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Anyone Have Any Experience With Voip Providers?


HolyMoly

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If you're still scratching your head, a brief explanation. VOIP is simply an acronym for "Voice Over Internet Protocol." Comcast and a number of other major players have either launched or will be launching services allowing broadband users to make and receive telephone calls over their Internet connection. No, I'm not talking about wearing headsets and such. I'm talking about plugging a real telephone into a special box (that's plugged into your cable/DSL/T1/T3 connection). When someone calls you, the telephone rings. When you want to call someone, you pick up the telephone and hear a dialtone, and dial your number. Baby-Bell companies and long-distance providers are literally shaking in their boots ... or trying to diversify into VOIP before they go the way of the dinosaur.

I'm going to be moving to a bigger house in about a week or two and went to Comcast to see if they offered VOIP yet. They do, but only in selected areas in my locale ... and my new location isn't one of them ... yet. Until then, the only option I know of is a company called Vonage.com.

Vonage currently offers 3 plans:

(1) $14.99 monthly - 500 minutes anytime/anywhere in the USA/Canada.

(2) $24.99 monthly - unmetered local/regional calls + 500 minutes anytime/anywhere in the USA/Canada.

(3) $34.99 monthly - unmetered calls anytime/anywhere in the USA/Canada.

And, all plans include the following add-ons FREE OF CHARGE: voicemail, caller ID with name, call waiting, call forwarding, and call transfer.

Anyhoo, I've been checking my local phone bills lately through my Baby-Bell provider ... and noticed that my costs for basic-basic service exceed the cost of Vonage's most expensive plan (ahem, don't forget to add in all those fees and taxes that VOIP users are exempt from). And, I've been thinking of taking the plunge into the future.

BUT ... before I do, I'd like to ask anyone here if they've had any experience with a "true" VOIP provider. Advantanges? Disadvantages? Let me know.

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The creators of KaZaa have since moved in and started an internet phone service--I think it debuted in Europe, and yes, the bells are shakin'. A friend of mine was connected to a big service in Phoenix, but it went down during the dotcom crash. I will keep my ears open in the meanwhile Out in LA, I have ATT--unlimited local and long distance calls for 48 bucks a months.

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Out in LA, I have ATT--unlimited local and long distance calls for 48 bucks a months.

Does that include fees and excise taxes? Even if so, that's $13 more per month than Vonage's most expensive plan. But even if you have their 2 cheaper plans with a 500-minute anytime/anywhere limit, they have a way around that. Let's say you have a friend or relative you call most often who lives in Bangor, Maine. For $4.99 extra per month, you can establish an ancillary number in Bangor ... allowing your friend/relative to call you "local."

Not sure about you but, frankly, I'm not on the phone that much. I'd have to talk on the telephone an average of 17 minutes a day before I'd exceed the 500 free minutes of their cheapest plan. And, if I got their $24.99 plan, I can't foresee in my WILDEST dreams spending 17 minutes a day for a whole month talking long distance. And, even if I exceeded the 500-minute limit, long distance calls after that are only billed 3.9 cents a minute.

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I like that local feature you just described. Yeah, they add some taxes, plus 5 bills for the voicemail, so it comes out about 55 all in. Yeah, Im gonna check out the new plans you described, as soon as they make it my way in LA...

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I like that local feature you just described.  Yeah, they add some taxes, plus 5 bills for the voicemail, so it comes out about 55 all in.  Yeah, Im gonna check out the new plans you described, as soon as they make it my way in LA...

Well, if your area code is one of these:

213, 310, 323, 408, 415, 510, 530, 562, 619, 626, 650, 661, 707, 714, 760, 805. 818, 831, 858, 909, 916, 925, or 949

... Vonage is already in your area.

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FYI, a recent article from CNET.com:

FCC to form working group on VoIP regulation

Last modified: December 1, 2003, 4:30 PM PST

By Declan McCullagh

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

       

The Federal Communications Commission on Monday took the first step toward deciding whether to regulate Internet telephony, a move that could increase the amount of money customers pay each month for such services and radically transform the fast-growing industry.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he would create a working group to investigate what, if any, regulations on VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) technology would be necessary. Powell and other commissioners said they had reached no final conclusions yet and intended a public briefing on Monday with speakers from companies including Cisco Systems, Time Warner Cable and Level3 to educate them about VoIP technology and business models.

