LookingUp:

 

Thanks everyone for their very helpful and encouraging advice on this :-)

 

The ONT has been installed in mum's hallway, right next to the phone jack, so it should be relatively painless to connect the phone to it if we can do that.

 

To answer the "why fibre" question - because I spend far too much of my professional day sorting out issues with cellular telemetry systems to be confident that it's going be totally reliable and trouble free.  Having a fibre connection is not guaranteed to be perfect either, but at least there will be a degree of diversity given that she can at least txt us on her mobile if the landline is down. Having lived through the Chch earthquakes, when cellular comms were also pretty shaky at times, diversity of connections is a good thing for those who live alone and might need urgent help.

 

PS - I know it doesn't make sense that she can (reluctantly) txt but won't use the cell phone for voice calls, but unfortunately that's the reality of what I'm dealing with.

 

Make sure you cut the copper cable at the DMARC (while telecom box) from the internal wiring to remove the street out of the picture before plugging your internal wiring into the ONT

Last thing you want is the NEAX sending a large voltage down the line and damaging the ONT or sending your phone line out into the world