Who heer uses a VoIP telephone service?

I have been using a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone service for about a month now. I was just interested in howmany other CPFers were doing the same.
I went with BroadVoice. The features for the price can't be beat. For $20 a month you get all the features caller ID, voicemail, 3way, call transfer, plus mutch more. As well as unlimited calling to anywhere in the US and Canada. Or for $10 a month you get all the same features but are limited to free calling only within your own state, 3.9 cents/min anywhere in US. Some of the other neet features are simultaneous ring, where when someone calles it will ring the VoIP phone and a nother number of my choosing (like my cell phone) at the same time. Which ever one I pick up first is where the call is transfered to. You get to manage your acount online so that it is easy to change or modify any of your features yourself.

The setup fees for starting the acount, adapter, shipping, taxes exc came to around $75.00 You get an adapter that plugs into your broadband conection and then you just plug your regular home phone into it.

I am quite happy with my service for the price but there are a few little things I have noticed. It does not seem to be 100% reliable and some of the features like called ID did not work at first until I called tech suport. The time on my voice mail and caller ID is still wierd. And you can't as of yet call 911 on it (this is suposed to change in the future). But fore someone who lived with only a cell phone for over a year it works nice.

There's a big difference between your normal telephone service and VOIP service.

The old telephone companies were given the responsibility of providing telephone service as a utility necessary for well being. They designed hardware that was very failure resistant and that could even have parts replaced while it was in use. The phone company even supplied the power that ran the phones so that an electrical outage would not mean that you lost phone service.

Modern IP networks are not very robust. This is bacause the cost of duplicating every piece of equipment is prohibitive and does not add a penny to their profits.

You stand a good chance that you will lose your 'phone' in a power outage. Without power, your equipment at home will die, your ISP will go offline, the DSL line may or may not stay powered, the cable modem will die and the cable amplifiers down the block will die.

You can add a few UPSes to take care of short power hits, but that does not mean that you will have internet access or VOIP.

I've used VOIP in business environments, and it can work well. Most businesses lose their PBX (and thus their phones) in a power outage anyway.

Good luck on your VOIP. Don't sell your cell phone /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Daniel

I just started using it and I love the price! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Now if you have a power outage thats another story!

I still have and use my cell phone in case of emergancy (hopefully). I have a moderate PV solar system powere system with 20K Watt worth of battery bank not to mention what is produced during daylight hours. Though the reliability of the cable ISP may be a problem. Even if VoIP and Cell fail I am still a Ham Radio Operator so I am not concerned. It usually will works as it should which takes care of nearly all of my calling from home and relieves the minuts un my Cell Phone.

O and their international rates are out of this world. A while ago I hade to place a 30min call to Isreal over the regular land line and it came to $60.00 thats $2.00 a minute. With BroadVoice it would have been $.05 a minute.

It is not a life dependent phone line but it does work for what I traditionally use a home phone for.