Using your LAN/ home WiFi to receive and make normal landline telephone calls

I came across this design when working out another invention involving triggering an automatic Skype video call from a normal landline telephone handset.

I’m amazed that it seems no one has designed such a system… its really simple. The idea is that you use your home network to connect standard telephones around your house rather than using a traditional wireless phone system.

In this model, the incoming telephone call gets converted to network packets and then is picked up by a de-converter box on the network that sends the traditional analogue signal onto a traditional handset.

Why would someone want to do this? Well wifi has a better range than normal telephone wireless and running cap5 through your house just makes more sense than running telephone lines as well.

In my case however, I am thinking of another application where the telephone is used as a simple control system for network devices. For example I want to allow my parents to call me using a normal telephone and when they type #77 on their phone a special purpose laptop will automatically start a Skype video conference session using our two telephone numbers to connect a corresponding two Skype accounts.

It’s all part of an experiment in elegant dumbing-down and simplification of devices we use every day to make them more inviting to end users who all want their lives to be less complicated.