"Moving more communications to IP networks is in the public interest," Powell said. "Internet-based services create more choices for consumers, more competitors, lower prices and lots more flexibility to personalize your service." Federal regulators should borrow the credo of the medical profession, Powell suggested, and "first, do no harm."

As more conversations begin to flow through unregulated VoIP links instead of the heavily taxed public switched telephone network, federal and state governments stand to lose billions of dollars. Because VoIP currently is not regulated, companies offering the service aren't subject to the vast thicket of taxes and regulations governing e911 and guaranteeing wiretapping access for police. Also at issue is the future of a special $2.25 billion-a-year tax--typically reflected in higher monthly phone bills--that provides schools and libraries with discounts on everything from Internet access to phone lines for fax machines and domain name registrations.

If their public comments Monday are any indication, the five FCC commissioners appear split on how to approach VoIP, with the two Democrats favoring a more aggressive approach than their Republican colleagues.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a former Democratic Senate aide, said that the federal government should not ignore its "important statutory obligations" to provide "universal service, homeland security, 911 service, accessibility (for) people with disabilities." Imposing such obligations on VoIP providers may be necessary to "bring equity and effectiveness to rules and regulations that protect the public interest," Copps said.

VoIP providers all expect to be regulated. They have been battling for a federal set of rules rather than a patchwork of differing state edicts. Time Warner Cable, for example, has already begun voluntarily paying federal universal service fees, just as traditional phone companies are required to do. While nearly every other VoIP provider has fought against state regulatory efforts, Time Warner Cable recently hinted it intends to follow any state generated telephone rules or regulations.

Monday's hearing was a way for the FCC "to start asking questions," said Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy. She said that because many of the labyrinthine rules governing phone service were based on the absence of competition, "legacy rules that apply to common carrier services should not apply in their existing form to VoIP."

There are different types of VoIP businesses, but all have one thing in common: At least part of the voice conversations they carry travel over the Internet. Because of VoIP's low costs, former Bell companies like Verizon Communications are shifting to it even for traditional voice calls that have an analog headset at each end.

A second type of VoIP technology is employed by companies like Vonage, which lets consumers bypass the traditional phone network by making voice calls over a broadband connection. Calls can either go to another Vonage customer and traverse just the Internet, or connect to a traditional phone number through Vonage's interconnection agreements with phone companies. Finally, Internet-to-Internet methods like Skype, Free World Dialup, and instant messaging clients ignore the phone network altogether.

An overview of U.S. law prepared by FCC aides and released Monday suggested that VoIP services that link to the public telephone network can be regulated, but regulating computer-to-computer connections may require additional action by Congress.

Charles Davidson, from Florida's Public Service Commission, told the FCC that current taxes and regulations should apply "to that portion of a VoIP call that relies upon the switched network."

In October, a federal judge in Minnesota ruled that VoIP provider Vonage is an "information service" rather than a "telecommunications service" and therefore exempt from state regulation. The opinion was issued a week after the judge ordered an injunction permanently barring Minnesota's Public Utilities Commission from forcing Vonage to get a telephone operator's license to do business in the state.

VoIP regulations could have some unintended effects, some panelists warned the FCC. VoIP relies on the same standard, known as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), that instant messaging software does. Microsoft also uses SIP in its Xbox game consoles, allowing players to taunt each other using VoIP.

Warning that terrorists could frustrate legitimate wiretaps by placing phone calls through VoIP, the FBI has lobbied the FCC to require broadband companies to provide more efficient, standardized surveillance facilities for eavesdropping.

The FCC has not begun a formal process to draft regulations, though Powell told CNET News.com earlier this year that he expected to initiate one soon. "I really want to be cautious to say that it's not because we're sure (VoIP) should be regulated--only that we're sure that it needs to start to be understood," Powell said at the time. In addition, a number of petitions regarding the issue are pending before the FCC, which has not ruled on them.

CNET News.com's Ben Charny contributed to this report.

