will the phone line from Magic Jack work if...?

Question

I live in an apartment complex that has a call box at the front door (where visitors can type in my apartment number & it will call up to my phone and I can press the # button to open the front door). In order for this to work though, I need a land line. As I understand it, Magic Jack plugs into your modem, NOT the actual phone jack in the wall. So my question is, if I get Magic Jack, will visitors be aable to call me from the call box even though its plugged into my moden, not the wall. Because I hate to pay $30+ a month for a phone line I will ONLY use for the call box, when Magic Jack is $20 a year.

Answer 1

NO it will NOT work...



those door buzzers that connect thru your home phone wiring have the telephone company wires going into the door phone control unit, and then back out of the control unit onto the riser cable into your apartment...



the only way that it would work is with some creative wiring, the dial tone from the magic jack would need to connect to a riser pair going down to the main telephone closet for the building then connect into the door phone control panel, then on a different riser pair back into your apartment... the phone company would not take too kindly at you using 2 riser cable pairs on their facilities to send your magicjack dial tone down to the telephone closet and then back up to your apartment... plus the magic jack probably would not supply enough current to send its signal to such distances - to the telephone closet, then back up, then to your phones...



you could get the absolute minimum land line phone service from your local telephone service provider for probably around $10-15 per month where you get all the incoming calls you want, and pay a measured rate for outgoing calls.. then you could use your magic jack for all of your outgoing calls.. you could even set your magic jack up to forward to your land line number so that you would not need to leave your PC on all the time for people to call you (not something you need to be concerned about if you get the magicjack plus that connects directly to your network)

Answer 2

From what I understand, those call boxes are basically an automated phone that dials your number and listens for the tone to unlock the door. So, if the apartment manager programs in your magic jack phone number to the front door machine it should act just like a landline. Actually, I don't see why they can't just program in your cell phone number instead, come to think of it.



However, if your computer isn't running all the time then Magic jack won't work and you won't be able to answer the phone, unless you get the new + version which I'm not familiar with.

Answer 3

To build a bit on Zorched's answer, if your computer is off you can have Magic Jack forward the call to your cell phone - that way you'll only burn plan minutes to answer your door if your computer is off.



Magic Jack Plus (the new product Zorched referred to) operates without a computer - you just plug it into an outlet, plug your phone into it, and plug an Ethernet cable from your cable modem, dsl modem, or router into it. That way you won't have to keep your computer on whenever you might need to answer your door.



If you use the original Magic Jack and elect to forward your phone when your computer is off, there is a plugin which makes it a little simpler and adds a few other features. The plugin is called MagicFeatures, and is linked below. Either with or without MagicFeatures, you need to forward / unforward your phone while the computer is turned on. For $360 a year versus $30 a year though...



Good luck with it.