So Tell Me About VoIP/Broadband Phone Service

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m interested in the idea, and the prices are out bloody standing, but I have some concerns about the network uptime, and the possible regulation of internet telephony, both from a commercial and residential standpoint.

It’s a newer technology, and as such is subject to glitches and problems, but I’d like to know if anyone else has experience with it, good or bad. What are the pros and cons, the extra expenses, and so on.

Should I go with it, or not?

2

I haven’t tried it yet. This company has a nifty little phone that plugs into a USB port on your PC.

http://www.vipernetworks.com/

3

I was looking at doing this. The main problems are availability, reliability, and lack of 911 service. A landline is going to be infinitely more reliable than any Internet access you have, especially given that if the power goes out, a landline phone will continue to work properly. Basic 911 service is not available on VOIP phones, a 911 call will be routed to a generic emergency calling center which will NOT be local to you, have access to your address or other information that a real 911 callcenter would, or be able to dispatch local emergency services.

4

I use Vonage. We do have 911 service (though I haven’t had need to use it, luckily). Our rate is under $40 a month for unlimited local/national calls, and something ridiculously low like 5 cents a minute for international (we have a friend in Germany).

Pros:

  • Cheap.
  • Stable bill (doesn’t go up and down ea. month like we had w/ Verizon et al.) = no surprises
  • Good voicemail, and options like call waiting, automatic call forwarding, caller ID (a must, IMO), etc.
  • ZERO telemarketers. Even during that 3-month lag between when I got the number and signed up for the DNCall registry.
  • Fax machine is totally compatible with it. (Although I have to tell it to not jump to voice mail as quick).
  • Can access all my voicemail/forwarding/etc. prefs. from a web page. Neat.

Cons:

  • Voice quality varies. There is often a faint “echo” or delay of my own voice. Plus, there is a pretty prominent noise gate in effect (as with cell phone calls) to save badnwidth; that’s occasionally annoying.
  • Service quality varies. It’s usu. pretty good; we’ll occasionally have it bump incoming calls straight to voicemail for no apparent reason. Overall, service has gotten better and better as time has passed (I guess they’re ironing out the kinks.)
  • You’re dead in a power outage. Remember the blackout this summer? We had no phone service.
  • Number portability. We’re moving to a town 60 miles away in a few months, and we won’t have to change our phone number. Technically, we could move to California and keep our phone number, if we wanted.
  • limited phone jacks. All phone service within your house comes out of a single box (which attaches to your ethernet router/hub). So you have to plug extensions and multipliers into that, and plug your phones into those… Not a problem if you have a small apartment (we do right now, and just keep the cordless phone base plugged in near the router with the handset out in the living room during the daytime), but def. an issue for homeowners. The literature strictly advises that you do NOT plug the adapter box into your house’s telephone wiring–you could severely damage it. Now, if you wired the house yourself, and know how to permanently disconnect the phone company’s incoming line, then go for it. Otherwise, you’ll face some restrictions.
    In short, it’s pretty good, very cheap, has a very stable price, and lots of features (call waiting, caller ID, etc.). But it’s not as reliable, or quite as convenient from a wiring standpoint, as a traditional phone.

I like it. But my one piece of advice: Get the best hub/router you can afford. Our first one gave us nothing but trouble (if your cable modem connection gets “dropped” by your ISP on a regular basis, and your modem/hub can’t reset the connection automatically, you’ll find yourself plugging and unplugging the damn things all the time in order to get phone service). I switched to a big-name manufacturer’s box, and have had few problems since.

5

An ad from Vonage peaked my interest in this technology. I know that a company can’t provide local phone service without 911 capability, even in phase 0 and 1 of wireless 911, you can at least get a call back number. The power thing worries me though, that in mind, it’s probably not a good solution for mission critical business applications, which is another reason I’ve been investigating it. The group I work for is going to, simultaneously, merge and expand, which will add remote sites with end users will have to connect to the central station to clock in, etc. I thought VoIP would be a good solution for this, but it seems like it’s wait-and-see. Thanks all.