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I have no doubt that more regulation is in the future of VOIP. However, when VOIP services become widespread, it will forever end the "local" monopolization of telephone service. It used to be that the local monopoly phone companies could do a song and dance in front of a utilities commissioner for a rate increase and generally get what they asked for. But, when raising one's rates in the face of competition is a factor, such increases would be less likely ...

...unless... (shudder)

we allow merger-mania to continue until only a handful of VOIP parent corps exist. That's my biggest worry ... that the Justice Department will sit on their thumbs and allow anti-competitive monopolies to merely "recreate" themselves in another form.

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I had lunch with two visitors today from out of town--they both are on the system!

And??? Did they have any comments, pro or con? The initial startup costs for Vonage are in the neighborhood of $130 bucks (the "special box" and ethernet card) and if they said anything reassuring, it'd put me more at ease.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update:

Week in review: VoIP connects

December 12, 2003

By David Becker

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

       

The nascent market for voice over Internet Protocol got a number of big endorsements this week, with leading phone companies and a big-time cable provider unveiling plans for Internet telephone services.

Time Warner Cable, one of the biggest U.S. cable TV operators, kicked off the action with a deal that involves Sprint Communications and MCI. The telecommunications giants will provide Time Warner with technology to flesh out the company's new digital phone service, allowing cable customers in 27 cities to make Internet-based calls to regular telephone users.

Analysts hailed the deal as a sign of significant interest in VoIP among cable providers, who are looking at telephone services as a way to draw new revenue from expensive infrastructure upgrades. "This is one of the main products that drove cable companies to spend $75 billion over five years to upgrade their networks to digital capacity," said David Joyce, an analyst with investment firm Guzman.

Next came Qwest Communications International, which launched its first VoIP service, offering Internet telephone service to a few hundred customers in Minnesota.

AT&T got into the act with broad plans to offer Internet calling. The long-distance giant said it will have consumer VoIP services available in its top 100 markets by the first quarter of 2004.

The announcements signal a major turnaround in VoIP attitudes among phone service providers, who initially worried that all-you-can-eat pricing for Internet calls would undercut traditional long-distance service. Competitor Verizon Communications has said it plans to begin Internet phone services in early 2004, while SBC Communications is still conducting tests.

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Comcast is also beginning to offer VOIP service but only in "selected areas." Mine isn't one of them ... at least, not yet. And from what I've heard, the rates they're planning to offer are worse than rates currently charged by Vonage.com -- which is the VOIP provider I'll be using in less than a week.

It's funny that QWest is getting into the market. To my knowledge, they have no cable-internet holdings ... just DSL. And while VOIP will work just fine over DSL, you have to have phone service already to get DSL. So, their VOIP rates had better be pretty darn cheap or their cable competitors will eventually bury them. I used to have QWest DSL and have nothing but contempt for their service (or lack thereof). They tried to stiff me on a modem rebate promise until I went to my state's utility commissioner to complain. And when I moved to another apartment, their "policy" required me to be offline for over 3 weeks waiting for an "upgraded" modem (at my expense) to arrive. I'm so very very glad I went to cable-broadband.

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Phone Service Over Internet Revives Talk of Regulation

December 15, 2003

By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 14 - Politicians have worked hard to

keep access to Internet connections and many forms of

Internet communication free from regulation and taxation.

But the debate over how government treats the Internet is

likely to reach a new level of intensity now that Internet

technology is colliding with one of the nation's most

lucrative businesses, telephone service.

Last week AT&T and Time Warner Cable announced that they

intended to make Internet-based phone service available to

millions of consumers next year, allowing those consumers

to bypass traditional phone companies. Those moves signaled

the start of a technological shift that could change one of

the biggest and most important industries in the American

economy. Central to that shift is whether and how Internet

phone service should be regulated, a question that the

Federal Communications Commission started to explore in

hearings two weeks ago.

In an interview on Thursday, Michael K. Powell, the

chairman of the F.C.C., said he had not made up his mind on

that question. But he was not at all shy about stating his

preliminary view - that Internet-based calls are

fundamentally different from traditional phone calls and

ought to be regulated cautiously, if at all.

