Broadband Will Come Down

[martymas]

hi team

how many have the voice over options

on their sys.

i watched an interview.

with the Ceo of a local telecomunications company.

and his words

broadband will be cheaper

because of the voice over tech

comming on stream.

already his company is advertising the tech

so to me this is exciting.

as reading some of your comments in the past

broadband is much cheaper in the usa than it is here .

so im lookinh forward to it .

any comments

thanks

marty

ps is voice over options software cheap.

it is here.

lm

Edited October 3, 2005 by martymas

[Bubba Bob]

Ok, this may be a noob question, but what do you mean by "voice over options "?

[blim]

Ok, this may be a noob question, but what do you mean by "voice over options "?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Waves exuberantly! Make that two noobs!!! Is it that "long distance telephone calling over the internet".....thing?

Liz

[Aluvus]

Voice over IP?

[CurlingSteve]

I'm guessing Aluvus is right, we're talking about VoIP (Voice over IP) service.

It works just fine, and will likely be the future of long distance telephone service.

I keep my "normal" telephone service just in case my broadband access (cable in my case) goes down.

Then again, when a tree falls, I lose cable TV, telephone, and power; so it's all gone.

(But the cell phone towers usually still work).

Current telephony is already handled as split packets sent over a private(ish) network and reassembled close to the destination.

Sounds a lot like Internet traffic, doesn't it?

VoIP is basically an audio Instant Messaging service.

The providers (like Vonnage) just have dedicated (and restricted/exclusive) servers handling the traffic and "guaranteeing" quality.

[Bubba Bob]

AHhh, VOIP.

I have Vonage. Had it for almost 8-9 months now. Perfect quality, great price.

Im not sure how the booming VOIP service could/would lower internet costs though... **scratches head**

[CurlingSteve]

Well, since VoIP requires internet access first...

I don't see where it will lower internet costs.

(Snake eats own tail)

Edited October 4, 2005 by CurlingSteve

[bozodog]

I've had Vonage since September 04. I love it! My land line was $32 a month for just a basic service. (no long distance) If I called long distance, they not only hit me with the 10 cents a min. charge, but $5 extra for the month.

Vonage offers me 500 minutes any time, anywhere in the US and Canada for $17 a month. That includes voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding, and conference calls. (3 cents a min. overseas)

I figure the money I saved by switching helps pay for my 3mg broadband service.

[blim]

Wow, Bozodog!!! Yep, Vonage would be about half price for me, too (I pay $31 for "basic telephone service") I'll have to check them out if they have ventured to the "great white north" yet....

Liz

[Bubba Bob]

I figure the money I saved by switching helps pay for my 3mg broadband service.

That's the same logic i use to justify the cost of internet. Well, plus comin to BT of course

Oh, anyone thinking about VOIP should also consider a cell phone. A cheap prepaid such as tracfone or CIngular. The internet is by far less dependable than phone lines.

Edited September 3, 2006 by Bubba Bob

[Pete_C]

I figure the money I saved by switching helps pay for my 3mg broadband service.

That's the same logic i use to justify the cost of internet. Well, plus comin to BT of course

Oh, anyone thinking about VOIP should also consider a cell phone. A cheap prepaid such as tracfone or CIngular. The internet is by far less dependable that phone lines.

Old thread but I think this is a good place to put my experience with Tracfone.

I purchased two and set it up to port two cingular numbers over to the new phones.

First go round the idiots activated one prior to porting either number.

OOPS, have to send you another sim card, but we have successfully ported one number to the other phone.

Second go round, the new sim card is tied to the already active number on the other phone; once again neither phone works .OOOPS we will send you two new sim cards overnight.

Only one card arrives.

Third go round , they insist the new sim card cannot be tied to the already active number because it is active on the sim of the card they sent prior, but that card says invalid sim when placed in one phone and registration failed in the other.

Went through three supervisors and who knows how many customer service reps and finally got one girl who understood things and got one phone working and promised to send the new sim for the other . She combined all the various case files for each phone and wrote out just what to do .

Got call the next day saying they were ready to activate the number which was working on the phone which was not. Told idiot NOOOO< please read the notes. "But I have a pending case file".

Still waiting on the new sim for the other phone.

But on the bright side they add time and minutes each time they mess up. I now have two phones (only one of which is useable) each with eighteen months and 850 minutes and only paid a total of $198 total.

If they get the second phone working next week it will be under a month to get it all squared away and I guess that is a good deal.

