VoIP

[BigKahuna13]

I'm considering ditching MCI in favor of VoIP. Dork did this a couple of months ago and tells me he's happy with his service and saving a fair piece of change. MCI costs me roughly $105/month and the provider I'm looking at, SunRocket, is offering $199/yr if paid up front. (I'd really like to ditch the home phone altogether since we all have cell phones but C's not ready to do that just yet).

Anyone else switch to IP based telephony? Worth it? From a cost perspective it's a no brainer.

[tyrolean_skier]

I'm considering ditching MCI in favor of VoIP. Dork did this a couple of months ago and tells me he's happy with his service and saving a fair piece of change. MCI costs me roughly $105/month and the provider I'm looking at, SunRocket, is offering $199/yr if paid up front. (I'd really like to ditch the home phone altogether since we all have cell phones but C's not ready to do that just yet).

Anyone else switch to IP based telephony? Worth it? From a cost perspective it's a no brainer.

Dork is happy with it but I am not. I was on support from home the other night and the trading floor was trying to reach me for 20 minutes. The phone never rang in the house. Luckily for me there were no major repercussions except that the traders never called me that night to tell me that I can stop supporting because they were done. I guess they wanted to get back at me for delaying them earlier. I've asked Dork if we could switch back because I cannot afford for this same situation to happen again but he is insistent that we should give it more of a chance. BTW cell phones in our area work sporadically so they are not dependable either.

[BrockVond]

Anyone else switch to IP based telephony? Worth it? From a cost perspective it's a no brainer.

I use Vonage, but I still have verizon land line.

I live 1 block from former WTC and in times of emergency the only things that worked here on 9/11 were old style non electric phones and , ironically , RIM pagers.

live and learn, literally.

[Geoff]

Anyone else switch to IP based telephony? Worth it? From a cost perspective it's a no brainer.

I use Vonage, but I still have verizon land line.

I live 1 block from former WTC and in times of emergency the only things that worked here on 9/11 were old style non electric phones and , ironically , RIM pagers.

live and learn, literally.

Vonage is only as good as your local residential broadband connection. Most residential data networks see lots of congestion in the late-afternoon through early evening and on rainy weekends when everyone is internet surfing. If you happen to get internet service from a provider that doesn't have congestion issues at the busy hour, a service like Vonage will work well enough most of the time. At my house, it would be useless.

[yeti]

Does 911 service exist for VOIP?

[winter]

It does but with an asterisk. The user must provide their zip code/location to the VOIP provider who can then route your call effectively to the local 911 call center.

I would think that emergency situations both 911 and a national emergency would be the shaky areas to VOIP. I just don't trust internet connections enough where I am (Fordham campus) to make it my official phone.

However, not only is it cheap as Kahuna pointed out, but you can take it with you. For instance, if you travel to a hotel with Hi-Speed Access you can hook your VOIP phone right up and make calls like it was your house. No location is needed for VOIP just a working hi-speed connection. So for the business traveler VOIP can be a real plus. Yet as Ty pointed out it can cost you business, probably the best bet is to get a local call only Verizon line for emergencies and backup and use VOIP the rest of the time.

Good luck Kahuna, let us know how it turns out!

[tyrolean_skier]

Does 911 service exist for VOIP?

I sure hope so in case I have an emergency situation to deal with. I'll have to ask SkiDork if he knows the answer to that one.

[KnuckleDragger]

Helmet cam was testing out vonage and let me borrow the router for a while. Worked great on my cable modem but every time the power went out I would have to go down to the basement to reset the routers. That is fine as long as you realize that the power went out. Otherwise, you dont know that your phone is out. I know, use a UPS on the modem and routers. I did this and still came home one day an found the service to be out. Haven't figured that one out yet.

Im still on the fence but until I figure out a way to make it more reliable i'm going to continue to pay too much for phone service.

[SkiDork]

I'm considering ditching MCI in favor of VoIP. Dork did this a couple of months ago and tells me he's happy with his service and saving a fair piece of change. MCI costs me roughly $105/month and the provider I'm looking at, SunRocket, is offering $199/yr if paid up front. (I'd really like to ditch the home phone altogether since we all have cell phones but C's not ready to do that just yet).

Anyone else switch to IP based telephony? Worth it? From a cost perspective it's a no brainer.

Dork is happy with it but I am not. I was on support from home the other night and the trading floor was trying to reach me for 20 minutes. The phone never rang in the house. Luckily for me there were no major repercussions except that the traders never called me that night to tell me that I can stop supporting because they were done. I guess they wanted to get back at me for delaying them earlier. I've asked Dork if we could switch back because I cannot afford for this same situation to happen again but he is insistent that we should give it more of a chance. BTW cell phones in our area work sporadically so they are not dependable either.

the reason for the outage yesterday was Verizon DSL, not Packet8 (the VOIP provider I/m using)

Gotta make sure the router auto-reconnects if there is ever a break of any kind (it's using PPPoE)

[Bling Skier]

" MCI costs me roughly $105/month"

Wow, do U pay by the word?

thats a lot of gabbing....

[andyzee]

My friend has it from his cable company. Usually works good, however he did keep his land line and it's a good thing cause there's a number of times he had outages.

[Geoff]

My friend has it from his cable company. Usually works good, however he did keep his land line and it's a good thing cause there's a number of times he had outages.

I build these things for a living.

What town? *cringe*

[yeti]

Well if this happens, you'll want 911 service....

[andyzee]

My friend has it from his cable company. Usually works good, however he did keep his land line and it's a good thing cause there's a number of times he had outages.

I build these things for a living.

What town? *cringe*

Forget the town, but it's Morris county NJ

[Geoff]

My friend has it from his cable company. Usually works good, however he did keep his land line and it's a good thing cause there's a number of times he had outages.

I build these things for a living.

What town? *cringe*

Forget the town, but it's Morris county NJ

That's Cablevision & Siemens VoIP equipment. Not my problem.