Hello Matthew: Your cable ISP would have to provide you with the dial-up phone number for you to receive email from their service while not connected. I have COX cable and they charge an additional $5.00 per month for this service, but it's either an 800 number or a local city number.
As for your second question, I'm pretty sure you can use a serial connected EXTERNAL modem to interact with the phone line, but why would you want to when the BrailleNote has the modem built in?? hth Jeff
