Broadband (VoIP) phone services: too good to be true?

Poststructural Pub
1

Heya,

I’ve been looking into boradband phone services for the past few days, and even though the technology is relatively new and it’s a little chaotic right now, it seems there’s really a way to save good bucks if you switch to broadband phone. But it all depend on your current setup and your needs.

I need the internet, and will always need it, so I’m never thinking “what if I don’t have the internet”. I depend on the internet more than my phone, so my phone is almost secondary.

That being said, primus.ca offers broadband phone for only 19.95$CAN with pretty much unlimited services (voice mail, caller ID, etc) and if you buy the Voice Gateway for 69.95$, the service is only 15.95$ per month. So instead of paying 35$ (with taxes) with my current Bell Canada phone line (which only has voice mail service) I could have a phone line for 18.50$ per month.

This is also a phone line you can “bring” with you wherever you go. You could go in China, bring your Voice Gateway, plug it to broadband and there you go, you can get calls and make phone calls as if you were home.

The drawback to this is that if there’s a power failure, then I don’t have any phone. My service depends on my internet and power. But since I havent had any power failure in the past year, and no internet failure, it seems pretty safe to me. I could buy a small UPS if I wanted to keep the phone running in case of a power failure.

What seems really strange to me is that Bell Canada is offering it’s own Broadband phone service for pretty much the same price as their normal phone service. There’s another company in Canada, cia.com, that offers FREE high speed internet if you get their broadband phone service for 40$ per month, but I heard horror stories about the company so I don’t think they’re ready it.

Bottom line, does any of you have experience with VoIP phone services, is it running smoothly for you? Have you heard of people who are using the service?

2

I have known a couple of people with broadband phone…one uses it to run conference calls for her whole family since it’s insanely cheap for her to ring people. The other was a girl I rented a room from once, and when the power went out for a whole week (ice storm) we were stuck with no communication methods at all. Well, I was - she had a mobile phone.

I’ve just gotten a programme called Skype, though I haven’t tried it yet…it’s something like 1.2 pence per minute to call from my computer to a telephone in the US. Might be worth looking into, if you don’t plan on making huge numbers of calls. It’s been around for years (I first tried it in 2001 I think) so they’ve probably got things running pretty smoothly by now.

3

Marrying an Englishman has really made you sound British, Avanutria. :slight_smile:

4

You must be joking! Beth still says “gotten”! :stuck_out_tongue:

5

I think that it was the pencive thing…'course the programme didn’t help any! :smiley:

6

Nothing to do with marrying a Brit…you try writing a dissertation in American English at a British uni without raising eyebrows..

As for the pence thing, I still find five pence pieces on the ground and think “ooh, a nickel!”

7

I gotta get accepted in a British school before I can dissertate in it.

8

But if you go to a Scottish University, you can hear the coin drop behind you before you accurately put your foot on it. If the soles of your shoes are thin enough you can tell what denomination coin it is and whether it’s heads or tails. There was a time when I could do this. Well, the first bit, anyway.

Yeah we still call 100th of a pound a penny. I hear that Americans call one cent a penny: what is that all about?

9

1/100 of a dollar was known as a penny long before 1/100 of a pound was known as a penny. :slight_smile:

10

Back to the topic of VoIP…

My phone is with BellSouth.
My DSL is Earthlink over the Bellsouth line.
Earthlink was (and probably still is) reselling Vonage VoIP service.
I tried the Earthlink for 2 weeks and cancelled my account to get a full refund with return of the equipment.

The problems I found were constant dropouts. It was nowhere acceptable for replacement of a land line. Huh? and Say again? were used as much as the conversation. DSL performance to the computer was also affected by way of hesitation and speed degradation. Save your money and get Skype. I have used Skype and I have a relative who uses Skype on a regular basis for calls to Italy. It appears to be better than the Earthlink Truevoice I had for 2 weeks and it’s free for my calls in the US.

Can I get rid of the phone company? Not around here. You MUST have a wired phone service for them to piggyback the DSL signal. There was (when I checked this) only one company who ran dedicated wire to supply DSL without phone service. The thruput was nearly double than phone/DSL lines but so was the cost.

