Wireless Telephones for Large Homes

bwestlake

Has anyone out there in the AMX residential world found a wireless telephone that works well in a 20,000 sq.ft.+ size home? Your recommendations would be appreciated.

ericmedley

If you're asking for a simgle phone that'll cover the whole house, you are requeesting a pretty tall order. Of course, a lot depends upon the construction materials, interfering objects, etc... We find, in our market, that we typically need 2-3 Panasonic wireless cell stations in a house in that square-footage. Here again, it varies.

A general rule of thumb is the higher frequency stuff has a more limited range and the lower goes a little farther watt-for-watt. Here again, a lot depends on things that are hard to measure.

You might look into wireless voip phones, but only if you can segment off your LAN. VoIP phones are notorious bandwidth destroyers. If you can partition off your LAN and wirless network (VLANs and managed wireless networks) you might get your gig done on one phone.

hope that helps.

bwestlake

Tough Environment

The one home I'm dealing with now is loaded with stone, concrete, lathe + plaster, granite etc. Cellular reception is almost non-existent inside and marginal outside. We can scatter cordless phones around the house but the customer would like to be able to walk around the house on a call.

ericmedley

They do make a cellular repeater that we've used here on the coastal barrior islands that works pretty well. The basic idea with them is you put a directional 'Yagi' antenna on the roof and aim it at a cell tower. You then run a cable inside the house and place an it in a central location. It does seem to add a slight amount of delay to the signal but most our users seem to like it. We use Wilson for our systems. It is pretty specific and you need to run some pretty beefy infrastructure to get it done (RG11) but it works great and is not cheap.

DHawthorne

The Panasonic digital hybrid systems support a local cell system that work with their wireless telephones. You install the cell packs throughout the property, and the phones roam transparently between them. They are available in DECT to avoid WiFi collisions, and the coverage is pretty good. I have deployed them in a 32K sq. ft. estate with no dead spots; we even put one out at the gate (300' from the house) so the housekeeper doesn't lose coverage when she checks for packages left at the gate. I imagine a plaster/lathe construction would inhibit reception somewhat, but you can set up a site survey in advance to see if it's feasible.

alexsquared

DHawthorne wrote: »

The Panasonic digital hybrid systems support a local cell system that work with their wireless telephones. You install the cell packs throughout the property, and the phones roam transparently between them. They are available in DECT to avoid WiFi collisions, and the coverage is pretty good. I have deployed them in a 32K sq. ft. estate with no dead spots; we even put one out at the gate (300' from the house) so the housekeeper doesn't lose coverage when she checks for packages left at the gate. I imagine a plaster/lathe construction would inhibit reception somewhat, but you can set up a site survey in advance to see if it's feasible.

I second this. We've put in a few of these (dating back to the TAW848 hybrid) and the coverage is pretty freaking great. Good distance. We covered a very large estate (including out buildings, barn, horse shed) with four of the repeater stations.