Rogers Ignite Home Phone and Building Entrance Systems

[Gimped]

My building has a buzzer system in the lobby. A visitor enters a 4 digit code, which calls my Rogers Home Phone number. I then press 9 to let the visitor in the door. This has worked fine since becoming a home phone customer years ago.

My understanding is that this will not work if I update to Rogers Ignite Home Phone.

Can I get clarification please?

[57]

It all depends on how the intercom system works.  There's a variety of intercoms. Check out the following thread for example:

https://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/Home-Phone/Building-Intercom-Buzzer-Stopped-Working-After-Upgr...

Searching this forum for "intercom ignite" may find additional threads.

[-G-]

@Gimped  How does everything in your unit currently connect to your Rogers Home Phone modem?  You should be able to unplug the modular phone connector from your Home Phone modem and plug it into the TEL1 jack on the Ignite gateway.

[Gimped]

@57 Yes, I read that thread before posting here, however it wasn’t helpful. I don’t have the same equipment or setup mentioned by that customer. Thx tho.

[Gimped]

@-G- I have the Scientific Atlanta home phone modem: coax into the modem, phone line out to my telephone. Plus of course the power cable.

No other connections as far as I can see, just a coax line splitter out of the single coax box in my apartment. Model number of my Scientific Atlanta modem is 2203C.

[-G-]

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@Gimped wrote:
I have the Scientific Atlantic home phone modem: coax into the modem, phone line out to my telephone.

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Okay, in that case, is your telephone hooked into (or do you have a special telephone that is part of) your building's buzzer system?

A home phone service is delivered over a pair of wires.  Connect a telephone to that and those two wires provide dial tone when you take the phone off hook, causes the phone to ring when somebody calls you, and carry your voice calls.  It works the same way whether it's the incoming wires from Bell's home phone service or the jacks on the modems that Rogers provides.  The complicated part of a phone installation is connecting all of the wall jacks in your home to the phone service or integrating with the building entrance system.

When switching from Rogers Home Phone to Ignite Home Phone, you are basically just replacing one telephone service, coming in through a pair of wires of one modem, with the pair of wires that are coming in through another modem.

HOWEVER, if you have nothing but a simple phone connected to your Rogers Home Phone modem, and no other hardware, then your building's buzzer system must somehow be integrated with the Rogers Home Phone service, and that same integration may not be in place with Ignite Home Phone.  You will have to ask your building management about how their building  entrance system integrates with your telephone and your home phone service.

[Gimped]

@-G- No special or dedicated phone. Just a regular cordless phone that I bought at BestBuy. The call box in the lobby literally just calls a phone number; no intercom, no special phone. So long as the phone number the call box is dialling is a local number, it allows folks to buzz apts just fine.

Does that help?

[-G- · Accepted solution]

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@Gimped wrote:
@-G- No special or dedicated phone. Just a regular cordless phone that I bought at BestBuy. The call box in the lobby literally just calls a phone number; no intercom, no special phone. So long as the phone number the call box is dialling is a local number, it allows folks to buzz apts just fine.

Does that help?

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I just re-read your first post.

My building has a buzzer system in the lobby. A visitor enters a 4 digit code, which calls my Rogers Home Phone number. I then press 9 to let the visitor in the door. This has worked fine since becoming a home phone customer years ago.

It must be a system where you provide the building management with your telephone number, and their system simply calls that number when a visitor enters your 4-digit code.  That type of system should be totally independent of who provides the phone service, and should even work if the telephone number that you provide to your building management is for a cell phone.  If that is the case, then it should be no problem switching from Rogers Home Phone to Ignite Home Phone.

[Pauly]

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@Gimped wrote:
My building has a buzzer system in the lobby. A visitor enters a 4 digit code, which calls my Rogers Home Phone number. I then press 9 to let the visitor in the door. This has worked fine since becoming a home phone customer years ago.

My understanding is that this will not work if I update to Rogers Ignite Home Phone.

Can I get clarification please?

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Hi Gimped,

I would like to give you helpful advise which is the most accurate as possible.  If you can confirm the door intercom actually is "calling" your number? This can be your cellphone or landline or a VoIP number or even your wife s cellphone then if that is correct, you should be good to go and it should work perfectly fine with you.

if a handset needs to be plugged into the wall jack that rings when someone buzzes you then you have a different style intercom and its more complex but can still work but needs an expert/specialist and some possible rewiring

[Pauly]

After reading all the posts, if you gave the building superintendent your phone number to program the buzzer dials, then you have a intercom that dials you it will work 100% a lot of people here were under the impression you had the older style intercom and were quick to give you advice about it without first asking you specific probing questions to get more details about your unit.

[Gimped]

@-G- Yes, that’s exactly what happens. I provided my landlord with a phone number to use with the buzzer system when I moved in. The system in the lobby just calls that number when someone enters the 4 digit “buzz code.”

I can change the phone number used with the buzzer system to any local number at any time. No special equipment needed to receive the call. Just any local phone number, including a cell phone number.

So when the Rogers tech told me the other day that Ignite Home Phone wouldn’t work with a building entrance system… they meant only certain kinds of entry systems then, like the ones with dedicated phones?

I just want to make sure that if I make the leap to Ignite that things will work properly. Rogers tells me that once you make the switch to Ignite you can’t go back.

[Gimped]

@Pauly Thanks for the info. I thought my original post was pretty clear about how my system worked — I DID say that the lobby system calls my Rogers Home Phone — but I guess it wasn’t clear enough. Lol! At least I have some clarification now.

[-G-]

@Gimped  Actually your first post was very clear.  What we didn't know was why you were under the impression that the Ignite Home Phone service would not work.

As @Pauly  pointed out, there are a lot of different types of building entrance systems out there.  Some buzzer systems don't even require that you have a phone service, and some systems can be very complicated to integrate with Ignite Home Phone.  Others don't care whose phone service you have; they just call a number, and those don't pose any integration challenges whatsoever and will work with anything, even a cell phone.

You can still double-check with your building management team but based on what you told us here, I don't think that there will be any problems with you switching from Rogers Home Phone to Ignite Home Phone.

[Gimped]

@-G- When I was speaking with Rogers the other day about making the switch to Ignite, Rogers specifically told me that Ignite Home Phone doesn’t work with building entrance systems. So we held off on the switch until I could investigate further. It was Rogers that said it wouldn’t work, not me. I was just doing my due diligence investigating things, and I’m really glad I did. Clearly the info that Rogers provided was incorrect.

Thanks all for your help here!! Glad my buzzer system will still work as expected if I switch to Ignite.

[Pauly]

just so you know many rogers call centre reps for them its just a part time or full time job they do their work answer calls and go home. to think of them as experts is unfortunately not like it was in the old days where the people on the other end of the phone were very skilled and also knowledgeable about the products and services and studied and learned about these on their off time, but unfortunately good talent is hard to find