"There is no functional or technical difference between an

Internet phone call and other data - be it bits, or e-mail

or Web pages," Mr. Powell said, during a visit to San

Francisco. Up to now, Internet traffic has been essentially

unregulated and untaxed because many politicians and

regulators have argued that the technology and online

commerce would grow more quickly if the Internet were left

alone.

Mr. Powell noted that while Internet-based calls might

serve the same function as calls over conventional phone

lines, the underlying technology was different enough that

it would not make sense to subject them to "100 years of

judgments" and regulations. "Let's get this thing right and

define it as truer to its real nature," he said, referring

to the new technology.

His views are far from universally supported, given the

many complex political and financial interests at stake.

What is clear is that the existing telephone infrastructure

is heavily regulated, on both the state and federal levels,

with intricate rules intended to keep phone access

universally accessible and affordable.

Gene Kimmelman, the senior director for public policy at

Consumers Union, said those regulations existed to satisfy

important public policy concerns. He contended that goals

like universal access would be gravely threatened if the

world went to Internet-based services that were

unregulated.

Mr. Kimmelman said that Mr. Powell's views, which seem to

argue for far less regulation, would undo "social policy

that has made phone service affordable and accessible." He

added that one possible result was that basic connections

which, under the regulatory structure were essentially

subsidized by consumers and the industry, could cost

significantly more than they did now.

Besides, he argued, function, rather than technology,

should guide the regulatory decision. "It looks, smells,

feels like plain old telephone service," he said of

Internet service, and therefore it should be treated

similarly.

This debate - the latest front in a 20-year-old regulatory

battle that started with the breakup of the Bell system -

will define the grounds on which various players in

telecommunications compete. The question of how to regulate

Internet-based calling will be "the communications

regulatory issue over the next few years," said Eric Rabe,

a spokesman for Verizon, with audible emphasis on the word

"the."

For starters, regulators will have to address some central

technical questions. Telephone calls are traditionally

carried to and from homes on copper lines, with routing of

the traffic using circuit switch technology. Internet phone

service digitizes voice signals and sends them as Internet

data.

Mr. Kimmelman argues that even with Internet-based service,

the voice signals are still sent over existing

communications networks, whether copper wires, coaxial

cable or fiber optic lines. And he maintains that there is

nothing sacrosanct about the mere fact that the signals are

sent as Internet traffic.

"It's just a different way of assembling ones and zeroes so

they can be more efficiently transmitted," Mr. Kimmelman

said, noting that Internet calls would still have to travel

through traditional phone wires through part of their

journey.

Mr. Powell, however, maintains that what is important is

not the wires but the technology involved. And, he pointed

out, consumers who want to use Internet phones would still

have to pay phone and cable companies to get Internet

access through those networks, and in doing so, would still

be supporting the basic telecommunications infrastructure.

"You pay Verizon $39.95" for high-speed access to the

Internet, Mr. Powell said. He argued that once consumers

have paid for that access, the providers should not

necessarily be paid more for the use of that access to send

particular communications, whether in the form of e-mail

messages or phone calls.

Telephone and cable companies are staking out different

positions, and other members of the F.C.C. may not share

Mr. Powell's views.

The phone companies naturally are not eager to compete

against Internet-based competitors who can avoid the huge

costs of regulation. But some, like Verizon, also say that

the solution is not to regulate Internet calling, but to

deregulate the phone industry.

SBC, another major telephone provider, said it thinks it

could compete against unregulated Internet-based services.

The reason, said Dorothy Attwood, senior vice president for

federal regulatory strategy at SBC, is that phone companies

have a head start on features important to consumers like

911 service and the ability to make calls even when the

power fails.

The cable companies have their own perspective on

regulation. Atlanta-based Cox Communications, for instance,

contends that regulation should be based, not on the

technology used, but on the market share of a company, with

larger companies subject to more regulations.

Cox, which already offers phone service based on circuit

switch technology to nearly one million customers, will

start Internet-based phone service in Roanoke, Va., today.

But it does not expect the regulatory questions to be

answered soon.

"It will be four to five years,'' said Carrington Phillip,

vice president for regulatory affairs at Cox

Communications, "before we have a good sense of how

regulation is going to evolve."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technolo...44e6761aead3016

---------------------------------

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- from an article by Matt Richtel:

In an interview on Thursday, Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the F.C.C., said he had not made up his mind on that question. But he was not at all shy about stating his preliminary view - that Internet-based calls are fundamentally different from traditional phone calls and ought to be regulated cautiously, if at all.

