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"Skype is currently the only provider to allow calls to landlines and cellphones."

I currently call landlines on stanaphone (via both softphone and hardware-based SIP), iconnecthere (both softphone and hardware-based), and packet 8 (hardware based). Skype is certainly not the only one allowing calls to the PSTN, and they're certainly not the most flexible.

I don't have the old TOS here (it's on a hard drive at home), but I'll find it and follow up with the diffs. Truth is, it's the principle of the matter that offends me far more than the changes themselves -- they're artificially coupling the 911 notification with a TOS change.

In terms of finding someone price competitive with Vonage, I'm switching to iConnectHere (http://www.iconnecthere.com/). They're the consumer arm of DeltaThree, who has been doing VoIP since 1996.

First I tried iconnecthere and after following their directions I had no service. I was thankful the first month was free so I could cancel before I was charged.

Next I tried Vonage whom I thought would be better. I had trouble signing up (I have no home phone and couldn't remember what number I gave the bank) and after trying three times to correct the information by following a link they gave me that didn't take me to the information I needed to change emailed them. Which I was invited to do in their email to me as I couldn't call the 800 number.
I emailed them three times.

Then I signed up with Lingo. The sign up went well (I remembered the number I gave the bank). The phone adapter arrived and I followed the directions. And it worked!

So then I pondered who I should call first.
Should I order pizza?
No! I should call Vonage and cancel my order. So I did.
After talking to three people and getting transfered the first two times I got this guy who had only been told I had problems signing up. I made it clear to him that I wanted to cancel because Vonage couldn't answer my emails so I went with a competitor.
Then he said "So you're talking to me..."
Me: "On my new VOIP service and it works GREAT!"

So I got Vonage to cancel my pending service and 911 is a little funky with my service right now. Basically when I dial 911 it will go my VOIP providers operators who will take the call and then call 911. So I had to verify that my living address was correct.

But I am not worried, I survived a collapsed lung without medical attention so I believe I can make my own way to the hospital if anything serious goes wrong. (Please don't bother replying how dumb this thinking is; I don't care)

I have been using iConnectHere, which is very affordable, but I have problems with not being able to connect, and problems with audio make it impossible to hear the person on the other end. Other times, it works fine though. Perhaps they have too many users?

a cellphone is cheaper than your home phone

That varies a lot from person to person. If you want all the features that are included in mobile phone services (call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, voice mail, nationwide long-distance minutes, etc.) then it can be a good deal. But if you don't care about any of that, it's easy to get a bare-bones landline that is half the cost of mobile service. My landline costs US$22.44 a month after all fees and taxes ($11.23 before "surcharges" and sales tax.). I use a no-monthly-fee VoIP service for the few times year a call long distance.

Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:04:31 -0200
From: Futurepower [futurepower_usa (-AT-) yahoo.com.br]
To: "U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center" [sedas (-AT-) neis.cr.usgs.gov]
Subject: NEIC: Why didn't you warn about the Tsunamis?

Question:

I haven't seen this discussed anywhere.

Why didn't the NEIC call the U.S. State Department, so that they could warn people about the Tsunamis?

The earthquake position and magnitude was known 6 hours before the waves arrived in Thailand, I understand. Wouldn't almost every person's life have been saved if Thailand, for example, had had warning?

Michael

_____________


Reply:

Michael,

Phone calls were placed to the State Department operations center, the White House situation room, the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, as well as several other organizations within 90 minutes of the occurrance of this earthquake.

The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace.

Stuart Sipkin
USGS/NEIC

_____________


Stuart,

I have a suggestion for a local tsunami warning system. There continues to be an enormous amount of earthquake activity in the area around Indonesia. It seems likely that there will be another big earthquake. Next time there is an earthquake that is likely to cause a tsunami, call me, any time of night or day. I will promise to call at least 30 hotels within 2 hours. I will promise to get 10 friends involved. They will promise to call 30 hotels each, also. We would each take a different country.

