<p>We have internet service through our cable provider, and they have been offering phone service now, where you can make unlimited calls to the U.S and Canada, 24/7. The first year is $39.99 p.m., and thereafter $19.99 p.m.
They come over, do something with your phone-lines, change the modem, and you will have a new tel.no. You also save by not having pay any provider like Verizon etc.monthly fees for the phone-line etc.</p>
<p>has anyone tried this, and what is your evaluation of the deal.</p>
<p>Some issues to be concerned with:
a) no phone service when the power goes out or when the cable service fails - better have at least a cell phone for back-up
b) not likely to support 911
c) for multiple telephones around the house you will likely need one of those wireless phone systems with one base unit and multiple phones.</p>
<p>Well, when power goes out, all the cordless go out too, and I have to get the old stand-by out of the closet anyway.
You are right about 911.
Actually for multiple phones around the house, they said it would not be a problem, because they would work on the single line from the outside of the house.</p>
<p>I think my biggest problem is that voicemail has to be checked by calling a # everytime you come home, and I cannot see myself doing that. I need to see the huge flashing light when I walk in the kitchen, or (with my earlier phone)hear the annoying beep .</p>
<p>I have no idea how it works but my son talks to people through his headset when he plays computer games. We have a dsl line through our phone company. The people he talks to are not locals and I’ve never seen any indication on any of our phone bills. We have seperate providers for local and long distance.</p>
<p>It sounds like you are describing XBOX Live. They offer a rudimentary Voice-Over-IP service that piggybacks on your DSL line. You are paying for it as part of the XBOX Live monthly fee. Your DSL bill should not increase by using this service and you should not see any charges on either your local or long distance bills. The quality of the service is not all that great and the situation is made worse by that fact that gamers tend to get excited and shout into their microphones. This distorts the signal and makes it almost impossible to understand. Another problem is that the microphone they use is not optimized for voice telecommunications and tends to pick up a lot of background noise. You can only connect with others using the XBOX Live service, so this is not a viable replacement for phone service.</p>
<p>We switched over to Vonage voice over IP phones about 4 months ago. My husband was desparate to save some money, so that he could buy a HDTV, and he realized he could do that by switching to internet phone. Previously, our phone bills were around $200 (with Verizon and AT&T), now they dropped to $35! (and we seem to be talking more on the phone!).
We are very happy with the service.</p>
<p>Regarding voicemail, the flashing light on the phone is active when there is a message and it is easy to identify that there is a voice mail. Besides that, I get an email to my yahoo a/c saying that there is a voice mail, and I can actually even retrieve the voice mail from anywhere though vonage web-site.
Regarding multiple phones, yes, we have 5 phones and the quality is not degraded (though that was one of my concerns before switching). The beauty of it is when the cable is down at home, the phone calls are routed to one of our cell phones, so we really didn’t experience any down-time. Above all I am happy with the savings we get and as a result bought a nice TV (with the monthly payment that we would have been paying to Verizon and AT&T)</p>
<p>@BassDad: I would not jump to the conclusion that he is using XBOX Live. All “steam powered” games from Valve include voice over internet protocol integration. The most popular multiplayer game in the world, for the past seven years, has been Counterstrike, a Valve game. For other games, players use third-party programs, running indepdendently of the game itself There is NO FEE for this. It’s like instant messaging with sound. In fact, AOL Instant Messenger includes a crude VOIP feature. VOIP companies offer voicemail service and a connection to the regular phone system. Without this service, a VOIP setup cannot call a regular (non-computer) phone.</p>
<p>Yes, it could certainly be one of those. My son and several of his friends are into the XBOX thing, so that is the one with which I am most familiar. In any event, kathiep should not be worried about extra charges on her telephone or DSL bills.</p>
<p>Oh I don’t know, the cable guy (yikes!) is coming this Saturday to set up, and this is going to be the second time that I will be calling to cancel and reschedule, just because I don’t know enough. How come at this bargain price, everyone doesn’t have VOIP?</p>
<p>We are seriously thinking about it because we have very high phones bills as a result of two phone lines in the house plus a third in a different locality for business purposes and a lot of long distance calling. Hence the payoff should be worth it. Our plan will be to eliminate the distant phone line and one of the two at the house, but (for now) possibly retain one of the lines at the house for emergency use. I spoke with a co-worker who did something similar and he is very happy with the service, although he used AT&T, not the service offered from the cable company.</p>
