Telephone Jacks in Europe

[pm]

My wife will be travelling to England, France and Poland on a business trip next week and wants to be able to connect to the internet while there through the telephone outlets in hotels.

Is there a difference between the telephone jacks in the US and in Europe? (IIRC, from my time in England, the answer is "yes&quot

Is there a difference between telephone jacks between various countries in Europe?

Does anyone know a place that sells converters?

We didn't think of this until now, but she leaves in less than a week, so I'd really appreciate any replies. Thanks in advance.

 

[Duckers]

Best Buy usually sells converters

 

[vinayag]

Yes, the jacks are different across europe and asia too. Radioshack has tons of telephone and electricity adaptors for other countries.

 

[DaddyG]

Even if you find an adapter i'm not sure that the modem will be compatable with European standards.

 

[dee]

just to echo what's been said already - we use significently different encoding methods for telecoms signals in europe & its fairly likely a us modem won't work here.

If you go to a modem manufactures web site you'll see different bios upgrades for european/us model etc.

Having said this - its a while since I've look into modems - some/all may now be dual standard.

 

[EEYORE]

Not to worry, mate. All she needs is a simple adapter which sells at any electrical appliance shop (or airport probably) for a couple of pounds. The jacks we use here are just unnecesarily huge, as are the power plugs.
I would imagine the hotel concierge would have a spare to lend her if she has no time to shop. Or rent a Fax machine at the hotel, and its phone outlet is likely to be of U.S. size.
All my PC parts including modems (both PCI winmodem and PCMCIA card modem) were brought from the States and they work perfectly okay.
I kinda remember when I started using PCs that there was an issue with hotel phone lines which go through digital PBX (anywhere in the world). Any veterans out there care to share their wisdom?

 

[pm]

Are you guys sure about the modem incompatibility issues? I lived for 5 years in England, and back then my US modem worked fine. Of course these were back in the days of 14.4K modems when 28.8K was the new and hyper-fast thing, so maybe things have changed. But I thought modems were international standards...?

Can anyone shed any more light on this? If she can't connect to the Internet, then it'd be nice to find out now so that she doesn't lug around a lot of useless (and expensive) equipment around Eastern and Western Europe.

Thanks for the suggestions on the plug converters. I'm going to Radio Shack tonight to pick one up.

I really appreciate the replies!

 

[RbM]

I travel all over the world with my trusty Compaq laptop and I can assure you that your modem will work. Depending on which countries you are visiting, you may need a phone plug adapter. (You'll need an adapter in the UK, but you won't in most of Holland, for example).

Many major hotels in Europe and Asia have their rooms wired with American-style RJ-11 jacks. If you are traveling, I recommend checking out this site. It can provide you with most everything you need,

http://www.teleadaptusa.com/

 

[ruckb]

HI PM

I would expect not to much problems. I'm using my PCMICIA card from
germany here in the states, and it worked fine. There was an
option in the software to change the country, but it worked with
both settings.
I think the situation is similar for other europoean countries.

The problem, that I would see, is to have an ISP in europe.
If she has the chance to log on a free number from work it is
OK, but if she has to look for an ISP she will have problems.
But there are a lot of internetcafe's out there.

I bought a webcam for my calls to europe. it is not the very
best solution with a modem internetconnection, but it works
good enough.


by

ruckb