Thank you, Mr. Powell (grin).

"It will be four to five years,'' said Carrington Phillip, vice president for regulatory affairs at Cox Communications, "before we have a good sense of how regulation is going to evolve."

Good (grin). I can live with 4-5 years without the typical taxes/fees baby Bells tack onto a bill. But even past that, VOIP will be offered in a competitive environment (at first, anyway) and rates will naturally be lower than local/LD rates via phone companies.

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A Voice in the Calling Wilderness

December 18, 2003

By DAVID LEONHARDT

MAYBE you have had the fantasy while sitting at home for an

entire afternoon and waiting for a 10-minute visit from the

phone company to install a new telephone line. Or maybe the

dream has come to you while were you on hold, once again,

hoping to resolve the latest billing mix-up caused by

Verizon, SBC or whichever local phone company dominates

your market.

For me, it began when my family moved into a new apartment

this year and Verizon informed us that we would need to

wait two weeks for a working phone line. Once that service

began, we would have to pay about $50 a month even though

we wanted to make only local phone calls on the line.

Thinking we were without any better options given the dodgy

quality of mobile phones, we grudgingly said yes.

But I could not shake a fantasy that millions of other

Americans have had. I imagined that I could respond to the

monopolistic customer service of local phone companies the

same way I would react to such treatment by a restaurant or

a shoe store and take my business elsewhere. I dreamed of

an economy in which I was not all but required to tithe the

descendants of Ma Bell every month.

Little did I know, that economy already existed. Thanks to

the proliferation of high-speed Internet connections in

homes, a jumble of companies, including start-ups and cable

television operators, have begun to sell telephone service

that does not rely on a traditional phone line. Instead,

the service typically enters homes through a cable modem

and connects to a simple phone, which emits a reassuring

dial tone when picked up.

Stewing over my latest experience with Verizon, I soon

decided to do something that I rarely do: become an early

adopter of a new technology. For the last month, my wife

and I have relied on the Internet for our main phone line.

The service, from Vonage, a New Jersey company that is the

largest of the start-ups, costs less than $30 a month

(including taxes) for unlimited local calls, 500 minutes of

long distance, voice mail, caller ID and the like. For

unlimited long distance as well, the price is about $38 a

month, about $30 less than what Verizon, MCI or AT&T charge

for similar packages.

None of this would matter, of course, if Internet phone

service suffered from dropped calls and scratchy reception

as often as mobile phones do. But the most encouraging

result of our experiment has been the nearly imperceptible

difference between a land line and a Vonage connection,

save one disappointing call. The friends and relatives we

spoke with never asked what kind of phone we were using or,

the ultimate insult, whether we were on a cellphone.

Before spending an hour as a guest on a radio talk show, I

asked the producer how our connection was, and he rated it

"great."

There are still drawbacks. Unless you have a backup

battery, a blackout like last summer's can knock out

Internet phone service even when traditional phones

continue to work. A breakdown in cable TV service, hardly

an unknown phenomenon, would do the same. Vonage phone

numbers will not be listed in the phone book. And a call to

911 will not display the caller's address to the operator.

But telephone and cable TV companies have made clear in

recent weeks how serious a competitive threat Internet

telephones pose. Time Warner, with help from Sprint and

MCI, will soon offer Internet phone service to many of its

cable customers, and AT&T is following suit by using

high-speed telephone data lines, known as D.S.L., instead

of cable modems.

"It's a very scary situation for the incumbent telephone

carriers," said Charles Golvin, a senior analyst at

Forrester Research, speaking on a Vonage phone line

himself, "because they're going to have real competition."

Vonage now has almost 80,000 customers, up from 7,000 a

year ago. (Over all, according to the research firm

InStat/MDR, about 135,000 American consumers now have

Internet phone service.) Part of the service's early

success stems from its relative freedom from federal rules

that bind phone companies. It barely needs to charge its

customers any taxes, at least for now, and it does not have

a mandate to ensure universal telephone access across the

country, as the Baby Bells do.