Bottom line? If you just buy and activate it with their number I guess they cannot mess things up; but if you have any real problems or anything that requires actual knowledge and competence be forewarned that ninety percent of their workforce appears to be incompetent morons who cannot read or understand what you are telling them. No they are not outsourced, they are located in Florida (I do not know if we can send the card today,we are under hurricane warning ,but it is just raining now.).

If you order online ; I think you can still get a phone, year service and 400 minutes for under $100 and you can add more minutes as you need.

The one phone they got working has been reliable (no dropped calls) at least until the time they bollixed things up by trying to activate the same number on the other phone. Since that fiasco got squared away it has been fine again , but until they get the other activated on the correct number and a month or two has passed I will be in constant fear that I will grab my phone and it will say "registration failed, invalid sim card" again because some moron did something stupid .

Regarding the original topic:

Long long ago My boss and the ISP that sends me a check every week tried VOIP out. Back then it was in its infancy. They actually had a seperate box which you configured and it connected to the ISP and you connected to it (IP Star http://www.tele.com.pk/ipstar-faq.htm)

Then you connect the phone to it.

Nice in that you could use the IP star directory (like skype) and call free to anyone who had an IP star box.

But the connection was terrible. Choppy, echos, dropped mid call.

It worked best when you used it to connect to a local ISP and they had some other ISP do the connecting at the other end.

But then along came Vonnage.

I suggested this for my Boss since he travels a lot.

With it you get a router/ access point which connects to any broadband connection and you connect a phone to it.

With this, he can connect it when at a hotel, or on vacation and calls to his office ring wherever in the world he is.

Similarly, he can call from it and it shows on caller ID as his local number wherever in the world he may be.

There are different plans to suit your needs.

I caution against this as your only phone because if you have cable , then when the power goes out , so too will your phone in most cases (some cable does use backup power and if you too have enough UPS you will too) .

Update on my Tracfone adventure; although it took a month they finally got both phones working correctly. I finally got a Customer Service Supervisor , who set up a conference call with all the departments who dealt with my problems. They finally agreed that the way to go was to have me turn off the remaining phone which would not work and they took a programmable phone, put in my phones imei, associated my number with a new sim which they put in the phone, activated it and made a test call. Then they packaged the sim and overnighted it to me so all I had to do was put it in and turn on the phone and it worked. They also credited me with a bunch of extra minutes and months of service for the inconvenience.

Bottom line now? Poorly trained customer service representatives and poor communication between departments in their company resulted in an inconvenience for me and a waste of time , effort , and service on their part.

Edited September 9, 2006 by Pete_C

[JDoors]

Considering my connection, my computer or the power here are down every once in a while, plus I'd have to leave the computer running 24/7, which for my box would lead to even MORE downtime, I'm not interested in VOIP. The only time in my entire life I lost my landline connection was, very memorably, on that 9/11.

[mikex]

Power - Get an APC on eBay then pull the battery, extend the battery wires, connect to a 12v deep cycle marine battery. I wouldn't run pc on this for long as a pc is a power hog when talking batteries. But also gotta concider the 911 issue. I work for a small WISP in SW Louisiana and we concidered VoIP. Only cost effective for "rural" business, around here everything is rural. You can get some of the best VoIP server software free.

Anyway.....only those with a lot of money will make inroads with VoIP, then the cost per customer will drop and smaller ISP's will be able to afford to provide it for residential customers.

VoIP is a big topic in the WISP industry.

M

[bozodog]

You don't need your computer running to have the phone working. We shut down both of ours and the Vonage modem stays on. I still say I love VoIP, I'm still saving a bunch of bucks.

Good deal, Pete. At least you get some free service for the grief. And boy, do I know about lousy customer service. I have the same thing with the new VISA credit card company that my Credit Union switched to. They are out-sourced so communication sucks.... Just how do they manage to type an email with an accent? :-)

[JDoors]

I be stoopid -- uh, so the phone plugs into the modem and works normally, computer or no? Yes?

[bozodog]

Yep, that's the way it works here. It uses your broadband connection but not the computer...

[Chappy]

I be stoopid -- uh, so the phone plugs into the modem and works normally, computer or no? Yes?

Yes, it doesn't require the computer at all JDoors. There is no program installed on the machine for this service, it works strictly thru a dedicated VoIP modem and I believe there is actually a firewall on it also but that it's only accessible by a tech with a special code.

Basic firewall I would guess, just because it still is Internet technology and can be "seen" by other modems and servers out there.

I haven't looked into it yet. My landline is $37.00 a month and I don't really use Long Distance at all. Do these packages have carry-overs for unused minutes?

My connection is exceptionally reliable so I wouldn't have any fears of switching over if it's that much cheaper.