Telephone Plug Adapters

Telephone Plug Adapters
By John Dulaney

There are no worldwide standard for telephone jacks. The North American RJ-11 pattern is used in over 100 countries through-out the world and if you are traveling to China, Greece or Vietnam, you will have no trouble plugging in your laptop modem, where-as, you will find that plugging-in is impossible without the proper telephone jack adapter, if you should be traveling to Sweden, Hungary and almost 40 other countries.

Complete selection of telephone jack adapters are now being offered by retailers, compatible to your laptop and modem, for your worldwide travel. There are duplex adapters, which will allow both the hotel's telephone and your modem to be plugged in simultaneously. This is quite an advantage, for it allows you to check the line quality and establish a connection without unplugging your modem.

In certain cases, you may find that the nationality of the hotel chain determines the type of telephone plugs used in that hotel rather than the country standard. This is a frequent occurrence with large US, British and German hotel chains. It is advisable that each time you plan to go abroad you should check this with your travel agent in order to make sure that you will be able to operate your computer system in the country that you are visiting or have the right telephone adapter with you. There are instances where the telephone in the hotel room is totally 'hardwired,' that is to say that the telephones installed in the rooms are without a jack. In this case there are three ways that you can solve your plugging in problem - first, you may use bare wire with alligator clips, wired to a RJ-11 line to create a connection, second, you can use a acoustic coupler that attaches the modem to the handset, or, if the telephone system in the room is digital, the handset should have a jack and, using a digital interface you can achieve the connectivity.

The other thing that you will need to check with your travel agent is whether the telephone system, in the hotel where you are booked in, is analog or digital. This is for the reason, that modems generally work with analog telephone systems, and for digital systems, you would need special adapters for your modem to work. The digital telephone system can be easily identified by the presence of a visual display, a data socket on the side, or additional buttons for such things as television channels and laundry and other services. Any attempt to plug in your modem with a digital phone may permanently damage the modem and render the digital phone in-operable. In order that you may operate your modem with the digital phone, you will need two things - one, an acoustic couplet that goes on to attach your modem to the telephone handset or a digital interface that connects your modem to the telephone handset jack. The equipment is driven by electrical power and hence you will need appropriate power supply along with, for these to operate.