I noticed the other day that Rowtex have updated their Orchid Low Radiation Cordless phone website. It still proudly boasts that theirs is still the only low radiation phone available in the UK. Wrong!
They’ve known it’s wrong since at least April, when we started getting posts on this site from the proprietor. We’d upset him by suggesting that in fact the Siemens C385 was a better and cheaper alternative to his product (in our opinion).
The Siemens C385 costs as little as £25 (rather than £80+) and emits no radiation when you aren’t on a call (in Eco+ mode), it’s prettier too. We still think you should use a corded (and cheaper) home phone, as many cordless Dect calls can now be ‘sniffed’ using a laptop.
Our advice is: don’t order stuff using your credit card over a cordless phone. Don’t do telephone banking over a cordless phone. Don’t ring any service where you give a password or keyphrase or date of birth over a cordless phone. About 50% of cordless Dect phones aren’t secured properly. If you don’t know anything about Ubuntu or Com-On-air PCMCIA cards or Dect-Cli software, then you can’t reasonably know which 50% you might fall into.
Both the Siemens C385 & C475 low radiation cordless Gigaset phones properly encrypt a call – we’ve tested them. Does the Orchid…?
All wired phones don’t need to encrypt a call, because they aren’t transmitting 100 metres down the street! Used a wired phone, please..
You can buy a wired desktop phone from Argos for about £5. It won’t ruin your sleep (partly proved); it won’t give you a tumour (not proved); and it won’t help a hacker empty your bank account (absolute reality)…You Decide!
What upsets me most about the Rowtex site is the way they quote scientific reports about the effects of radiation, in an attempt to differentiate their product from every other Dect phone. If you want to act on these reports you use a corded phone, not a Dect phone, not a low power Dect phone, not even an old analogue cordless phone (which is undoubtedly safer than both, given that it’s not pulsed like Dect). It’s now well known that low tar cigarettes just give you a different kind of cancer, lower in the lung. I see low power phones as a similar beast – trying to make something that is still basically stupid appear more acceptable, therefore prolonging Dect’s lifespan (whilst possibly reducing yours).
You are far better off using your mobile phone as your main phone, than allowing any kind of Dect cordless phone in your home (assuming you keep calls short). Here’s why: your mobile will contact the local mast every 15 minutes, for maybe 10 seconds, whereas most Dect phone’s Base stations transmit a constant carrier (like a WiFi router does) 24 hours a day. Use your mobile phone on hands free to minimise exposure to your head, regardless of Mobile or Dect. Also, if using a regular mobile phone, always stand near a window when talking on it, that way the RF transmitting power should be lower (mobile phones automatically reduce their power output to the minimum needed, mostly to conserve battery power).
Unplug your WiFi Router and Dect phones from the mains power when you go to bed. Even better, never plug them back in!