A few suggestions…
Make sure you can get around having DSL without phone service.

Don’t have them port your phone to the VoIP service until AFTER it is up and running and you are satisfied. Remember these VoIP numbers are for virtual phones. They are easy to change. Transferring a phone number to VoIP may take a few weeks. You can be up and running with a VoIP phone number within a few minutes.

Do have your telephone forward calls to your VoIP number. Make sure the virtual number is within your calling range or you will be subject to toll calls. If the virtual number you want it out of your calling area you must setup another VoIP virtual number and have those calls forwarded to the local number.

11

I have some experience with it, though I have not opted for it myself, yet. First of all, you need a high-speed internet connection. As far as I know, these companies like Vonage and Primus are not selling you that, so you will still need to pay for that from your phone company or your cable tv company. Add that to your VoIP costs and your savings decrease.

VoIP goes down with power outages, as you’ve noted. VoIP can not identify your location if you ever need to call 911 (they’re still trying to figure out a solution for this). VoIP works great, except when it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it sounds like you’re talking to someone on a really cheap cordless phone set; you’re asking them to repeat every second word to make out what they’re saying. Still, there are great savings in long distance to be had within North America, if that is where the majority of your phone costs are.

Even with the uneven performance, enough businesses and people have found they are willing to accept the lower quality sound for the increased savings. Its pretty much caveat emptor at the moment, but there is no question this will be the main form of land service within the next ten years.

djm

12

I got cable modem, not DSL, and it’s an ultra high-speed at 10mbps download speed. But a land-line isnt required with VoIP here, you just need an active broadband connection, it doesnt matter if it’s DSL or cable.

Yeah thanks, this is exactly whay they suggest on their website. They say we should wait for VoIP service to work before cancelling the land phone.

13

But as I said, I need a high-speed connection anyway, so I don’t mind. I could pay 18.50$ a month instead of 35$, it’s a worthy saving in my opinion, I really like to lower my mandatory monthly expenses.

The way I see it, if I had a family or even living with a girlfriend, I’d think twice about not having an efficient 911. But for now I don’t care, if I die then so be it :slight_smile:

So now the only thing that get me “worried” is the “random” quality the service might have. If the connection drops a lot, it sucks. Maybe the best way to go is try it for one month, keep Bell’s line meanwhile (because there’s a 55$ reconnection fee) and then cancel the land line if the “trial” worked well.

By the way I know about Skype, but my problem isnt long distances, I seldom call long distance, my problem is getting rid of an expensive land phone service, and taking pleasure in telling Bell Canada “Hello-goodbye!”.

Thanks for the answers so far, please keep the information coming if you got any more :slight_smile:

14

Right, you neglected to mention this. VoIP should work the same over Cable or DSL.

You mentioned using a small UPS should you encounter a power failure. I figure you would not get more than an hour or so before it shuts down. In an emergency, I suggest a power inverter connected to your car battery.
How far is the car from the modem? 75 feet of extension cord should work fine. That will run for hours.
I was without power for days after a hurricane and easily ran a desktop computer, 19" monitor, speakers, DSL modem, cell phone charger all through my 650VA UPS connected to a 400 watt power inverter in the cigarette lighter of my car. I would start the car every few hours and let it run for 10-15 minutes to recharge the battery.

15

Do you have a cell phone?

16

I do not! :smiley:

17

Well, first of all I don’t have a car :slight_smile: Even if I had, I’m on the 5th floor in a block downtown, so using the car for power would be impossible. But since I’m downtown, electricity is really efficient. But yeah, I get the point. There was the famous blizzard in Quebec years ago that cut the power pretty much everywhere, so that would suck if I had broadband phone.

Also, I don’t have a cell phone, and proud of this, but yeah, the only alternative is to run down the block to the nearest public phone, or find a cute neighbor who has a phone :slight_smile:

The other potential problem: let’s stay I got technical problems with my internet, how am I supposed to call the internet company without a phone? That would suck.

18

Telepathy? Its even cheaper than VoIP :smiley: Not to be a wet blanket, but how much are you really saving if you don’t need a break from LD bills?

djm

19

Three best means of communication?
Telephone, telegraph, tell a woman.

20

Tough choice, isn’t it?