VOIP Pros and Cons

[materia3]

I am contemplating changing my phone service to VOIP via my local cable company and I was wondering if anyone has studied or is aware of the pros and cons of this move.

The monthly price is the same as my current provider for
unlimited local and L.D. calling (US and Canada)
It includes caller ID, call waiting and call forwarding.
The only advantage seems to be (right now) a 3 cents a minute
savings on some overseas calls I make but this comes to two or
three dollars a month in savings.

The cable company claimstheir VOIP also works with the 911 systrem which shows my address should a 911 call be placed and that no other VOIP provider can do this.

I also send a lot of faxes locally and wonder if there is any
problem with this feature.

The cable company also tells me that if there is a power failure
my phone won't work and I can't use an old fashioned phone which derives power from phone company sources.

Any other pros and cons would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Kaylee]

I've been wondering the same thing, particularly the difference in speech quality over the telephone both incoming and outgoing. This is a big consideration for me.

I know many people that don't hear well so I can't call them on my cell phone, and this is really the main reason that I still have a landline phone. If a VoIP phone has the same quality I would switch.

 

[CurtC]

I've had VoIP for about a year and a half, over my home cable modem. My provider is Vonage, and I'm very happy with it. It costs my $27 a month, including tax, for unlimited long distance calling, call waiting, caller ID, voice mail, etc. etc.

The voice quality is indistinguishable from regular phone service. I've never noticed any degradation even when I know that I have lots of data going over my internet connection.

Faxes go through just fine, although I don't use that very often. In the event of a power failure, I will depend on my cell phone. My internet connection is very reliable, and I haven't had any phone outages that I'm aware of caused by the cable modem being down. There was one time a couple of weeks ago when my internet was down, but the phone still worked. It apparently was a DNS problem with the cable service provider, but the Vonage box used direct IP addresses so was oblivious to those problems.

 

[garys_2k]

I switched to Vonage about a year ago and have been happy with the service. YMMV, as a lot depends on the stability (jitter and latency) of your broadband connection. I also invested in a UPS for the head end gear (cable modem, router and phone adapter) and wired it into my house's phone lines.

I'd give it a 9.8 out of 10, as there have been a couple of brief outages but nothing serious. You can have a cell phone as a backup for incoming calls if your Internet connection dies.

 

[CurtC]

One of the newer features is that you can set the Vonage service to forward to another number *if* your Vonage box is offline for whatever reason. So if the power goes out, calls will forward to your cell phone.

Another cool feature - when we visit my in-laws, we can take the box with us and hook it up to their high-speed internet, and our local phone line is available there. I know people who have taken it to Japan, and used their "local" phone from the other side of the world.

 

[Kaylee]

CurtC and Garys --

Thanks for your posts. I 'm going to give it a try.

 

[davefoc]

Can you do VoIP over DSL? Does anybody have any experience with that?

 

[CurtC]

You can do VoIP over any 100-base-T ethernet as long as you have 90kb/s bandwidth.

With DSL, most people have that in conjuction with their regular phone line. With cable internet, I was able to sever my connection to the phone company completely. I guess in theory you could have the DSL service, and not get your phone company's regular phone service. I don't know how much they would charge for DSL if they didn't have your phone service too.

 

[CBL4]

I have Vonage also and am pretty happy with it. There are more outages than with a old fashioned phone company but it is a lot cheaper. We have a separate fax line ($5/month?) and it works fine. I believe has unlimited calling in the US and Canada for only $25.

The quality is almost as good a normal phone even though we support three houses plus a two person office via one cable modem. (3 phones, one fax, 6 computers, 1 wireless router and 1 wired router.)

The Vonage part was easy to hook up and most of our problems have been with other stuff. Sometimes we have to rely on our cell phones.

CBL

 

[Zep]

Apart from products like Skype, what would be some recommendations for using a standard PC and s/w to run VoIP? I'm interested in doing this regularly to interstate and international contacts.