Federal regulators will probably need to level the playing

field at some point, but Internet phone service will still

increase competition. Even with a 1996 law intended to

foster competition in local markets, the Baby Bells have so

far retained much of their power. While long-distance

carriers now have the right to sell local service, they

must lease the lines from local carriers, creating abundant

opportunity for trouble. A married couple I know in the

Bronx went more than a month without service while AT&T and

Verizon blamed each other about which company was

responsible for the problem.

Internet phone service avoids this free-market bottleneck

by circumventing the so-called last mile of telephone

wiring, which is owned by the Baby Bells. Companies like

Vonage instead break down voice traffic into packets of

data that are sent through cyberspace and reconstituted as

voice on the other end. If the person receiving the call

has a land line, Vonage pays a fee to the local phone

company to complete the call.

After reading about Vonage in a handful of places, I did a

Google search for it and quickly found a coupon that made

the second month of service free. (The company says it can

transfer most land-line or mobile-phone numbers to a Vonage

account, although we did not try to do so; we were given a

number in the 646 area code.) Including a $30 activation

fee, my start-up costs amounted to about $85, about half of

which was for a device called a router that permits

simultaneous calling and Web surfing. Vonage has since

switched to a different device, which acts as both router

and phone adapter and which it sends to new customers free.

Setting up the system was not as easy as Vonage had

advertised, but a phone conversation with a customer

service agent from the router manufacturer cleared up the

confusing directions from the manual. Minutes later I was

listening to a dial tone (a fake one, piped in by Vonage to

make the system feel familiar). In my own version of "Mr.

Watson, come here!" I then dialed my parents and announced:

"Hi, Mom. I'm talking to you from the Internet." She did

not know what I was talking about, which was precisely the

point.

Over the next month, few other people suspected anything

was different, either. My wife, Laura, and I alternated

between thinking the sound quality was just as good as it

was on a land line and judging it to be slightly worse. At

times, voices seemed tinnier than they did on a land line,

almost as if we were using the phone in a big, empty room.

We never lost a call, but it does happen. Mr. Golvin, the

analyst at Forrester, said he occasionally had trouble with

incoming calls on his Vonage line. And when a Vonage

employee called me on an Internet line to set up an

interview with Mr. Citron, the message left on my voice

mail was indecipherable.

"We're not that happy with the level of service today,"

said Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's chief executive, adding that

the company was working to improve it. "You shouldn't ever

be able to tell the difference" between an Internet line

and a land line, he said.

For us, the service became a problem only once, when Laura

was uploading photographs onto our computer and I was

talking on the telephone. The call became fuzzy, presumably

because too much data was flowing over our cables at once.

Mr. Citron said the device Vonage now sends to customers

gives priority to voices, allowing calls to sound normal

and delaying simultaneous downloads by a few seconds.

The smaller start-ups that offer Web phone service seem

more problematic. As part of my experiment, I persuaded

some other family members to sign up with two Vonage

rivals, and none of my relatives was satisfied. My sister

and her husband signed up for VoicePulse, and they found

that their phone line often slipped out of the device it

was plugged into. During the one conversation I had with

them over the line, we were cut off three times for no

apparent reason.

My parents used Packet8, and I had high hopes for it, since

it costs a little more than $20 a month for unlimited

calling to anyone in the United States and Canada. But

their line simply went dead one night, and the customer

service department was never easy to reach.

With Vonage, I suspect most people will find that the

biggest drawback is needing to bind their phone to their

modem. This makes a cordless phone essentially mandatory.

If you are using the Internet for your primary phone line,

you will probably want to buy a splitter at an electronics

store, allowing you to have more than one phone for the

line.

We still have some reservations about Vonage, but the big

difference in cost and the tiny difference in quality have

persuaded us to make it our main phone line. We are now

trying to decide whether to keep a bare-bones land line at

a monthly cost of about $18 in case of emergency, or

whether we feel comfortable relying on a combination of a

cellphone and a backup battery for the cable modem.

In other words, this service is far from perfect, and all

of the individual companies seem to have the potential to

provide the same kind of what-me-worry customer service as

local phone companies. And can anybody really get excited

about relying even more on Time Warner or other cable

companies, which tend to act like the monopolies they long

have been?

