Any voip users in CPF?

Anyone using voip over their broadband connection? Which service are you using and what has your experience been with it?

I use Skype and it works fine. Of course you will need a good broadband connection for it to work well. Sometimes, I chat with the local CPFers /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I am a SATISFIED Vonage customer. Only outages I have had were attributed to the local ISP (Comcast) during their upgrade to 6 MBPS downstream conversion. Total downtime over the past 6 months = 1 hour. Voice quality is indistinguishable from traditional landline service (POTS). I've sold most of my family on the service and they have no regrets.


Abbie

Of you guys that use, have you given up your POTS? My DSL was down almost all of last weekend so I do not fully trust the service although I guess I still could have used my cell phone.

I have been using Iconnecthere.com and it's been good so far, the sound is very clear, and the rates are good.

AlexGT

I am a satisfied vonage user, I did have problems with my router and had to send it back so I am currently without phone (the power adapter died) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif and am waiting for the new one to arrive to my APO.

The sound quality is the same as standard phone lines and I was able to pick the location and area code of my phone that was the selling point to me being at an APO (overseas)

Doug

I have Vonage, and I LOVE the voicemail to email feature.

The only problem is that it is not available in my area code yet. I have it mainly for my wife for LD as her family lives on the island of Newfoundland. WE use it for LD, and we use our cellulars for local. I killed my POTS line 3 weeks ago, and have not looked back yet. I do not expect to.

To the best of my knowledge, not available for my area code either. A fellow at work got it, but has long distance Michigan phone number.

Additionally, it was a big news item here that "911" doesn't work with it, at least with subscribers in this area.

In order for 911 to work correctly, the user has to register th eir physical location with Vonage (or whichever carrier they use) each time they relocate the unit. If you take your Vonage router with you on a trip, you have to tell them the location of your hotel, otherwise they'll send the ambulance to your house. The FCC has just cracked down on this issue and is requiring MUCH clearer instructions about this from both the voip providers as well as the broadband ISPs. Apparently there have been a few unfortunate incidents because of the customer's lack of knowledge of this.

I have used packet8 as my only home phone since Nov. 2004. No problems at all except no phone during power outages, no phone during internet outages. Other than that u can't beat it. ~$22/month for umlimited calls in the US. I don't use the long distance that much, but this was cheaper than my local service - and I hated them. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I started out with Broadvoice and was happy with them for 6 months untill my phone died for a week while they were doing a system upgrade. I switched to Vonage and have had good reliability but I think the call quality is slightly less than my Broadvoice service was, on just about every call I make I have atleast 1 short second of garble that sounds like when you have a verry poor conection on your cell phone. It could posibly have something to do with my internet conection but I have COX cable? As far as outages I have nearly the whole house on a solar powered UPS and we still have cell phones.

Been using Vonage since May and love it. You can't beat $15 per month. I've signed up 3 friends too so I get 2 months credit based on their plan. They've all signed up for the unlimited plan which is $25 per month so I really haven't paid a bill since the initial one. I forget how much my credit still is.

Very good voice quality.

I'd recommend it.

Eric

Thanks for all of the info, guys. I've purchased a voip router but I've been holding off on signing up. I may decide to take the plunge and sign up.

Tyson, is the voicemail-to-email feature a .wav or .mp3 file conversion?

Brlux, the whole house is on a solar powered UPS? Wow! Care to offer more details of the system?

Not recently. Used a Voice communication feature in an IRC client called vIRC back as far as 2000. On dialup then, and still now. Quality's same if not slightly better than normal phone line. No major lag provided your net connection's not too busy. Maybe 1/4-1/2 second on 33.6K which I was using then (still using that modem in the other PC).

Extremely useful I thought.

OOH! PICK ME! i use FireFly because skype is very proxyserver-unfriendly, and it is identical if not better quality than a landline....

neg

I have been on Vonage on a cable broadband connection (Time Warner Cable company and Earthlink ISP) for about 6 weeks and I am personally basically satisfied, although I have already had several outages lasting over an hour. I know this was a problem with my ISP at least once and probably the other times as well. I am satisfied with it if the outages become more rare. My wife is a stay-at-home mom who lives with the phone to her ear and she expects 100% reliability. When there is no dial tone, it becomes my problem. If I were single, I wouldn't care. We will cancel if the outages are more frequent than a few per year, and I am pretty sure they will be. I just don't need the hassle of my wife complaining about it when it is down. There is more to go wrong with VoIP than landline because an outage with any one of the following will knock out your service: Vonage, ISP, Cable, electricity. The phone company is more reliable.

The sound quality is generally on par with land line, but not 100% of the time. You will notice occasional minor problems with connections or noise, etc., but nothing I find annoying. It is fine in my opinion.

911 is not quite up to par in most areas in that the operator will not see your name/address/phone number in most cases and your call will probably be routed to a general number at your local police station rather than the emergency 911 call center. Vonage is supposedly upgrading to a true 911 system (E911) nationwide gradually. Some VoIP companies have no 911 service at all and at least one has more E911 than Vonage and this may be the biggest distinction between the various companies.

All in all, it is a good way to save money, but you are compromising on the service reliability/quality somewhat vs. the local phone company. Since most people have a cell phone to use when necessary, this is probably not a major problem for most people. Or it would be ideal as a second phone line. We are paying less money for both the VoIP and a broadband connection than we were paying for a similar unlimited calling plan with the pnone company before. So we basically get free broadband and save a little money, too. And no longer have the expense of the dialup ISP account. The unlimited plan on Vonage is $25, really about 27.50 with taxes and fees. There are competitors pricing at about $20 and I would check them out first.

