MJ and home arrest bracelet? :P data/modem type transfer..

[stillsearching]

This is an odd question you probably have not heard before... first no i'm not a criminal, and actually technically neither is the friend of mine who has to do this stupid thing but until we fight the appeals process for wrongful arrest and failure to follow proper police procedure, he has to have some kind of ankle bracelet which is connected to a machine that connects wirelessly to the phone line.

Now I know nothing about this phone line thing, but it's connected wirelessly to the bracelet. They call in randomly to talk to him through it apparently, but i'm assuming data transfer is occuring before/after/during at some point as well. Since i'm pretty aware MJ is primarily intended for voice (despite reading some accounts of faxes maybe working for some people) I have no idea how or if this will work. He already has a MJ for phone and no landline, it will cost a nontrivial amount to install and set up just for this one use. Finding out afterwards it wont work when were going to try it lacking other advice might be bad. (he is not currently under home arrest, it is just going to happen very soon as terms of a release within a week or two) Wasting the money if it's not needed and would have worked is also bad.


Now the "easy" safe answer is just get a normal phone line and don't risk it. But he's on SSI, the extra $60/month for basic phone there is most of his food bill. Theyre already going to take half his SSI money for the "priveledge" of home arrest, and the rest goes to the rent. I'm borrowing him food but I can't afford much charity either. So this is really kind of scraping bottom of the barrel money territory to risk and try it but it's sorta desperate.

It's possible "no nobody has done that" and we'll just have to try it then to see if it can work and worry about the phone if it doesn't. But if somebody by some chance actually were forced to try it and could say yes it worked, or no it didn't, that would help greatly.

If forced to experiment the hard way we'll post what the results were but peace of mind (or a warning "no it will never work, we tried it" might help prevent problems). :(

[Matt9876]

MJ and MJ+ should only be used for voice communication, any other use will likely have a bad outcome.




MJ and MJ+ use a unique 10 digit dialing that makes it incompatible with most auto dial devices.

Also data transmissions are very touchy with MJ, seems to only work on certain Internet service providers and a select number of modems.

[dtommyd]

This happened to a friend of mine.
When you sign up for one of those, the company needs to make sure its actually a land line. Thats their major qualification for setting it up. The same way you can't use a cell phone. The second part why it won't work is that the device uses a modem device that checks in periodically (in and out) and if that doesn't go through, your in trouble. Maybe in both senses of the word. They don't care what your communications problems are. Consider it the cost of being out.

[rexlan]

Basic phone service is not $60/month. More like $25 which in most cases is LESS than the cost of the Internet service required to use the MJ for a phone.

I have basic phone and it is about $18/mo inclusive.

Another option of course is he/you can stay put for free.