Uniden’s long-range home phone is the way around NBN limitations

For a lot of people, the home phone is something antiquated. It’s included in their internet plan or whatever, but it’s not like they’d actually plug it in. What if someone called?

But for older people, and those living in rural and regional Australia, home phones are a vital way to stay connected with the world. While the lack of reliable mobile coverage in less populated areas is a problem, the landline connection has usually been fine enough that there was no need to worry. But the introduction of the NBN and turning off of the old copper networks is causing major headaches for people who once relied on having multiple phone ports.

With the NBN you only have access to one port on the modem, which is fine for most suburban houses but is complicated if you have an unusual house, or sheds, or another reason why basic cordless handsets aren’t a viable option.

When I originally planned this article, I was hoping to showcase lots of different ways to solve this problem. Maybe some kind of powerline adapter or other way around it. But, in the end, I only found one: the Uniden XDECT 8355 + 3WPR. It turns out the landline space is one few companies see as worth innovating in.

The Uniden XDECT 8355 + 3WPR is more than just your usual cordless phone. It’s Uniden’s longest-range phone, and in tests the company managed to get one handset working with full reception 698 metres away from the base. In the box you get three regular handsets, one waterproof and dustproof handset for sheds/pools and a repeater to get it going even further.

I tested the system in the most technologically inhospitable house I could find: my parents’. Their apocalypse-proof, reinforced concrete fortress has found flaws in every wireless system I’ve ever tried, from wi-fi to phones. No cordless phone has ever managed to get reception more than four metres into the next room, and currently three Linksys Velops are only managing to get wi-fi coverage to 90 per cent of the house (the most I’ve ever achieved). However, this phone system has changed all of that; getting reception from my father’s study on one side, to the kitchen on the other, downstairs in the underground part of the house, and even more than a hundred metres away from the house in the shed.

The package includes a base station to plug into your lone home phone port, two additional phones and chargers to place around your home, one rugged phone and charger for outdoors or the shed, and a range extender.

While we couldn’t replicate the 698-metre number due to the constants of metal and concrete, being able to get any reception outside the house at all (not to mention in some of the weirder places inside the house, like the bunker) is extremely impressive. And that was before I plugged in the range extender making it clearer. Given you can easily add multiple extenders (so long as you have somewhere inside to plug them in) and up to 12 handsets, if paired with a house constructed out of non-apocalypse-ready materials, most people would be able to get reasonable coverage over a farm or other large property

The underground reception isn’t as good as the above-ground areas of the house, with calls sounding ever-so-slightly muffled down there, but mildly muffled calls are better than no calls at all. On the upstairs handsets with good reception, calls were clear as a bell and significantly clearer than the old Telstra corded unit and older model Uniden phone I used for comparison.

The ability to pair the base unit with your mobile phone over Bluetooth is extremely helpful. If you have one pocket of your home that gets reasonable mobile reception (say, near a window), while the rest is a dead zone, you can leave your mobile in range and take calls wirelessly on the home phone hanset. That’s especially helpful in a blackout, when the NBN’s powered modem won’t let you make home phone calls. Add a battery pack for your phone, and the 10 days standby time/24 hours talk time on the handsets should keep you connected to both your mobile and the rest of the world until the power comes back.

The handsets can also go pretty loud, enough that my hard-of-hearing test subject could hear perfectly clearly. The handsets also claim compatibility with T-coil hearing aids, though I didn’t have any hearing aid users to test this with.

The main (but minor) downside of the unit is that the answering machine outgoing message recording quality was terrible. It sounded muffled every time we tried, both using the speakerphone on the base and the handset, and there’s no reason for it. The microphones seem fine in all other situations. You can still understand the message, and leave a message easily enough, it just sounds like it was recorded on a car handsfree at the entrance of a tunnel.

The other problem is that the ringtone options were all at least mildly irritating and lack the classic elegance of a traditional analogue ring, but that’s also a minor complaint.

While I wish I could bring you more options to get around a lack of phone ports in the NBN-connected home, the Uniden XDECT 8355 +3WPR for $299 is an excellent choice that should solve the issue for most people.

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