I need multiple phone lines (i.e. phone numbers) in my flat for office, fax and private use. Is the only way I can achieve this through Swisscom (Multiline ISDN) or are there other providers out there (as I loathe, loathe, loathe Swisscom)?

Sorry if this has been asked before or is a stupid question. I am a novice when it comes to the Swiss fixnet system. Any help or comments appreciated.

Now you can get your phone line through VTX. Not sure if they have multiple lines though. Can't hurt to ask... www.vtx.ch

If you're a techie, you could set up Asterisk and us a VOIP provider to give you multiple lines.

Hold on if you are writing a mâil at 22:38, what time did you leave the party? Now I would say that is sherking your responsibilities. It is a requirement to get home at 2 am and sit in the office writing daft mails at 7am

If you can get Cablecom Digital phone then you can have two phones per cable modem.

Of course your location states London so who knows.

VoIP is another solution, of course, as mentioned by Greg...

It's going to be hard to avoid Swisscom, as they pretty much have a monopoly on the 'Last Mile' connections to most residences (and businesses for that matter). You might find a community with a Gross-Gemeinschafts-Antennenanlage (GGA) which translates roughly community antenna system, that has decided to take over the construction of a modern telecommunications infrastructure. Our last community before we moved, Muttenz, was in the process of doing this. However, I think even then, the 'Plain Old Telephone Service' (POTS) lines are still owned by Swisscom.

Anyone know the French and Italian terms for GGA?

With VTX super fast connection (20megs, if you are in an area that gets it), you can by pass Swisscom.

The disadvantage of going with ISDN is the crap you have to go through to hook up ADSL or VDSL as well, if you don't want to have wireless stuff all over the house - wife is not a fan of this solution!!!!

Talking to the Swisscom guys today, it seems like I'm going to go with a bog standard Swisscom fixed net connection (= one phone number) and then get ADSL. Over the ADSL you can have as many BlueWin phones as you like - each with it's own number.

After thinking about it for another while I came up with a new option - Swisscom are currently runing an offer for mobile users who want ADSL: a speical land line for data only with no fixed charges - what if I ran just the Bluewin phones over that.... Gave the boys at Swisscom a call with this opiton and they were not to impressed with me! Seems like it would work, put a grey area as regards the contract.....

Hope this helps,

Jim

Thanks for all your comments, I will have a think and possibly even call the dreaded Swisscom people and ask about Jim's solution.

I just moved to Switzerland and the telecom stuff has been a nightmare so far. They disconnected my phone for 2 days by accident when trying to switch analogue to ISDN, and then ADSL wouldn't work for a week (a week!) due to some faulty wiring and whatnot. Ack.

I just bought a Siemens C475IP Gigaset which connects to one fixnet connection and up to SIX SIP connections. You can also add handsets as you wish.

That might be worth a look too? 180-ish for the base + one handset and about 80 for each extra one