I could have saved some time if I had read more user comments from the Google results for unlocking my Vonage-provided Cisco ATA-186 adapter. It appears Vonage doesn’t want to unlock your adapter even after you have stayed with them for ages, or even if you pay them for the unlocking service.
I found this quite surprising, as I’ve been a satisfied Vonage customer for many years. I only discontinued the service several months after moving to Finland, when it was clear I was not using it enough to justify the cost.
Based on my experience today, though, it seems the horror stories are quite true.
I called the Vonage support number and explained that I’m no longer a customer but would like to use the adapter in my own network, and would need to have the adapter unlocked. The support technician answered (more than once) that I could “simply unplug all cables from the adapter and it would not disturb the network.” Obviously this did not answer my inquiry at all.
I wasn’t sure if the tech even understood my question (his English wasn’t very fluent), explained this to him, and asked to speak to a supervisor. He offered to transfer the call to technical support instead of the supervisor, and I agreed to this. It’s just that nobody ever picked up the call after that…
I guess all this nonsense was just tactics right from the beginning to get rid of me with my questions. I would have preferred a direct answer like “sorry, we don’t provide unlocking for the adapters” or whatever the case is. I wonder if that is against consumer laws in the USA, so they try to just avoid answering anything at all. What other reason could there be for not being direct with customers?
Unfortunately my ATA-186 is of the later revision where the eeprom chip is soldered on the motherboard. Even if I had eeprom programming hardware, it would take some careful soldering to retrieve the chip without damaging it (or the motherboard).
One more item for the next electronics recycling pickup…