xrd•24d
Ask HN: Best way to get a land line for my kids?item?id=44856006

If you are a parent like me, perhaps you'll understand this. My kids spend way too much time on their phones.

As we start the new school year, I want to add a "land line" to my house so I can tell them "devices are off at 8:30! If you urgently need to make a call, go ahead and use this land line."

I am hopeful this will mean they don't "just need to text someone" and then get sucked into the void of their smart phone addictions until all hours of the night, damaging their fragile sleep patterns.

Of course, I don't really want a land line. I want a SIP phone that connects via Plivo or Twilio. I've been looking on eBay and others to find an inexpensive cordless version that I can easily connect to Plivo.

I'm confused, however, what the difference is between a SIP phone, a DECT phone, Bluetooth and a WiFi phone, and if those can all be used with Plivo/Twilio.

For example this link:

https://www.voipsupply.com/voip-phones/cordless

Anyone have suggestions on going down this path? Do I need to run a PBX on one of my machines?

I figure the least expensive way is just direct to Plivo. The pay-as-you-go plan seems to be about $0.005 a minute inbound, $0.01 a minute outbound. That's easily worth my sanity.

https://www.plivo.com/pricing/

26 comments
  • toast0•23d

    > Of course, I don't really want a land line. I want a SIP phone that connects via Plivo or Twilio. I've been looking on eBay and others to find an inexpensive cordless version that I can easily connect to Plivo.

    Why those providers? have you considered voip.ms (afaik, based in Canada, despite the domain name) ? $0.85/month for the line, $1.50/month for e911, about a penny per minute; and home phone is one of their specific use cases.

    > I'm confused, however, what the difference is between a SIP phone, a DECT phone, Bluetooth and a WiFi phone, and if those can all be used with Plivo/Twilio.

    DECT is cordless phones; some DECT base stations are setup for POTS, some do SIP. The easiest way forward (and what I've done) is to pick up an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA), and use something designed for Analog POTS. Something like a Grandstream HT801 should do well.

  • threecheese•24d

    Are there any actual land line providers left? During the US east coast blackout 20 years ago, cellular networks and cable internet were both unavailable widely. It was frightening. However, land lines were generally usable given they had hardwired low voltage and didn’t rely on internet or cellular telecom infra. My current home has an old-school Verizon landline termination that’s unused.

    My current “land line” is VoIP through my internet provider, and when the power or internet are down I have no way to communicate (given my cellular also rides the internet, using a Verizon femtocell, bc the local signal stinks).

    • toast0•23d

      Yes, I signed up my MIL for a real landline when she moved out here about 3 years ago. But it's $60/month for a landline; I'm only doing it because we do get frequent utility power outages and I hope the central office stays up longer than cell towers. I haven't followed up to find out when we had a long outage, but cell towers only stay up for 4-6 hours, and when we have an outage of more than a minute, it tends to be at least 24-48 hours.

    • tocs3•23d

      We had a land line until early this year. We dropped because the service had gotten so bad.

  • solardev•24d

    You can't just add a phone line option from your ISP? It's all VOIP these days and sometimes it's actually cheaper to get it bundled (if you have a cable modem) than without. Fiber and DSL usually offer it too.

    It'll be a bit more than a DIY SIP phone, but a hell lot less hassle.

    Also, it's probably easier to just use the smartphons' parental controls.

  • sugarpimpdorsey•24d

    Why don't you just get a "LTE phone adapter" where you pop in a sim card, plug an analog phone into it, and be done? Sure beats fiddling with SIP and jesus christ Asterisk to do something very simple and not worth any more time and maintenance.

    • xrd•24d

      This is exactly the kind of comment I was hoping for. Thanks!

      But, I'm unclear that this is very cost effective. For example, is this the kind of device you mean?

      https://twenty7tech.com/product/pots-adapater/

      That's $300 and then requires a SIM card as well, right? So, let's say I use a cheap one from Tello that is $6/mo.

      That's still a lot more than using Plivo/Twilio with a SIP phone, right?