My suggestion is that we would use Google to find hotels, for example in Sri Lanka. This is one of the hotels I found there, a 5-star hotel with more than 400 rooms:

Galadari Hotel
The Businessman's Home in Sri Lanka
64, Lotus Road,
Colombo 1.
Sri Lanka.
Tel: 94-1-544544
Fax: 94-1-449875
E-Mail: galadari (-AT-) sri.lanka.net

"The Galadari Hotel is in the heart of the city in Colombo, over looking the beautiful Indian ocean."

Big hotels answer their phones 24 hours a day. Presumably there is a staff of at least 200 at that hotel, for three shifts. I think if one person were told, everyone else would know soon. They don't want their family and friends and neighbors near the water to die, and they know how to reach them, even if they have to ride a motorbike to those who don't have phones.

There are two easy ways to prove that a call about an earthquake is not a hoax. I would tell the person who answered the phone that it is an emergency and I need to talk to a manager. I would tell the manager to check the USGS web site at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/. Any 5-Star hotel, and most others of any size, have internet access. I would also tell the manager that, if the water at the beach receded, people had only a few minutes to get to safety. I would ask the manager to get staff members to call radio and TV stations in their area.

You said in your message, "The problem is the absence of local warning systems in the countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. There were no systems or response plans in place to warn the local populace."

It seems to me that this is a workable plan for a local tsunami warning system. It wouldn't cost much. Using Skype, a two minute call to any land line phone in Sri Lanka is about 40 U.S. cents, for example. Using iConnectHere's most expensive service, a two minute call is 80 cents.

you people are all crazy. $29/month, $39/month. whats the point of getting rid of your phone?

I've been using iconnecthere.com, $12/month and i have my own phone number that anyone, even without a voip phone, can call. it just works. and its just damn cheap!

i use a cisco ata-186, plugged into my linksys hub. That converts the net connection into a regular rj-11 phone. works/looks/behaves exactly like a regular phone, but much cheaper.

sure i dont have 911, but i really dont care, i have a cell phone for that... 8)

twc, vonage, packet8, etc, they are all too expensive. iconnecthere.com, check it out.

you people are all crazy. $29/month, $39/month. whats the point of getting rid of your phone?

I've been using iconnecthere.com, $12/month and i have my own phone number that anyone, even without a voip phone, can call. it just works. and its just damn cheap!

i use a cisco ata-186, plugged into my linksys hub. That converts the net connection into a regular rj-11 phone. works/looks/behaves exactly like a regular phone, but much cheaper.

sure i dont have 911, but i really dont care, i have a cell phone for that... 8)

twc, vonage, packet8, etc, they are all too expensive. iconnecthere.com, check it out.

If you want to use voip for out-going calls only, you don't need to use Vonage. You can use something like iconnecthere or as someone else mentioned sipphone. They both have a software phone and low pay-as-you-go rates so you can try them out with very little investment. I use iconnecthere, it's not the greatest but it gets the job done. I may try sipphone soon.

"... but if it's pre-installed they might try it and like it."

But it's not pre-installed, it costs $200. If a user wants to try VoIP, they can go to iconnecthere (or similar service), download the software and signup for a free trial. It takes just a few minutes.

Apparently there will come a time in the US where you can switch your landline phone number to a cellular phone and vice versa.

They're not there yet. I was able to retain my landline phone number when switching providers (BellSouth to Birch). However just moving down the road required a totally new phone number - with the same phone company. Makes no sense to me, because the cell phone companies and now the VoIP phone companies can give you a number in any area when you set up or move service. Especially intriguing is the offer from iconnecthere.com to give subscribers a choice of international numbers (presently UK and Israel) that a person in the USA could have on their VoIP phone. It means that theoretically my UK family could call me for pennies at the weekend!

