Experiences with Internet Phone service (VOIP).....

[lokki]

Hi,
Was considering signing up with one of those VOIP programms (vonage,lingo, ATT vantage etc).

Mainly because they offer unlimited calls in the US. and Cheap/free calls to europe and mexico.

Has any one had any experience with these services? Love them\hate them?

From looking at the websites it looks like the phone is connected to the phone router directly. Any body know a way of hooking this up to the existing house phone lines? (to use the existing rj11 wall plates.


Thanks

[Thenasty]

this is how it works, for optimumonline they will change you cable modem witha cable modem w/an rj11 hookup. You hook up your phone in it. If you want to use your rj11 wiring in th house, just hook up those 2 wire from the house rj11 to the back of the cable modems rj11 (you need to make the rj11 tip).

For others like vonage, they will send you a BOX with rj11 connection on it and rj45 to

[lokki]

Hi,
I was worried about if the Internet at home was not working what would happen to the phone service. I checked with ATT and they say that if they detect that the modem is not connected they will call an alternate number you define such as a cell phone. I think this would work for me

I'm leaning towards at&t mainly beacuse they seem to be the chepest ones to mexico. 7 cnts.

The one thing no one seem to be able to answer was if I would be able to plug it into the wall to using my existing wall plates. Since the main phone is in the kitchen and the Cable modem is on another room.


Thanks

[Generic Eric]

The one thing no one seem to be able to answer was if I would be able to plug it into the wall to using my existing wall plates. Since the main phone is in the kitchen and the Cable modem is on another room.

Thanks

I have digital phone service from timewarner cable.  The output of the cable box as TheNasty described is connected to my wall.  The cable techs did a little fox and hound and found the line for the jack closest to my PC and connected it where the SBC line one was distributed throughout my home.  Does that make sense?

For something like Vonage, I don't believe it will be near as complex unless you do it or you hire someone to do something like that.  You will probably be stuck with the phone that it is closest to.  But you will be able to use a cordles just fine.

[Thenasty]

with new phones today, you really don't even need WALL JACKS anymore. Just buy one of those 4 hanset (codless) w a main answering machine phone connected to the cablemode and the rest, just put it anywahere you like. Thats all you really need, but if you need to hook it to your existing phone lines, then like I said, if you have a phone near the cablemodem box, open it up take the wires from it, make an rj11 tip and plug it in.

[Thenasty]

I checked with ATT and they say that if they detect that the modem is not connected they will call an alternate number you define such as a cell phone.

actually lets say Vonage, this is just a CALL FORWARDING, you set it up yourself so when line is down and people call the number it forwards to WHATEVEER you SET IT UP WITH.

[lucindrea]

i have a friend that uses it and the sound is about the same as normal telco , he also pays like $20 a month for a single outgoing only pots line in his house .. good to have to say , call 911 if the power goes out 

my brother lives on the other side of the country and we both just use a voice chat program on our computers , it's free and works fine ( their are differnt ones out their , just need to work out whats good for you ) , in theory , if everyone you knew was online , you should never have to pay a phone co.  But then calling for pizza becomes a problem  ...

the big phone companies are doing everything and anything they can to prevent the spread of voice over ip that is NOT controled by them , and they are loosing ( recent attempts at passing some bills in congress died ) , i guess they are concerned about not being able to charge 10cents per min , per mile when it costs them .005 cents to route the call and only during the connection ( made up numbers , but you get the idea )

simple fact is that the internet and the phone system is basicly the same thing! , both run through the same switchs and routers , just the pots system uses a differnt protcol and in some cases differnt lines , but not that often anymore. Call a friend in another city with pots and visit a web page in that same city and odds are 98% of the "packets" are going through the same hardware.

it allways amazes me how telco companies are "compeating" with ISP's for customers , when it's the tel co thats renting the high speed lines ( T1's OC3's etc ) to the ISP's in the first place! just look at DSL .. ever wonder why no matter who you get dsl from you still need to be X feet from the telco's switching station

[Thenasty]

my brother lives on the other side of the country and we both just use a voice chat program on our computers , it's free and works fine

I use to do this too and remember the FREE PHONE CALLS before ? This is how it worked, in you screen you have 2 windows, on the right dial your phone number that your in and the left window the number you wann call.
So it calls you first, then when you pick up, it then dials the number you type on the left window. This worked great if you have 2 phones lines before. Now thats no longer found anywhere. The only problem with it was I have only one phone line and had to hang up my dial-up connection and then I only had certain minutes to talk. If I had Cable/DLS/2 Phone lines back then, then you can have more minutes to talk because a pop-up window is everytime your time is up and you had to click to continue. I could not do that with one phone line.

