We moved from manhattan to brooklyn. We previously used verizon phone service.
In brooklyn home, we use optimum online internet for 50 a month. Apparently phone service cost 35+ a month and we barely use the landline but we want it just in case.
I heard stuff about Voip. Does anyone know much about this? I have heard of vonage and someone in a forum mentioned VOIPO and its like 8 dollars a month for unlimited calling in usa/canada.
Is it easy to install? Its a new home that my family moved into but im not there… im in canada so they will have to do the installation but is it simple/hard? I read that they send you some equipment and you just plug it in but is it easy? The thign is im not sure about the wiring of the house etc. I just know previous homeowner had verizon fios internet and phone service there.
And is the quality of voipo okay?
I’ve just recently started using Ooma. http://www.ooma.com/ Previously, I’ve had VOIP from Time Warner and AT&T as part of a tv/phone/internet package.
It’s $10/mo for fancy features, or “free” (you pay about $3/mo in taxes) for basic service.
The setup is very easy - plug one cable into your internet and one in to the phone or household phone wiring. (If your phone wiring is still connected to the legacy phone network, you may have to do something to you wiring to allow you to hook up the phone that way, but directions are available. Since you say the previous owner had fios phone service, then this configuration has probably already been done).
Call quality is just fine, but is dependent on your internet connection. There are considerations about 911 (just make sure your provider has the proper address information for E911. Other considerations may apply if you live in a rural area.) You phone will not work in a power outage unless your internet and your phone adapter are on a battery backup. Everything else seems to work about the same as it did way back when I had a landline.
Okay so that cost 150 just for that box initial cost and then 3/month in taxes after that? I see thats only for calls within the usa? Fancy features its 10 a month and i see canada is included as well.
But the VOIPO.com… that one is just 8 dollars a month for 24 months… and from that theres no inital cost for the equipment?
I’m quite happy with Ooma. Better voice quality than wireless, but sometimes not as good as the traditional wired landline. The main issue is latency: it takes a half-second for the other party’s words to get reassembled on my end, and they think I haven’t heard, or vice versa, and we step on each other’s words. It’s seldom noticeable on local calls.
I am not in Brooklyn (DC area) and I use Google Voice, for free. Google voice is awesome. I like how it gives a transcript and I can read it via SMS, email, or listen to it on my iPhone or from within GMail itself.
Seriously, check it out. It’s the beast.
What’s the “just in case” you want it for? I have VoIP service through my cable company because it’s basically free with the package. It works fine but my experience is that it’s significantly less rock solid reliable than a traditional pots landline. There’s battery backup and stuff, but we’ve had many outages and I’d guess that in a disaster it would be less likely to work than a pots line. Basically any time your internet connection goes out, so does your phone. That being said, I still don’t bother paying for a phone line. But it’s something to keep in mind depending on what your concerns are.
My daughter, who recently moved, no longer has a landline. She and the BF both have mobile phones and they have a fibre TV/internet package. She says that hardly any of their friends have landlines.
I use a Linksys (Cisco) PAP2T, btw, as the device. Be sure you get an “unlocked” one if you go that way.
Very cheap, very flexible.
VoIP works quite well for regular phone calls (Voice, duh). It can be problematic for FAX machines, burglar alarms, and similar things, so check with the provider to make sure they guarantee those will work (as opposed to saying “well, it probably will” or similar) if those are important to you.
With a provider like Vonage, you get a box with 3 connections - power, Internet, and telephone. Plug each into the corresponding place, register it on the web site, and away you go. That’s what I recommend to my non-technical friends. For the geeks, I suggest voip.ms as there are many more features and pricing is lower, but there’s a lot of setup involved.
In either case, if you want to use the existing phone wiring, you may need to disconnect it from wherever the traditional landline service enters the premise - many times, “disconnected” phone service is still connected for emergency calls and so the telco can provision service without having to send a tech out.
There is one slight advantage to getting your VoIP service from the same place you get your Internet (usually the cable TV company) - if you are using the full capacity of your Internet connection (for example, streaming a movie), your VoIP may stutter or cut in and out. If you get it from your Internet provider, they will usually provision it using a higher priority than regular traffic, so this doesn’t happen.
Lastly, if you absolutely need guaranteed, always-working phone service, stick with a traditional land line. This isn’t about people who are always talking, but for people who have some medical condition (such as needing supplemental oxygen) where being able to reach emergency services is essential. Even if you have a UPS for all of your Internet / VoIP stuff, you’re relying on everything between you and the VoIP provider (equipment you have no control over) also having sufficient battery backup. Even cell service will eventually stop working due to depleted batteries at the cell towers, while old-style landlines will probably continue to work (unless the central office floods, like Broad Street did in downtown Manhattan did during Sandy).
okay so this is my situation.
We have the optimum online modem/router on the 2nd floor of the house. We use the wifi on the 2nd floor always and rarely on the 1st floor.
