I was contacted by Spark last week. The rep asked if I would like to change over to a wireless service, as it would give me double the speed I’m currently getting, and would cost less than I pay now. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell me it would be a capped data service, unlike the unlimited one I currently have. I got back to talk to him today, but after all the sales pitch, I then find that our current telephone system would become obsolete. So my first question here is, is there a way around this?

We live on a rural block, and have workshops that are remote from the house, which have telephone lines (cat5e) running to them. Our house is also quite large, and a simple multi-handset single base system wouldn’t work for us. Also, the modem point is in a garage corridor, which would make the base unit inaccessible really, when plugged into the wireless modem.

Does anyone know a way of using our existing wired phone lines on a “wireless” network system, or is this impossible?

Also, should I just stick with the current setup, which is the Home Broadband Unlimited Data Plan

I have a couple of add-ons, and including my mobile phone with 100mins, it costs me around $179/mth.

I average around 100gb of data use, but this may go up soon as I have installed a NAS, and plan on downloading films etc etc… we are eligible for their “rural” wireless data plan, which with a discount would only cost about $5 more than we currently pay (all being equal).

Well, firstly, if I cant use the telephones in both workshops, as well as the house, it’s a non starter. Secondly, even if this is possible, is wireless a flim-flam game, and would I be better off staying with copper?

Our speeds are not poor admittedly. We average around 5.5mbps/up and 0.5mbps/down, which is probably on par with someone living in a hut in outer Mongolia!

I would be grateful of any sage advice.

Thanks