Come last Friday morning, the tension was so high here that you could cut it with a knife (to mix a few metaphors). All through the house, there was a feeling that something great was about to happen. I had been on pins and needles since the night before. I had gone out to my truck to get any tools that might be needed (phone cords, spare non-powered phone, phone splitters, etc.) and was waiting in anticipation for that white truck to pull up. My wife equally shared the excitement. Well, actually, perhaps not. She looked at me as she often has over the years, when I go into techie-overdrive mode - a mixture of resignation and a "what-is-it now?" look.
The cause? My digital phone service from Time Warner Cable was finally going to arrive.
And so it did. I had planned to write this week's column about it, but I have to confess that after all that anxiety, the final effort was decidedly underwhelming! They came, they did, it worked, they left. The bottom line is that it works just like your "old" phone - which, of course, is exactly how Time Warner intended it to work.
(I could end my column now, but my editor at the paper might be a bit disappointed, so for her sake I will continue!)
Time Warner Digital Cable is phone service that comes to your home via your cable TV cable, along (and simultaneously) with your television and Internet access. It uses your existing phone wiring and telephones, and you can transfer your old phone number if you wish. The advantages are: a single bill, untimed and unlimited calls to anywhere in the US or Canada, and lots of features packed in - all for a single fixed monthly fee.
The installation went very well, except for a few glitches. Two technicians showed up at the house. The first thing they did was to disconnect the internal home phone wiring from the old phone service. Usually, your phone service connects via a box on the side of your house, called a DPA or Demarcation Point Arrangement. Basically, all they had to do was to unplug a standard phone connector from the DPA, thereby disconnecting my house wiring from that service.
The next step was to install a new Road Runner modem. The new modem looked and worked very similarly to my old one, except that it had an additional phone jack on the back, which was cabled to my existing house phone wiring. However, the new modem worked fine for Road Runner, but the techs could not get a dial tone from it. Swapping in another modem cured that problem. They then make a call to the appropriate people to initiate transfer of my old phone number, which occurred in minutes. I was anticipating an issue here, but there was none.
Finally, they checked out the connection to the rest of the house, and found that one of their cables was bad. Again, a quick fix and we were on the air.
The call and voice quality seem excellent. Making and receiving calls was just like normal, and it was nice to have some of the new features that are bundled into the package, such as Caller ID, Call Waiting ID, Call Forwarding, etc.
The primary disadvantage of the service (and they are very up-front about telling you this) is that it is not emergency powered as the traditional phone system is. If the power goes out, so does your phone.
See their website (one is www.twceastnc.com) for details. But the summary is that for a fixed monthly fee, you get unlimited and untimed local and long distance calls (within the US and Canada), lots of features thrown in, and you still use the telephones you have.
At one point in time, I contemplated getting rid of my wall phone entirely and just using my cell phones. A number of my friends and relatives have done this successfully. It's not the cheapest deal, but in many ways easier and more direct. Now a reason has come along to make me keep the old phone after all and I may be able to drop some of the cell minutes I pay for. I think I am going to like this!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)