Community Newsletter: Q&A: The advantage and disadvantages of using VoIP

I think it all depends upon the VoIP service provider.

In reply to: The advantage and disadvantages of using VoIP by Lee Koo (ADMIN) 

Dear Maria M.,

My wife and I live in North-central New Jersay and subscribe to the Optimum Voice VoIP service provided by our local cable company, Cablevision. We've had the service for well over a year, now, and it has been nothing short of spectacular, especially by comparison to the service provided by our local POTS provider, Verizon. POTS service in this area is plagued by ancient infrastructure which Verizon is unwilling to upgrade, so our phone service was interrupted several times a year, sometimes for surprisingly long periods. And while our VoIP service hasn't been 100% trouble-free, service interruptions are much less frequent and generally short in duration. A bonus is that the sound quality provided by the Cablevision-supplied Motorola SBV-5120 cable "modem" is much, much better than over our old POTS line, both sending and receiving, and we don't need to mention how inexpensive the service is, for it's practially free compared to what Verizon and MCI were charging us. Another bonus is that, without fanfare, Motorola designed their voice-capable cable modems to support even the oldest telephones and it works fine with our 1935 Western Electric D1 set, the type of phone with a mechanical ringer in a box on the wall, and both the ringer and mechanical dial work just fine. Most other cable modems and stand-alone VoIP boxes don't bother supporting old-fashioned ringers and so-called pulse dialing.

That all said, I'm afraid that I must report that while Cablevision does a very good job with VoIP, at least for us and friends and family in this area, VoIP is not always so trouble-free. I have a friend in Brooklyn, NY, for example, who used to subscribe to Earthlink VoIP over his ADSL line provided by Verizon. He had constant service interruptions and almost all connections were marred by packet loss and the resulting sound degradation, which made people sound like they were gargling or speaking under water. He switched to Time Warner cable but kept Earthlink VoIP. His service is now a good deal more reliable, but he is still plagued by poor sound quality, though it's much better than it was over the much lower bandwidth ADSL connection. My parents and In-Laws, both in the Philadelphia area, subscribe to Comcast's VoIP service and, in both cases, the service is reasonably good though not by any stretch excellent. The sound quality is generally fine, though not as consistently good as with Cablevision, but there are frequent interruptions, some of them lasting days at a time when they first signed-up, and Comcast has proven inept, at least in these two, anecdotal cases, at solving them. Comcast supplied both my parents and In-Laws Arris cable modems which appear to be inferior in design to Motorola cable modems, though I'm on shaky ground, here, this due to limited experience. An example is that when my parents first got their service, they were plagued with problems involving phones not ringing and their answering machine not answering. They had a multi-handset Uniden system and Comcast actually informed my father that their phones and answering machine were incompatible with VoIP, in general. My father bought all new phones, gave me his Unidens and I'm using them without any problems whatsoever with my Motorola cable modem and Cablevision voice service.

I don't know the quality of Comcast technical support in your area, but if it's as bad as it is in our parental region, I wouldn't recommend switching any time soon unless you can get a free trial with a no-cost option to switch back to POTS service.

Regards,
Jeff