Now, I saw a commercial and here is what I remember.
It is a PHONE that you connect to your COMPUTERS SOUNDCARD (mic/speaker out) and you use it as like a phone, same as you mentioned but I don/t remember anything else. Anyone seen this commecial?

Basically it works just like what you mentioned as I quoted. but instead of using your regualr mic and speaker, its built in the phone.

[Trenchbroom]

I've had Vonage for over a year now.  Dropping the telco phone and going w/ Vonage enabled me to get a broadband connection through Comcast for about the same price as my old phone and dial up service.

Overall I'm very happy with Vonage.  The sound quality is good (if you are bandwith limited you can lower the amount of bandwith used for the Vonage connection so that you can use the computer with the phone, but it sounds pretty "tinny"), especially now that Comcast upped the amount of bandwith that I get per second.  I'm to the point now that I forget I'm using a VOIP phone, except for when I dial out (you have to dial the area code every time you use the phone, even if you call local...no biggie), and when I pay the paltry $24.99 bill for my phone bill that used to cost $70+ every month. 

IF your broadband connection is very stable then I heartily recommend Vonage.  However, if you have problems at all with your connection on a routine basis, don't do it unless you can call forward to another phone that his handy (cell phone).  At this point the phone "doesn't work" about once every 3 months, which is acceptable since all I typically have to do is reset the phone box or wait for my Comcast connection to come back. 

[lucindrea]

you have to dial the area code every time you use the phone, even if you call local...no biggie

anyone living in or around a major city does this anyway ( my parrents live 2 miles down the road and i need to dial 10 digits to call them ) .. i have been making 10 digit phone calls for so long now i compleatly baffeled a client when i couldnt make a phone call at their office .. they  never even heard of anyone dialing like that except for long distance .. and this was in DE .. heh right outside of at least 2 major cities ( Baltimore and Phili ) , but then agin , their whole state has 1 area code , where i live their are at least 3 "local" area codes.

[Thenasty]

I though the entire US, once it was placed, you need to dial all the digits including area codes. This is how it is started maybe 1998 ?

[lucindrea]

nope , still some areas where it's not needed , mainly places where their is only one area code for like 75 miles .. but i think that if you DO dial the area code it will still work .. so in that respect the us is in a 10 digit system ....

think of it this way , the telco companies WANT everyone dialing 10 digits , this way theu can get rid of the 1 for long distances and you dont know 1/2 the time if your dialing long dist or not.

[JackTucky]

I just checked into it again and decided against it.   I don't want my phone calls relying on the internet.   Reminds me of when I looked at a Gateway PC like 7 or 8 years ago, the one with the 35" monitor and a windows PC to tune the TV.  I asked the guy, so I have to rely on windows to change my channel, he said, yes, and I walked out.  I was worried I'd miss Melrose place while my PC was rebooting 

Also, optimum online can't move my existing #.

What about Cell phone only service? 

Art

[Thenasty]

I asked the guy, so I have to rely on windows to change my channel, he said, yes, and I walked out.

[shmokes]

I still get a "call cannot be completed as dialed" if I dial more than 7 digits for a local number.  All of Utah is that way.  We only have 2 area codes for our whole state.  About 10 years ago we only had one.

But even within area codes there are local (requiring 7 digits) and long distance (requiring 10 digits).  You just have to know, or figure it out by trial and error. 