But the wonderful thing about a competitive market is that

the foibles of any one company will not matter for long. If

Time Warner tries to overcharge you, you can switch to

Vonage. If Vonage regularly makes you wait on hold for 15

minutes to get the answer to a simple question, as it did

to me this week, you can sign up with AT&T. Maybe Verizon

and other Baby Bells, once they are forced into real

competition for customers, will emerge as the best choice.

They just won't be the only one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technolo...01e98d39c37940c

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A Voice in the Calling Wilderness - December 18, 2003 - By DAVID LEONHARDT, NY Times

Vonage phone numbers will not be listed in the phone book.

Uh, actually, Baby Bell's charge extra for unlisted numbers. Not being listed in a directory is something I'd consider a plus, not a minus.

And a call to 911 will not display the caller's address to the operator.

Possibly true when he signed up but not anymore. You don't get 911 service through Vonage automatically. You have to "activate" it (free) ... and part of the activation requirement is to supply a physical address which is forwarded to the PSAP (public safety access point) at the time you make your call to 911. I activated mine before the box even arrived (grin).

Setting up the system was not as easy as Vonage had advertised, but a phone conversation with a customer service agent from the router manufacturer cleared up the confusing directions from the manual.

Similar to the problem I had though I didn't have to call the ethernet card manufacturer. Vonage knew what the problem was right away and the fix was immediate.

Over the next month, few other people suspected anything was different, either. My wife, Laura, and I alternated between thinking the sound quality was just as good as it was on a land line and judging it to be slightly worse.

I wonder if he knows that you can go online and choose from three different bandwidth settings to "assign" to voice?

For us, the service became a problem only once, when Laura was uploading photographs onto our computer and I was talking on the telephone. The call became fuzzy, presumably because too much data was flowing over our cables at once.

... or because he hasn't gone online, as suggested in my last paragraph, to tweek his bandwidth settings to give voice a higher priority. But, there could be other reasons. If he lives in a large metro area with a lot of cable customers in close proximity, that could drain bandwidth, too ... and that's probably something Vonage (or any other VOIP provider) can't solve. It's a capacity issue.

With Vonage, I suspect most people will find that the biggest drawback is needing to bind their phone to their modem. This makes a cordless phone essentially mandatory.

Horsefeathers (grin). He's probably reading Vonage's edict in the owner manual, "Never plug your Vonage connection into your wall phone connector." On it's face, that's good advice ... but only because, whether you're a Baby Bell customer or not, the Baby Bell owns the line into your house. If you've chosen Vonage over your Baby Bell ... and Baby Bell notices a "signal" generating from the line (trust me, they can tell), they'll try to spike it into silence ... and that would probably do damage to your Vonage box. The secret? Go outside to your phone box and simply disconnect the incoming-line wires from the internal phone wiring in your house. THEN plug your Vonage box into your wall phone connector so every phone jack in your house will be Vonage-connected - and your Baby Bell will be clueless. The incoming-line wires may belong to them but the telephone wiring inside your house belongs to you. Screw Ma Bell, hehe.

BTW, the Motorola phone converter box comes with connections for "two" phones on the back, not just one (grin). Plug the phone next to your computer into one jack and plug the other jack into your wall connector -- AFTER you've disconnected your Baby Bell's incoming-line wires. It works in my house and that's a fact!!!

We are now trying to decide whether to keep a bare-bones land line at a monthly cost of about $18 in case of emergency, or whether we feel comfortable relying on a combination of a cellphone and a backup battery for the cable modem.

Actually, I'm going to contact Comcast to see if they have an approved battery-backup scenario for the RCA cable-modem and Motorola box. That's a damn good idea.

But the wonderful thing about a competitive market is that the foibles of any one company will not matter for long. If Time Warner tries to overcharge you, you can switch to Vonage. If Vonage regularly makes you wait on hold for 15 minutes to get the answer to a simple question, as it did to me this week, you can sign up with AT&T. Maybe Verizon and other Baby Bells, once they are forced into real competition for customers, will emerge as the best choice. They just won't be the only one.

How sweet it is, too, hehe. So long, Ma Bell ... and good riddance.

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