We want to have 2 phones, one on 1st floor, one on 2nd floor. However, the main use of the phone will be on the 1st floor.
I spoke to voipo support and they told me the adapter they send me will have to be connected to the router. The thing is the router is obviously on the 2nd floor and we cannot move this. They said then you would connect the phone to it and then it would work. I said but i want another phone on the 1st floor and this is going to be the primary phone. Because if we just have main phone on 1st floor and not 2nd floor thats not that bad b/c we dont really need a phone on the 2nd floor. though obviously having both is better.
I told them we previously used verizon landline in our old apartment and we had those corded phones. They said to do what we want to do, we would have to get those cordless phones with 2 sets. So this means we have to buy new cordless phones with 2 headsets correct? They said i could do what i want to do with our 2 corded phones… issue is you would have to have a wire connect from the 1st floor phone to the 2nd floor to connect to the router and thats something we wouldnt want because a wire would have to go up the stairs. Is this correct?
So basically now just get something like this with 2 handsets?
Then order the VOIPO adapter 2 year contract then i get it for $8 a month basically?
Someone on another forum mentioned i dont even need to get cordless phone and we could just use our 2 corded phones and it would work but it require us to
Corded phones: Disconnect Verizon phone line from outside of the house, connect ATA phone port to house phone wall jack on 2nd floor, plug 1 phone in phone wall jack on 2nd floor, plug 1 phone in phone wall jack on 1st floor
Thoughts on this?
Right now the dial tone comes to your house through telco wires that enter through a gray box, probably on an outside wall. You’ll be disconnecting those wires. The new dial tone will come from the box connected to the router. That box probably only has one RJ-11 phone jack on it. So all you need to do is to split the dial tone so it gets piped to both upstairs and downstairs phones. Probably the easiest way is a simple splitter from the dollar store or Home Depot that lets you plug in two phones at once. Into the new phone-next-to-router gizmo, plug the splitter. Into the splitter, plug the downstairs phone and a short phone cord, which you also plug into the old wall jack. Check to see if you have dial tone upstairs.
If you don’t, you’ll need to do a little tracking of where the phone wiring goes and why there might not be a connection from upstairs jack to downstairs jack.
Just to state the obvious… You do know that VoIP uses your Internet line right? The same modem and connection that you use for your computer. So why not use Skype? Paying for VoIP when you can use Skype is redundant. Am I missing something?
Because Skype isn’t a phone system. Not everyone has it or can use it. Many businesses and others block it. You might not be able to install it on your work computer. If the other person has a regular phone line or a cell phone, how do you call her? How does she call you? All the partial solutions Skype provides involve $. Skype just plain isn’t a normal phone system.
I would say you are missing something, that’s for sure.
To Pauly01: Do not buy anything from VTech. Buy a Panasonic or maybe AT&T model.
Ooma sale today: Get an Ooma Telo home phone system for $79.99 - CNET
We don’t have a landline. We’ve been using Vonage and Time-Warner Cable voip since 2003 or so. Both have been easy to setup with good call quality. So, if you have a broadband internet connection I don’t think you can go too far wrong with many of the voip offerings out there.
Skype can make landline calls, you could certainly use it as a VOIP phone system. AFAIK, people can’t call you directly however… it’s only for calling out.
As for workplaces blocking it, I highly doubt they have the capability to even tell if a phone number connects to a Skype account, and I can’t imagine what motive they’d have for blocking it.
We replaced our land-line with a Magic Jack. It’s only $20 a year and has every feature of the landline (call waiting, caller ID, voice mail, etc.) and unlimited local/long distance. We couldn’t be happier with it.
I said that you had some partial functionality in my post. As you point out, calling a regular number (land or cell). But that costs money, which was a key point of the post I was replying to. Skype is only free if the other person is also using Skype. See what I was getting at?
I said absolutely nothing about other people calling out to a Skype user from a regular line. Why? Because that can’t happen.
Businesses block Skype itself for lots of reasons. In general they don’t want people installing any old app on their machines, especially networked ones. Also, Skype has a weird routing system that makes a lot of people nervous (and not just businesses), which doubles down on the “not a good thing” mentality of a competent sysadmin.
Geez, why the hostility?
Sorry for trying to help.
Not hostility. You just made several errors. When I try to correct things, I get very direct.
Regarding Magic Jack: Their current fee is ~$30 a year*. Regular Magic Jack requires a computer that has to always be on if you want the phone always on. Magic Jack Plus is more expensive to start but it plugs into your router. If you’re going that way, may as well do Ooma or some such. Better quality equipment and service. MJ has caused issues for many people.
There are a lot of options for VoIP that are just a few bucks a month.
In any case, find out if your VoIP provider does E911 and how much that costs. Also check into number portability. How much to transfer in and out?
*I love how their ads say “No monthly fee.” and list the yearly fee divided by 12 to show how much per month it is. Nice.