What cordless phone works in old houses?
November 3, 2006 8:18 AM   Subscribe

Can anyone suggest a cordless phone system that will work throughout an old house?

We've barely had the phone service connected for a month in our new apartment and we are already preparing to return our third set of cordless phones. Something about the structure of the building is causing us much grief.

Part of the apartment is on the second floor of a two hundred year old New England farmhouse. The other part is on the first floor of an adjoining house which is not quite as old. These are connected by a winding stairway, at the bottom of which is one of our two working phone jacks (the other is in our toddler's bedroom, and therefore of very little use). I threw together a rough diagram of the layout in Sketchup. We were really hoping to use a single-base, multi-handset system, so that we could keep handsets charging and ready in several rooms despite our single useful jack.

First we tried a set of digital 5.8GHz phones from Uniden (TRU-9460 and TCX-905). The phones were easy to set up and use, but the sound got a little fluttery as soon as we ventured into any of the upstairs rooms, and a lot fluttery when we went to the two back rooms. I tried walking outside the house and had a good signal on the three sides near the first floor section, but a terrible signal from behind the older two-story section.

So I took these back to the store and brought home a set of digital 5.8GHz phones (KX-TG5623M) from Panasonic. These phones didn't look as nice to me, and weren't as nicely designed, but I'd heard good things about the performance of Panasonic phones. Unfortunately the sound was just as bad (and they were harder to use). Back they went.

Speculating that 5.8GHz might be getting sponged up by our old walls I decided to bite the bullet and try 2.4GHz, even though it might not play nicely with my (or my neighbors') 2.4GHz Wifi networks. So I brought home a digital 2.4GHz set from Uniden (DCT756 and DCT750 similar to the first set, though the design is a little older and not quite as nice. These phones reach slightly farther into the upstairs: you can talk on them in all rooms. But they sound very poor, especially from the farthest rooms. There's a heck of a warble up there, and even sitting in the same room as the base they don't sound great, offering my own voice back to me with an annoying hollow ring. I tried turning off all my Wifi gear, but it didn't make a noticeable difference.

My next test will probably be a 900MHz digital phone, though it pains me that manufacturers are treating 900MHz as the bargain basement and shielding it from any of the design improvements they've made in the last decade. Maybe they hope small phone book and caller ID memory will push us to buy 5.8GHz hardware. It makes me fear for the batteries they probably use in the 900MHz models. More annoying is the apparent dearth of multi-handset 900MHz digital phones. The few that are out there don't even allow both handsets to be used at once so that two people can speak with Grandma.

Maybe it sounds like I'm whining, but for $90 or so you'd think you could find a phone system that's usable throughout a three bedroom apartment. This place isn't huge, about 75 feet (23 meters) from end to end, with the phone base close to the middle. The old part of the house is really old, so we don't think there's metal lath, though a friend suggested that there might be a lead component in the old plaster. I'm wondering whether there might be metal sheeting of some sort between the two connected buildings.

I'd be grateful for any general or specific advice about this problem. Have you solved such a problem with a particular model? Is there some kind of a repeater or booster we can use to extend our base station's coverage (without microwaving our bathwater, that is)? And no, we don't want to go cellular-only.
posted by Songdog to Technology (6 answers total)
 
Running another (wired) phone jack to the poor reception part of the house may be the way to go and not all that difficult. Another phone, another base station.
posted by pointilist at 8:56 AM on November 3, 2006


I don't have much help for you, but I hear your pain on the 900MHz. I went through a process a year or two ago to find the best 900 cordless out there and they all sucked. I started to look for the best 900 phone from back when they were the state of the art, but a 2.8 fell into my lap that has the features I want, works pretty well, and still knocks out the WiFi to my laptop when I talk on it. I'd still love a hotshot 900, though.
posted by rhizome at 11:03 AM on November 3, 2006


I also was in the same spot as you last year. I purchased a 5.8GHz Panasonic phone, mostly because I needed the answering machine. We still have our old Panasonic 900MHz DSS (sans answering) phone, and it's heads and shoulders above the newer model.

What really struck me when I went shopping is that in this sector, the "new" technology is actually a step down in signal range from the old, and more expensive. Maybe check ebay for 900MHz?
posted by SteveInMaine at 12:26 PM on November 3, 2006


That's true. The higher the frequency, the shorter the range (though probably better fidelity, for what it's worth). My issue was being in an apartment with WiFi, a microwave (2.8GHz as well), and thin walls (so, neighbors' microwaves and Wifi and phones as well). 900MHz is not so subject to this interference and can also reach down to the laundry room or my car if need be. Ebay is probably the best bet, or maybe Craigslist and a specific want ad and a lot of patience.
posted by rhizome at 3:24 PM on November 3, 2006


If you don't mind a bit of hacking, you can probably improve the range on your cordless phone by adding a larger antenna on the base, putting half a coffee can behind the antennas it does have (as a reflector), etc. Changing the antenna obviously is going to void your warranty, since no cordless phone I'm aware of is designed with a removable antenna, but if you do it I'd suggest going with a 2.4 GHz phone system -- since it's the same frequency as 802.11 wireless networking, suitable antennas are widely available.
posted by kindall at 3:36 PM on November 3, 2006


If you can find 900 MHz phones, that should help a lot. I could use my old Sony 900 half a block from my house, but my Uniden 5.8s get poor reception in the back yard. You will definitely get much better range with a 900.
posted by AstroGuy at 10:49 AM on November 4, 2006


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