Silly question about Magic Jack and Dial up

magicjackcurious · Post by **magicjackcurious** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:55 am

I have a silly question, so don't beat me too badly.....I live in a rural area and have dial up....I see no dicussions
about Magic Jack and Dial up internet; is it possible to replace my land line with Magic Jack to connect to the internet?

Why Tempt Fate · Post by **Why Tempt Fate** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 9:31 am

If I understood you correctly, you wanted to know if magicjack could replace your dialup? No, as the technology behind the device requires that you have a broadband internet connection (cable, dsl) to provide the service.

magicjackcurious · Post by **magicjackcurious** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:36 am

Why couldn't I plug a phone chord into magic jack (which is already plugged into my usb) and the other end into
my pc "line in" and have free internet?

Forgive me but I'm not understanding how revolutionary this thing is if I need to have a phone line anyway.

dbarber · Post by **dbarber** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:17 am

magicjackcurious wrote:
Forgive me but I'm not understanding how revolutionary this thing is if I need to have a phone line anyway.

You don't have to have a phone line, you just have to have some sort of high speed Internet service. It could be from your local cable tv company or a local wireless setup.
The MagicJack phone service "rides" on your Internet service. Do some research on VOIP. This will explain how MagicJack works.

Donn

gooney · Post by **gooney** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:18 am

magicjackcurious wrote:Why couldn't I plug a phone chord into magic jack (which is already plugged into my usb) and the other end into
my pc "line in" and have free internet?

Forgive me but I'm not understanding how revolutionary this thing is if I need to have a phone line anyway.

hahahahahaha i love your sig

magicjackcurious · Post by **magicjackcurious** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:33 pm

But I need to have the dial up because I'm in a rural area and my only other option is $99 per month to have a high speed connect. through my Dish. That's not an option for me right now.

I would do the research on VOIP, however I like doing things the easy way. That's why I'm here.
I do "get" the concept of VOIP.

Just curious.

PGPfan · Post by **PGPfan** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:59 pm

magicjackcurious, unfortunately MJ will be of absolutely NO benefit for you. It MUST have a broadband internet connection to function. What it will do - assuming you upgrade to broadband - is allow you to drop your landline phone (and it's associated fees) while giving you all local and long distance phone service for $20/year. That's what it does - it has nothing to do with providing internet service.

Hope this helps!

-PGPfan

couch-potato · Post by **couch-potato** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:04 pm

So now you have a telephone local landline and a dial-up ISP and a long distance package.....total cost=?

Get rid of all of them and get high-speed internet ($99) and a MagicJack.

I also live in a rural area, and I just did that 2 weeks ago. The cost savings were minimal, but it is so worth it to have high-speed.

NOTE: Do some more reading about using MJ as your only phone line before doing this. Things to consider are whether you have a cell phone for backup, or have elderly or disabled people in the house that need reliable telephone service or 911 service.

P.S. You say the only option is high-speed internet through your satellite TV? I think that has high speed download through the dish but dial-up upload, so it might not work very well. Check out if there are other options for high speed in your rural area. I am using a wireless system that communicates with the tower ten miles away.

Why Tempt Fate · Post by **Why Tempt Fate** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:17 pm

VoIP - Voice over INTERNET Protocol. (Piece missing from your puzzle: The little red cloud).

P.S. As stated on www.majicjack.com, "magicJack does not work over Dial-up or satellite internet."

ChuckIL · Post by **ChuckIL** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 6:56 am

magicjackcurious wrote:But I need to have the dial up because I'm in a rural area and my only other option is $99 per month to have a high speed connect. through my Dish. That's not an option for me right now.

MagicJack won't work for you. The device converts analog signals into digital packets and sends them across the internet. If you didn't have dial up, you would have no connection to the internet. Even if you had the broadband dish, it would probably not work for you, as satellite broadband and VOIP are iffy at best, and completely unusable at worst. The only way MagicJack would be usable at all for you is if they start using the G729 codec, which uses little bandwidth and can work over dialup. Of course you would have to keep your dialup, but you could use MagicJack for long distance calls (this of course depends on them using G729, which they don't as of now).

tranceport · Post by **tranceport** » Wed May 21, 2008 2:23 pm

magicjackcurious wrote:Why couldn't I plug a phone chord into magic jack (which is already plugged into my usb) and the other end into
my pc "line in" and have free internet?

Forgive me but I'm not understanding how revolutionary this thing is if I need to have a phone line anyway.

So let me get this straight. You want to plug your modem into your magic jack and get a dial tone? I'm afraid that's not possible because magic jack needs an active internet connection (broadband, no less) in order to receive a dial tone. So your computer would have to already be connected to the internet in order for magic jack to be of any use. What you're proposing is the same as plugging your telephone in to your computer's "line in" port and wondering if your telephone will work. Just doesn't work that way!

What you can try is to see if any mobile phone providers get good coverage in your area. You might be able to get a data plan from that that will allow you to connect to the internet with broadband speeds (slower than DSL or Cable but still way faster than dialup). I don't know how well Magic Jack will work on that but I've done video chat on skype and it worked very well with 3G speeds.

wgnweb · Post by **wgnweb** » Wed May 21, 2008 5:30 pm

Uhhh for some reason I think magicjackcurious is messing with you guys. I think he is someone else under fake name maybe Dan. haha nice try magicjackcurious, you didnt get all of us.

Stewart · Post by **Stewart** » Wed May 21, 2008 5:46 pm

wgnweb wrote:Uhhh for some reason I think magicjackcurious is messing with you guys. I think he is someone else under fake name maybe Dan. haha nice try magicjackcurious, you didnt get all of us.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. All his posts came through the same corporate firewall, belonging to a low tech enterprise in upstate New York. While it's possible that the firewall was hacked, IMO it's unlikely that someone would do that just to make these posts.

voceman · Post by **voceman** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:43 pm

[font=Arial Black] [/font] Just to clarify what is often misunderstood. VoIP does not require broadband. The simplest (typical) implementations do require a broadband connection. It seems like MagicJack is in that category. Skype has always worked on dial-up lines, which is not widely known even by Skype users. The issue is the bandwidth required for the digitally encoded voice. By compressing the signal, good (even excellent) voice can be transmitted over dial-up lines. The quality of the ISP is more of an influence. (In the biz since 1200 baud modems were state of the art.) Solve a myriad of problems and just use Skype. Sorry.

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Silly question about Magic Jack and Dial up

Silly question about Magic Jack and Dial up

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