Concerning number portability, keep this in mind: If you want to port your current phone number to Vonage, etc. then you should not cancel your phone service. Request a port through Vonage and let them cancel it for you. I have heard complaints that Vonage can be really slow getting this completed. And if you ever want to port your number away from Vonage, they reportedly will not allow it. Their position is that they do not have to because they are not governed by the FCC, not being a "telephone company" in the technical sense. So you may lose your phone number if you decide to dump Vonage (or whatever VoIP service you use). This does not seem like a very customer-friendly policy to me.

A lot of people do not know how easy it is to route the VoIP service into their home's telephone wiring network so that all of your house's phone jacks are active and you can use all of your existing telephone equipment as usual. You basically just disconnect the phone company from your house at the junction box outside your house, then use a standard phone cord to plug your phone adapter into a wall jack. This will work in most cases depending on some variables such as the kind of phone adapter you have and your existing total ringer equivalency number, etc. There is more detail searchable on the net.

If you choose not to wire VoIP through your home wiring and you leave the phone company connected, I found in my case that even though I disconnected my phone company service, I was still able to pick up the phone and get a dial tone from the phone company. I could not place a normal call, but I could call 911. This can be a way to overcome the 911 limitations of VoIP.

In summary, I would say to give it a try. Especially if you are not a real stickler for 100% perfect service reliability and/or you have a very stable broadband connection. Maybe even keep your old phone service while trying out VoIP so you can fall back easily.

And finally, if you do sign up with VoIP, see if you can get a referral bonus for a fourm member. I know Vonage has a referral program, and probably others do too. It's free money for someone.

Just an update to my last post immediately above: My damn broadband connection is down again this morning, so no phone service. I have actually only been on VoIP for 4 weeks, not the 6 I originally estimated, and the outages have been too numerous (at least 4 outages of at least several hours each). I just don't have a reliable connection, so I will probably have to cancel.

I do not have time to get these trouble calls from my wife, try to troubleshoot the problem over the phone, sit on hold with the cable company for 15 minutes, call the wife back, ask her to be available all afternoon for the service technician, etc. It is just a pain.

I don't fault Vonage for any of this, but the reliability I am receiving from my ISP sucks.

I don't know what the problem is because other cable internet users living within a couple of miles of me get good reliability. Maybe it is the construction going on near my neighborhood.

[edited to remove unfair bash of my ISP]

I've been on Vonage for about 2 months now. We were having service issues with our local provider (Sprint - we were without phone service for 5 days) and got a Vonage adapter the fifth day.

I'm mixed in my feelings on it. I think we will keep it as a second line for outgoing long distance, and an alternate phone #/line, but will not give up POTS.

Vonage will not work with my 3-line phones as a primary line. The VoIP adapter doesn't generate the proper ring sequence for my phones to recognize it.

I had several service issues with Vonage so far. In 3-4 weeks, I had at least 13 outages of incoming calls and at least 8 times where we couldn't dial out. None of the issues were my broadband company either. The incoming call issues were usually incoming/outgoing at the same time, but I had more than a handful of people tell me that on numerous occasions they tried to call and got a recording saying that "the call cannot be completed at this time."

I've got friends in NJ (Vonage home base) that have had it for a few months, and one that's had it for a few years now. They never mentioned service issues, but a couple of them may not be disclosing all the facts /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Anyway, my asessment is that it's great as a second line. Not your primary, IMO. Heck, it's $35 or more for a second phone line, why not save $10 + all your LD's and have the IP phone?

Obviously the telephone "pipe" relies on another pipe and is only as good as the weakest link. It also relies on continuous power, which in the case of a traditional POTS line is provided by the telephone company's -48vdc supply in the central office, and that supply is normally on backup power during a power outage. That ain't necessarily the case for a VOIP router.

Having said that, some things in a VOIP connection are more tangible and controllable than others. A customer should have their VOIP router on a UPS; that's a given. What's less tangible/controllable by the customer is whether the broadband ISP (cable) has battery backup in their outdoor amps and nodes. Mine does an excellent job with this, and the cable service is usually up even when the power is out.

What's also not-so-tangible is whether the cable plant is up to DOCSIS 2.0 (or greater) specs, where the system can make use of QOS bits for prioritization of voice packets over web and email traffic. The customer's modem should also be capable of supporting 2.0 so it's ready whenever the ISP is ready to support it.

The big unknown is the "phone company" itself, and that's where I sit right now. I've got a solid broadband connection so I'm sure that any VOIP service will not be hindered by it. What I'm not so sure of is the reliability of a third-party "telco" which always has the option of blaming any technical problems on the ISP, whom they do not support nor answer to, yet they make money off of. That's why I'm so interested in your opinions before/if I take the plunge.

Thanks for sharing, and for letting me rant a little.

Hey PW, I don't know if Tyson answered you re: wav or mp3, mine gets delivered to me in .wav format. Although mp3 is generally more compact, the wav file is sampled at 11.5 khz and is generally not unwieldly in size. About half a meg for 45 seconds of speech is usually what I've been observing. Unlike some posters on here, my Vonage service has suffered no service interruptions of any sort. Guess it depends on your ISP and locale. I'm in Central PA and voice quality for me, has been on par with POTS service.


Abbie.