suggests that all these issues are likely. The sales part of the site only warns that it'll not work on ADSL lines or via a surge protector. It not only needs some kind of gauge to tell you how good the signal is - it also needs a note on the box to say that as solutions go this really is half good.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I had no problems with my One For All SV1550 Wireless Telephone Extender and a Pace Sky box. It seems that the modem in some Sky boxes are sensitive to the amount of time the SV1550 takes to pick up the line.

I bought mine from xtendedplay and am extremley happy I don't have to run cables!!!

Ro G said...

Thx. I'm always glad when things work. I have heard numerous reports of people being happy with the way it connects their Sky box. My need to pick up phone calls reliably was a 'mission critical' one.