Graves on SOHO Technology

Two weeks ago my wife told me that the small snom m3 handsets are not working as well as they should. To be specific, when she’s in the front bedroom the call quality is not good. I was out of town at the time but eventually got around to looking into the matter.

It’s is a simple matter of signal propogation. That bedroom location is the furthest possible point from the base radio, which was in my office.

There are also a couple of exterior walls between the base and the handset. In our house exterior walls are very dense. The house is vintage 1923, pre-dating the availability of plywood, so the walls are decked with 1″ think T+G Southern Yellow Pine on a 2×4″ frame. Southern Yellow Pine is technically a softwood, but when well aged (80+ years!) the resin sets up seriously hard. You can break drill bits trying to drill a hole through our walls or flooring.

My short term solution has been to relocate the base into the central wiring closet in the house, mounted high on the wall. This takes care of the house handily. But the call quality when I’m in the office can be a little sketchy.

I contacted snom tech support about the use of multiple bases and roaming capability. They told me that they have not provided roaming capability within the m3. However, they are preparing a “DECT extender” as an alternative solution. I’ll have to try one of these when they become available.