Voice over IP

[BeanoNYC]

Just curious. How many of you techheads use VoIP phone service and how do you like it? I use lingo. It works well, everyonce in a while I have to reboot the Lingo modem. But for 19.99 a month unlimted US/Canada and Western Europe, my phone bill is down around 120 dollars a month! That's a lot more lift tickets. :wink:

 

[BeanoNYC]

for some reason, I can't get the poll to work

 

[ChileMass]

I'm really interested in the replies to this - my Dad has used Vonage for a couple years now and swears by it. Is it really possible to do this? Is the reception decent? Can you get a hands-free phone with one ot he VOIP set-ups or do you have to be in front of your PC to use it? Forgive my newbie-ness......

 

[riverc0il]

i will be switching to vonage VoIP next month when i move. my DSL service isn't available in StJ and mobile phone service is spotty up there at best. so i am switching cable for internet and vonage for VoIP. i haven't had a land line since leaving the parents home years ago, so it will be weird giving up the mobile for a home based phone. it's $25/month unlimited any where with a crap load of features. due to phone number portability, i am going to add a $5 service in which i can have my current (978) local number be an incoming "ghost" number. in other words, i will have my regular 802 number in VT, plus i will retain my current 978 number for incoming calls so friends and family in MA can call me locally. VoIP is SICK SICK SICK and i hope it buries the phone companies who are really raping consumers with a less than technologically superb service.

the only draw back with VoIP is if the power goes out, no 911 access. though VoIP providers have provided ways of accessing 911 through emergency operators, if i was ederly or had a potential emergency situation, i would have back up plans in case of emergency.

 

[riverc0il]

I'm really interested in the replies to this - my Dad has used Vonage for a couple years now and swears by it. Is it really possible to do this? Is the reception decent? Can you get a hands-free phone with one ot he VOIP set-ups or do you have to be in front of your PC to use it? Forgive my newbie-ness......

chile, it's very possible. all you need is a broadband connection (either cable or DSL). i haven't done it so i don't know about reception, but it's gotta be better than my mobile, that's for sure hands free is definitely possible if you have a hands free setup, providers charge extra for accessing the phone through your computer, iirc. it's essentially just like a regular phone, you connect your regular phone line into an adaptor that connects to your broadband modem and hey presto. pretty much any regular telephone should work.

here's a pretty straight forward image on how it works:
http://www.vonage.com/images/VoIPHardwareDiagram.gif

 

[ChileMass]

River -

Thanks for the info. I have to do something about my monthly communication bills. Verizon home phone averages approx $90, wife's Cingular cell is $50, and Charter cable TV is $75. Fortunately, my company picks up my Cingular cell ($75), 2 Verizon home office lines ($110) and Charter hi-speed web service ($43). But that totals $443 per month just for various communication services, which is crazy!!

There has to be a better way.....somebody help me out here......

 

[BeanoNYC]

If you plan on calling Europe a lot you may want to consider Lingo. 20 bucks a month includes Unlimited Western Europe as well. We'll be living in Norway for about 6 weeks this summer visiting my wife's family. I have a Norwegian cell phone number. All cells over there have free incoming. I Will set up Lingo to forward all calls to that number so I can receive my home calls for free while I'm over there.

Here's their website: http://www.lingo.com/

 

[riverc0il]

chile, easy enough... vonage unlimited calling anywhere for 25 a month and tell the wife to ditch the mobile phone and put the money into the retirement plan. can't help you on the TV, but 75 a month (ouch) is one of the many reasons i don't have TV at home (it's far from the biggest reason too). ditch the TV and combined with the above to make communications fees per month only 25 after what your company is picking up

 

[thaller1]

I'm currently researching VoIP for my company. We have three branches and two home-sites. It sounds like a great option for us. We had a rep from Omni come out to give us a demo. What a great system. Very little bugs and lots of options.

My company has a lot of sales people out on the road and the option to have them log into the phone system wherever they are is fantastic.

 

[Angus]

VOIP products are certainly maturing.

I don't have any technical experience with them - although I am a telecom professional.

Here's a couple of personal observations, use a cable modem or dsl line at home and it works great and saves $$$$ - a close friend does this for his home office and the quality is excellent. remember cable modems are a shared bus architecture so there is a chance of contention but if your cable company does it right, you shouldn't have a problem. dsl with guaranteed bandwidth would eliminate any issues there.

on the other hand, a former company used VOIP for its pbx and there were always problems, I don't the specifics (manufacturer/model/software) but it never seemed ready for prime time. I talk with a friend who works for a (the)leader in IP networking products and their office system sounds crappy sometimes - echo suppression/correction just not doing the job & higher level service features fail frequently

 

[Paul]

VOIP products are certainly maturing.

I don't have any technical experience with them - although I am a telecom professional.

Here's a couple of personal observations, use a cable modem or dsl line at home and it works great and saves $$$$ - a close friend does this for his home office and the quality is excellent. remember cable modems are a shared bus architecture so there is a chance of contention but if your cable company does it right, you shouldn't have a problem. dsl with guaranteed bandwidth would eliminate any issues there.

on the other hand, a former company used VOIP for its pbx and there were always problems, I don't the specifics (manufacturer/model/software) but it never seemed ready for prime time. I talk with a friend who works for a (the)leader in IP networking products and their office system sounds crappy sometimes - echo suppression/correction just not doing the job & higher level service features fail frequently

I design WANs some of which incorporate VoIP. The biggest problem is latency. Once your call is routed to the Internet, there is no guarantee that the packet will get forwarded, or get the priority queueing it requires. In cases where you're using it on a LAN or WAN, it works fine usually because it will be on a cell-switched ATM backbone. The voice packets are given a high CoS priority, and will be queued before data packets. Once it goes to the internet, there are no guarantees.