      • galaxy_gas•24d

        <$100-120 ATEL LTE on Amazon cheaper than that one. The adapters are such you can use a traditional legacy style oldphone.

        DECT phone uses local RF (like cordless home phones, think of it as the "phone to headset via bluetooth" portion), a SIP phone uses the internet directly, and an LTE base station provides a fake bridge from POTS button presses to a mobile call dial.

  • kalleboo•24d

    I got it for another reason (playing around with retrocomputing) but what I did was get a Cisco/Linksys SPA voip adapter (there are PILES of these on eBay for cheap, they've been making them for decades) and hook that up to a SIP provider and then a $5 landline phone from a thrift store. You can also configure it to allow local calls between the 2 ports.

  • al_borland•24d

    This YouTube video showed up in my feed a while back where a dad setup a whole phone system so his daughters could have landline phones. This might be overkill, or exactly what you want. Either way, I imagine it will give you some ideas.

    https://youtu.be/fdM1V98iIQI

  • gooodvibes•24d

    > I am hopeful this will mean they don't "just need to text someone"

    This is naive. They'll want their phones just as much as before. The landline won't make any difference.

    Maybe the goal is to entertain your children? "Oh dad and his 1980s technology, what a goofball"

  • gus_massa•23d

    At least here in Buenos Aires, the cooper wires are too old and when there is a problem the landlines telephones companies replace them with a mobile device disguised as a landline. It has a chip, and perhaps some geographical restriction. It looks like an old phone, but it's a cell phone.

    You can also buy a very stupid phone, with a tiny screen and plastic buttons. It still has SMS, a camera and a browser but you must type the ULR in T9 that is as fun as it sounds. The main feature is that you can't use WhatsApp (that is super popular here), so nobody can contact you unless they realy want to speak.

  • abbycurtis33•24d

    Your kids don't need to urgently make a call after 8:30.

    • xrd•24d

      Totally agree.

      And, I'm in the process of divorcing. I want them to have the psychological safety that they can call their mom when they need to.

      Kids are all about trying to establish some kind of control in their lives. My son especially says "I'm texting mom!!!" at 10 pm. I want to provide him the access to reach his mom if he really needs to, but avoid him staring at a screen, which is what he is really trying to do in between waiting for the text from his mom.

      I know there are parental controls that would help with this kind of thing. That requires both parents are aligned on the way those controls are used. It isn't that simple in my case.

  • tocs3•24d

    I have been using cell2jack for a year or more and have been pretty happy with it. I plugged a cordless phone with satellites stations (extra phone around the house). It connects to a cellphone via bluetooth. At first I used a flip phone but now it uses a android phone.

    https://www.cell2jack.com/setup.html

  • jryan49•24d

    https://tincan.kids/ ?

    • xrd•24d

      I really love this.

      But, be honest, did you just vibe code this site once you read my question?

      Respect, either way. I love it.

      • jryan49•23d

        I actually saw it on hn a few weeks ago :P

  • ycombinatrix•24d

    Dumb phone would be better than a landline, as it can be used for emergencies away from home.

  • toomuchtodo•20d

    https://tincan.kids/

    (no affiliation)

  • stop50•24d

    I use an number of an sip provider that allows time based routing. Outgoing is still possible for mobile phones, but when i set it, it straightly goes to voicemail.

    • xrd•24d

      Edit: Oh, you said SIP... Thanks, I'll review.

      You are suggesting I get the kids to use a SIM I control?

      My kids split time at my house and their mom's so I don't see this being an easy solution. But, it is an interesting idea.

  • paulcole•24d

    Do you want to teach your kids some kind of a lesson or do you want a hobby project for yourself?

    Just add an actual land line. It’s not that complicated.

    • xrd•24d

      I have tmobile as my internet provider. I suppose I would rather use plivo than tmobile because I see fewer vectors for excessive charges with plivo. tmobile always seems to be running a scam that you cannot cancel.

  • KimReyes•23d

    [flagged]