<p>One of my concerns that I didn’t mention above was not being able to support the nightly Tivo call (can’t live without my Tivo). However, in looking at the Vonage site, they recommend linking Tivo directly into the data (cable) network and hence bypass the need to generate a phone call. I guess this will work (and provide additional capabilities) but does require networking the Tivo box to the cable modem.</p>
<p>“How come at this bargain price everyone doesn’t have VOIP?”</p>
<p>I have been intrigued by the Vonage ads, but being an early adapter to a new technology carries some risk. When Consumer Reports or the big daily newspapers weigh in with more information more people may make the switch.</p>
<p>Vonage is growing like crazy. They just announced that they will be moving out of their original location to a much bigger location with room for future growth. Must be that they think things look good.</p>
<p>I think the reason for the slow take-off is threefold: (1) inertia - people have been paying a phone bill for all of their lives and have become used to that as a fact of life and don’t even question it. (2) ignorance - not that the people are ignorant but rather that they don’t know how much they actually are paying for phone service. Many people, like me, have opted for automatic bill paying such the phone bill is automatically deducted from their bank account. By not physically writing a check each month, it is easy to get disconnected from the actual amount that you are paying for something. Kind of like taxes. (3) affluence - people who have broadband access tend to be more affluent and hence less likely to be that concerned about the cost of their phone service.</p>
<p>I plan to hang on to my POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line for a few reasons:</p>
<p>1) It is far more reliable than any service I have seen provided by any other utility. The amount of down time I have experienced on my old-fashioned analog telephone line is something like an hour total over the past twenty years. By contrast, our electrical power goes out for a couple of seconds to a few hours at least three or four times per year, and our cable TV, particularly the digital TV signal, has been known to be out for the better part of a day several times a year. My cable modem service is the least reliable of all, frequently experiencing congestion and sometimes losing synch with the far end. I usually have to reboot the modem once or twice a month and they tell me this is not abnormal.</p>
<p>2) 911 service is important for us. If I am in a situation where I need to use it, I don’t want to have to worry about which phone I am using. </p>
<p>3) Most of my long distance is already included in my cell phone package which is locked in for a couple of years, so VOIP would only save me the local charges. The cell phone does indeed help with the issues raised in points 1 and 2, but I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of a guy about certain things. Lifeline phone service is one of them.</p>
<p>4) The companies that want to sell me VOIP grew up as entertainment providers. They have gotten pretty good at providing non-essential information in broadcast format. They have made some big strides in retrofitting their networks to support two-way communications and on-demand, point-to-point services. I think they still have some lessons to learn from companies who have been providing voice telephony services for the better part of a century.</p>
<p>5) VOIP standards have come a long way in the past several years, but they are not entirely mature. Will the hardware you buy today work five years from now when connected to a different service provider in a different part of the country? Maybe. I can be pretty sure that my analog phones will (provided I buy ones that are good enough not to fall apart over that time.)</p>
<p>One thing about VOIP…providers differ in their quality, expertise, and packages.</p>
<p>E.G. my Cable Co. will lower the bill to $19.99 per month after 12 months of VOIP
However, I lose my current tel.no., which I am fond of.
AT&T lets you keep your current tel.no., obviously because they are also a tel.service Co.</p>
<p>BassDad, I think your view is typical. It really is hard to beat the reliability of analog service. </p>
<p>However, some of your points are not applicable to everyone. For example, the use of cell phone for long distance: in my case, I get horrible cell phone service when I am inside my house. Unless I am in a certain location of the house or outside, I can’t make or receive a call. Even if I am in the right place to initiate a call, many times the call is subsequently dropped. I can’t imagine VoIP service being any worse than this. Plus, unless you restrict your LD calling to nights or weekends, you have to worry about your monthly allotment of minutes.</p>
<p>Nope, not xbox live. We don’t have xbox. He has a special gamers headset with microphone that’s really clear. He just plays computer games. As long as it doesn’t cost us anything, I’m okay.</p>
<p>My son in college told me about Skype. We both installed it and use it to talk to each other when I’m at the computer. I was surprised at how clear and crisp the sound quality was! Not sure I’m ready to make it my only telephone service yet but I really like it.</p>