My wife and I bought ourselves a CellSocket for a Holiday Gift. It's enabled us to unplug Ma Bell and lower our phone bill in half by using those airtime minutes and low-cost long distance calls from the phones in the house. The unit works with my T-Mobile (used to be VoiceStream) Nokia 6190 (and quite a few other handsets).
The CellSocket sits on your desk and your PCS phone drops into its cradle when you come home. The CellSocket recharges the PCS phone. After unplugging Ma Bell, you plug it in a phone outlet next to the desk. You can use a "tee" to then plug-in your desk phone into the same phone outlet.
When there is an incoming call on your PCS phone, the phones in your house ring and callerID displays just like it did with Ma Bell. When you pick up, the sound is as good as your PCS phone. If you are in a good location, it sounds just as good as your wired phone. If you are in a poor coverage area, buy the one with an external antenna jack. You can buy gain antennas to improve reception.
To dial, you pick up any phone in the house and hear a special dialtone. Then you dial numbers just like you would on your PCS phone. The # key acts like the Send or Talk key. The CellSocket works just fine with banking applications or voice mail where you need touch tones to navigate around menus. The # key works normally during a phone call. Kids have to be taught this extra step so they can call 911# if they have to.
CellSocket gives my wife one number where she can be reached at home, shopping or on the road. The PCS cell provider's voicemail catches calls when I am on the phone or not able to answer it. An answering machine can only catch calls when you are not on the phone. It's really great for providing phone service into areas where you can't get phone service, need it for an emergency line, or simply want to unplug Ma Bell to save some money.
The only shortcomings of this product are 1) Having to remember to dial # after the number. I find the special dial tone reminds me to dial using the PCS dialing method. 2) The Call Waiting feature does not work with CellSocket (or I did not figure it out yet). We don't use it anyway since we don't like being interrupted during a call and know calls are being caught by voicemail. 3) When the power fails, and you have an incoming call, only the PCS phone rings. The other phones don't have dialtone. To overcome this, you can plug the charger into a uninteruptable power supply (UPS) - the same kind used to keep computers running during a power failure. 4) It does not work with computer modems or fax machines. I use a wireless computer connection and an online service like e-fax that converts an incoming fax into an e-mail attachment.
Despite these few shortcomings, I like the product very much and highly recommend it. Its savings, particularly on long distance bills and the recurring monthly bills make it very useful for nearly anyone.
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