[iwillfearnoevil]

i've used vonage and am pretty happy. it's a lot cheaper as i was paying $50+ for verizon local plus call waiting. vonage made it cost effective for us to go to broadband. you easily get used to dialing 1+area code in front of numbers and you don't even think about it. i use cordless phones and have several handsets. the batteries don't seem to last too long on them, i'm more unhappy with the phones than vonage. service outages have mostly been due to my timewarner internet going out opposed to vonage. of course during power outages, you are kinda hosed unless you have your router, voip box, and phone in a ups. i think keeping a phone plugged into the old line for emergency 911 is a good idea. not having a normal 911 may be something to consider but not a deal breaker. quality is great unless i'm like downloading at full blast but even then it just gets a little echoey. i love the extra features like emailing you when you get voicemail and call forwarding.

[lucindrea]

heh I'm just waiting for someone to come up with a open source solution .. i have a server here and most of my family are here , my brother spends allot on long dist to call my parrents and i would stick a modem on my server and allow him to use my LAN line to call my parrents if their was a a decent way to do it , ya the software is out their , but it's $$$$.

on a side note , i have a friend to is spending quality time with the state ( first time was a technicality , then the fool broke parole ) .. he can ONLY call collect and MUST use the states system , so his parrents end up paying like $0.30 per min , and they have no choice in the matter ( except deny his phone calls ) .. makes me wonder about those who are really struggling and have to deal with this.

[Thenasty]

heh I'm just waiting for someone to come up with a open source solution .. i have a server here and most of my family are here , my brother spends allot on long dist to call my parrents and i would stick a modem on my server and allow him to use my LAN line to call my parrents if their was a a decent way to do it , ya the software is out their , but it's $$$$.

What is this software called ? And you can call any Local/Long Distance Telco from  it ? This sounded like the one I mentioned above but I can no longer find it.

[lucindrea]

i forget off hand , i know i saw it like 6 months ago when this came up on another forum ( i'll look to see if i bookmarked it ) ..
as for long distance not really .. the basic idea is that my brother calls my server via the internet , then my server makes a LOCAL phone call to my parrents , basicly becoming a relay from the internet to the phone co. ( so for him it's long dist , for me it's local )

in theory , you could have users all over the world like a p2p system and you connect to whoever is the closest to the # you want to call .. this is basicly what voice over ip does now anyway , just the hardware is a bit more complex.


acctully , now that i think of it , if i could find a soultion to plug one device in at my brothers end , and another at my parrents , i would pay the extra $5 amonth for a static ip at my parrents :-)  just seems everything needs a gateway to route the calls .. hence the reasion for an open source soultion.

[lucindrea]

hmmm ...

http://www.cuphone.com/

or

http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/voip.html

??

[patrickl]

Our au-pair is using Skype to call for free to other Skype users and for a low rate to Bulgaria (where she comes from). She's pretty happy with it even though she needs to use the PC for it (with a headset).

[Santoro]

I had Vonage in combination with cable modem for a year and a half and it was pretty good as a household line  I'd give it a B.  Sometimes there would be really annoying echoes and other artifacts that were bad enough that I had to redial the call.

Now that I am working out of the house (YES!!!) I have sprung for good old Verizon.  It costs $25/mo more for unlimited long distance, but for business I can't afford a lousy connection.

I miss the email voicemail notifications though.  Vonage emailed the voicemails as a WAV file to my work inbox.  Very cool.
 

[daeven]

I'm now a happy Vonage user.  Initially I had some issues since apparantly our cable connection was losing 80% of the packets destined for my modem.  I would suggest that anyone considering using VoIP run a pingplotter test, or do the circuit test on DSLReports.com before ordering service.  Get your network connection cleaned up before you disconnect your old line!

Also, Vonage does referals.  If you refer someone to sign up, both the referral and the new signup each get a free month of service!  Anyone thinking about signing up for Vonage, send a PM to one of us already with Vonage and we can send your Email address to Vonage to make this deal work.

[lucindrea]

also somthing to keep in mind , although this is on the sneeky side of good busness , i wouldnt put it past any of the big co's ..

if your ISP is also a voip provider or telco or is partnered with one ,  the odds of your packets getting bogged down in their system  ... voip uses it's own set of protacols and it's really not that hard for the co to put delays or  place that protocol much lower on the piority list for thei routers..   i wouldnt be suprized if people on verizons dsl tend to get choppy voip connections.