Last Updated on February 8, 2018 by Dave Farquhar
A friend asked me a good question: Does a POTS phone use the same wiring as U-Verse VOIP? The answer is, it depends. Outside your house, no it doesn’t. But that’s not your problem. Outside, that’s AT&T’s problem.
Inside is where it matters to you. And inside the house, a POTS phone–the old-fashioned landline phone we’ve been using for well over a century–uses the same wiring as U-Verse VOIP. I’ve probably answered your question but I can elaborate if you’d like.
The residential gateway does the job of translating the signal between old-school POTS phones and the VOIP system. When I got U-Verse, my installer simply spliced a new cable from the gateway into my existing wiring so all of my jacks continued working.
So even though U-Verse is VOIP, there’s no need for VOIP phones. The same common and inexpensive phones that work with traditional home landline service work with U-Verse too. The only caveat is that if you have any rotary phones left over from the 1950s, 60s or 70s–I have a couple because they’re indestructible–they won’t be able to dial out.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.