Question Wireless access point with POTS?

[Tom Nicols]

I am looking to purchase a Wireless Access Point ideally 4G & 5G, these are common enough so surely not a problem. where I do run into difficulty is that I would like to take advantage of the existence of the SIM card such that I also have the SIM cards POTS connection, (might not be the right terminology I know) Essentially what I want is that my rather remote workshop will then be Internet serviced but that I will also have an innate cell telephone number that I can call out on/be called in on. An Internet based telephone would not meet my needs, I want the actual SIM cards voice telephone connectivity.
My experience has been that very occasionally a wireless access point does not provide an Internet connection; actually a very rare and infrequent issue but that the cell phone voice connectivity invariably still works.

Would anyone with knowledge in this sector please advise me, I am prepared to bet that many others would like to take advantage of the voice connectivity.

 

[Eximo]

Those would be provisioned differently. I'm not sure such a product exists. How would the access point have a handset for you to use?

VOIP with a 'real' phone number would be the common solution. Either through the ISP or a separate service.

You could just get a cell phone with unlimited tethering and use it that way, but that seems silly.

 

[punkncat]

FYI the term "POTS" is generally used as a tech word meaning Plain Old Telephone Service and is a moniker for copper phone lines which practically do not exist any longer, at least on the provider side.

 

[bill001g]

So you are using the wrong terms here. Generally a AP is a very stupid device that basically is a small ethernet switch that has wifi radios. It really has no other function like 4g/5g or even simple routing,

So they do make cell routers that can run on 4g/5g and have POTS lines. These though are some kind of VoIP which I assume is what you are calling a internet phone.

What it appears you are asking for is some device that lets you in effect plug a old style telephone into a cell phone. I have never seen a device like that but it might exist if there was some kind of APP running on the cell phone.

Now in theory at least you could get a router that could also do this but I have never seen a router that could do any kind of voice or text type of function. Pretty much these device are data only. I am not saying they do not exist but I have never seen anything like that.

Be aware most mobile broadband provider are jerks. They offer really cheap and so called unlimited plans but as soon as you hook a pc to the phone in anyway or move the sim to a router they all the sudden change the rules and charge more money. Lately they even restrict how much video you can stream in the "unlimited" plans. I guess too many people watching netflix at 4k. Just read all the fine print. They can easily detect when you move the sim card even between phones. They will know you put it in a router.

 

[bill001g]

Maybe instead find a router that is compatible with your phone tethering option via USB. I know asus router have a large list of phones they support tether with but it might be much more common that when I looked at this in detail years ago.

Running off a USB cable your phone would still function as normal phone and allow you to use the data plan on the phone.

Again be careful to check and see if there are any restrictions on your plan for "tethered" connections.

 

[Tom Nicols]

Those would be provisioned differently. I'm not sure such a product exists. How would the access point have a handset for you to use?

VOIP with a 'real' phone number would be the common solution. Either through the ISP or a separate service.

You could just get a cell phone with unlimited tethering and use it that way, but that seems silly.

Thank you for your response, A VOIP phone would not work well on a poor Internet link and I know that the Internet does occasionally become flaky in the location of my workshop plus I am paying for many hours of regular cell phone coverage with my SIM card subscription so I'd really like to access it. I had considered using a regular cell phone as an access point but I've tested the sim in a phone and in a borrowed access point in this location and where the phone has a poor/ intermittent signal the access point is all bars up, I believe the regular access point has a much better antennae provision than any phone that plus a cell-phone is really not designed to run 24/7 with as a data link.
I have googled for an access point but cannot see anything out there, I had hoped that some esoteric product might exist, hence my post here.

 

[Tom Nicols]

FYI the term "POTS" is generally used as a tech word meaning Plain Old Telephone Service and is a moniker for copper phone lines which practically do not exist any longer, at least on the provider side.

Thank you for that response, yes I am aware that POTS really means a regular telephone line, I was just trying to differentiate between a VOIP phone and the audio facility that I am paying for with my monthly SIM card subscription. I just cannot define the correct term for a cell phones innate audio connection.

 

[Eximo]

Current cellular technologies are all digital and is effectively VoIP anyway. 4G/5G use multiple bands, and what you are likely experiencing is that the voice data carrier signal is getting through more easily than internet traffic.

If you are having difficultly, solve that problem first and then a VoIP phone solution is fine.

Cellular repeaters are relatively inexpensive and will get you the gain likely needed to get rid of your flaky connection. If it is a traffic problem, not much you can do about that.

 

[bill001g]

Current cellular technologies are all digital and is effectively VoIP anyway.

Although it has been digital from the beginning they somewhat recently went to only using voice over LTE. Although the call setup is very different it is almost the same thing as VoIP.

I am not real sure if there is any place you can even use the old CDMA or GSM.

I guess I assumed the issue was he wanted to use his current phone number or something. The VoIP vendor would give different ones.

I agree technically there should not be a lot of difference. If there is a poor cell service coverage you are going to get poor voice call quality no matter what. This is kinda why the old GSM was better. They used a lot more radio bandwidth to carry the same amount of information so they had more range and tolerated low signal levels better. The number of calls the carrier can support in the bandwidth they own is much much less so they would rather use voice over LTE. It took a very long time to get that to work, I worked for a company that help design this and the first test implementation completely failed and it took them a number of years to resolve all the problems.

 

[Eximo]

Although it has been digital from the beginning they somewhat recently went to only using voice over LTE. Although the call setup is very different it is almost the same thing as VoIP.

I am not real sure if there is any place you can even use the old CDMA or GSM.

I guess I assumed the issue was he wanted to use his current phone number or something. The VoIP vendor would give different ones.

I agree technically there should not be a lot of difference. If there is a poor cell service coverage you are going to get poor voice call quality no matter what. This is kinda why the old GSM was better. They used a lot more radio bandwidth to carry the same amount of information so they had more range and tolerated low signal levels better. The number of calls the carrier can support in the bandwidth they own is much much less so they would rather use voice over LTE. It took a very long time to get that to work, I worked for a company that help design this and the first test implementation completely failed and it took them a number of years to resolve all the problems.

First cellular network and what came to be know as 1G were analog systems, basically just multiband radio calls. 2G and up became digital.

3G network had been relegated to low speed data (remote car unlocks and the like) and voice data only during the 4G era. Bricked a lot of cool stuff when they shut that down.

4G LTE is still carrying internet and voice. Remains to be seen for how much longer.

GSM is still in use. CDMA did go away with the shut down of 3G.