Community weekly poll: Do you use VoIP service at home?
- 6/7/05 12:58 PM
VOIP
by jkeine - 6/9/05 3:25 AM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The service is fantastic. For 35 bucks a month I get unlimited calls anywhere in the US + Canada along with a separate fax line. I have literally cut my monthly phone bill to less then a third of what I used to pay. For the record I am using Vonage.
VoIP not best...
by par61 - 6/9/05 5:26 AM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
VoIP can be great for business use, short calls or if all your family and friends are long distance from your current residence, but there are too many "hidden" issues and costs to consider. First, your computer and your broadband ISP quality. Both have a MAJOR impact on your VoIP service quality. If your computer slows down pretty quickly during long sessions (full cache), your VoIP conversation can start to break up and actually become worse than a cell call in a "dead zone". If your broadband is through cable modem, the more people in your neighborhood that are online, the more likely your call quality will degrade. Plus, if your ISP is down (like "cable maintenace" in the area), your VoIP service is down! Not to mention that not all areas or providers have 911 on VoIP yet. Then there is the cost of your broadband to consider. True, most of us are already paying that cost but most wouldn't consider that as a part of our phone service cost. With VoIP, you must have the broadband so it IS a part of your phone costs, whether it's through your phone line or cable or satellite. Until ISPs and computer systems can be totally reliable and guaranteed not to crash, slow down, etc., I'll stick with my landline and just shop for the best "package" deal. Since SBC lowered their DSL price to only $14.95 a month, my bills including phone, voice mail, and DSL are about $15 LESS than just my cable ISP was running me and unless a phone pole is knocked down, I'm always up...phone AND ISP.
VOIP doesn't work for the deaf or hard of hearing
by pstauff - 6/9/05 7:25 AM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Currently VOIP is not supported by most equipment that deaf and hard of hearing people use. (captioned telephones). Until there is support for that, we will be staying with our landline.
Here's one example of a captioned phone:
http://www.captionedtelephone.com/index.phtml
voip and captioned phone
by donp33 - 6/17/05 6:27 AM In reply to: VOIP doesn't work for the deaf or hard of hearing by pstauffIf it is a voip service that works with a standard phone, why wouldn't it work with a captioned phone? Isn't the text sent by some coding that is constrained to fit in a standard phone frequency range?
Like or not, lots of long distance calls are already converted to data packets so I don't see that a good voip would work any worse than existing long distance circuits.
I use it and it's usefull
by gpmonter - 6/9/05 8:19 AM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I am an installer for LCD with advertising, controlled by a CPU. This CPU is conected via internet to a server, for actualization propouses.
When I install all the hardware, I don't need to wait that the supplier of DSL can give me the line, simply I conect it, and it is done!
Other point is that the supplier makes the invoice according to the adress and the phone user, but not to the principal custom: the advertising company. In the VoIP I can use it everywhere and the invoice has the same adress and customer.
We use Packet 8
by only1kiku - 6/9/05 12:15 PM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Our experience has not been so good. There is a lot of fading in an out. Either we cannot hear or the person with whom we are speaking can not hear us. Since my husband uses this phone service for his home-based business he has logged a lot of customer complaints.
We are considering trying Vonage's service or just using our cell phones, since we have to pay that bill anyway.
While I love the idea of VoIP particularly how Packet 8 allows us to use our regular phone to make IP calls, I am not certain that VoIP is ready for at home use.
Coincidently, I recently found a used IP business phone for under 100 USD. It was an earlier version of the Avaya phone we use at my place of employment. The phone has many features like directory lookup through our server, confrencing, transfer calls, multiple lines, etc. These phones work well except that the sound quality is not as good as land line. Perhaps if the price of IP phones went down then people could buy them for at home use and then just use them with an IP service. The downside would be that you may need to leave a computer on all the time depending on what phone features you want to use or the requirements of the VoIP service provider.
Know How, No Problem
by priorsayin - 6/9/05 3:19 PM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've read the HORRIBLE reviews on Vonage VOIP and had to laugh. If you can't figure out how to use Vonage with your home network, then you deserve a land line & the enormous phone bill you swallow each month.
Really - it is simple and it works great. Just make certain you have plenty of bandwidth. I use Vonage for home and business, two different accounts, all on the same line as my 3 phones & three computers. I use Comcast for broadband.
Thank you Vonage.
VOIP not ready for replacing analog land line
by llellis - 6/9/05 5:59 PM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I used Vonage for more than a year before switching to Lingo. They finally got Vonage to be pretty reliable although Lingo's introductory price was just too tempting to ignore. Lingo still has issues with dropped calls and audio transport going half-duplex from time to time. The fundamental problem is IPv4, which has no support for Quality of Service. IPv6 will address it, but will be slow coming to the public internet. In the meantime, when Lingo's service works (which is much of the time), it is the most cost effective way for me to talk to friends and colleagues in North America and Western Europe. In my opinion, Lingo is about as reliable as Cingular's GSM service.
VoIP it's worth the money !
by ngoron - 6/11/05 5:31 PM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I was introduced to VoIP back when almost everything
on the internet was free. There were a few free internet phone services available. I chose Dialpad's
service because I liked there user interface. I tried
to introduce as many people as I possible could to it
but not too many of the people that I knew had made the switch to broadband (TCI Cable Internet). The call quality was awesome. My brother in Kansas had no
idea that I was in Hercules, Ca calling him from my computer. Nor, did my aunt in Tacoma, Wa or my cousin
in L.A. So, now that I have to pay for it at almost 1/2 the cost with much more features than PacBell (SBC) Vonage has become my telephone service. And, I
am a very satisfied customer.
Vonage
by retromaven - 6/13/05 8:15 AM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Have used Vonage for over 6 months now and have had absolutely NO PROBLEMS. It took 5 minutes to set up, I got the 911 online and then said buh-bye to $96 flat rate calling from my land line carrier and have been thrilled with my $24.99 + $2 tax service from Vonage.
I have even gotten free months for recommending them to others and the other parties have been just as happy. I'd highly recommend VoiP (especially Vonage) to anyone. I'll NEVER pay for a land line again.
Yes I use VOIP at home
by jerryp4809 - 6/17/05 9:19 PM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use my VOIP line mostly for my fax machine and all my long distance calls. I am leary of giving up my land line because about every few days my VOIP adapter fails to sustain my service and I have to reboot the adapter before my phone works again. It seems that every time my wife goes to make a call she says "I don't have a dial tone...what's wrong with this phone?" I thought I would give it a good try because I have a high-speed cable modem and the VOIP is only $20.00 per month. I will probably drop it after one year if it continues to be unreliable. I have no problem with voice quality. That is OK although you can't talk over one another as well as on a land line. It is like a cell phone in that regard. We have our electric go off quite often in this neighborhood too. One of my landline extensions is the old fashion dial phone and it is always reliable when the electric goes off.
I'm considering it but not now because.....
by indiecds - 6/20/05 12:41 PM In reply to: Do you use VoIP service at home? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I'm considering it but not now because we live in a rural area where dial-up is all that is presently available. We expect cable to be available within 6 months.
One concern I had was whether or not the number of extensions were limited and if so to how many?
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