However, this doesn't mean people will suddenly get multiple phone numbers so that Auntie Flo can call them on the cheap. Rather, it is nationwide calling plans on landlines which will capture that market - services like former Worldcoms' Neighborhood - $50/mo and unmetered across whole USA. Speaking on nationwide calling plans it's about time European telecom operators got together to offer "unmetered" calls across Europe for a single monthly service fee. Oh, and to have a Euro plan where standard minutes are used rather than the expensive ones presently charged.

Mark.

One thing I don't like about Vonage is that you have to use their Cisco ATA-186(the "POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo" you mentioned). Of course, they password protect it and provision it themselves, so it can only be used with their service. This means you don't get to play with this nifty device, 'cause they've locked you out. Goes against the hacker spirit, seems more like the Microsoft "we've set this up for you for your own protection" thing. I even emailed them to ask if I could use my own ATA, here is their response:

"We do not currently offer service on devices that we do not provide. We do include the Cisco ATA 186 free of charge. We do appreciate your interest in our service. Please do let us know if we may be of further assistance."

Why would you want to configure the Cisco ATA yourself? Well, you might want to try Free World Dialup, or you might want to play with VOCAL from vovida.org. Or whatever.

What I did was to buy a Cisco ATA-186 myself from YesMicro for about $170 with shipping. Then, I got an account at iconnecthere.com and set up my ATA using their setup instructions (it's a Word file, oh well...). I pick up the phone, and it works. When I make a call, they just charge me by the minute (2.9 cents to the U.S.). They have other plans that are cheaper, if you make a lot of calls. If you want to send and receive calls, you can do that for $8.95/month, or $10.95/month for a toll-free number (first hour is included, extra minutes at $0.10/minute). I don't, however, need my own phone number. So, here was my decision-making process, in a nutshell:

With Vonage, if I don't need my own phone number, too bad, no discount; I get a phone number anyway. I still can't tinker with the Cisco ATA, and I still need to give it back (it's not like I could do anything with it anyway, since it's locked down). $39.95 for unlimited calls to the U.S.

With iconnecthere, if I don't need my own phone number, then I don't pay the extra $8.95/month. However, I need to buy the Cisco ATA. Assuming a cost of $170, it would cost me $14.16/month to pay for it. Taking the cost of the Cisco into account, $39.95 buys me 1404 minutes/month, or about 47 minutes/day. Without the cost of the Cisco, it's 1767 minutes/month, or almost an hour/day.

However, I don't make a lot of calls every day. So, with iconnecthere, I can just pay by the minute. Assuming I make about 15 minutes of calls/day, that's $24.16/month including the cost of the Cisco as above, or $10/month not including the cost of the Cisco (with their 1000 minutes for $10 plan). Plus, I have the fun of being able to hack around on the Cisco ATA, and it's mine to keep.

So, in conclusion, if you don't want to hack around on your Cisco ATA, you don't mind giving it back, and you make over an hour's worth of calls every single day, go with Vonage. If you want to hack your Cisco ATA, own it, and make less than an hour's worth of calls a day, iconnecthere seems to be a better option.

One thing I don't like about Vonage is that you have to use their Cisco ATA-186(the "POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo" you mentioned). Of course, they password protect it and provision it themselves, so it can only be used with their service. This means you don't get to play with this nifty device, 'cause they've locked you out. Goes against the hacker spirit, seems more like the Microsoft "we've set this up for you for your own protection" thing. I even emailed them to ask if I could use my own ATA, here is their response:

"We do not currently offer service on devices that we do not provide. We do include the Cisco ATA 186 free of charge. We do appreciate your interest in our service. Please do let us know if we may be of further assistance."

Why would you want to configure the Cisco ATA yourself? Well, you might want to try Free World Dialup, or you might want to play with VOCAL from vovida.org. Or whatever.

What I did was to buy a Cisco ATA-186 myself from YesMicro for about $170 with shipping. Then, I got an account at iconnecthere.com and set up my ATA using their setup instructions (it's a Word file, oh well...). I pick up the phone, and it works. When I make a call, they just charge me by the minute (2.9 cents to the U.S.). They have other plans that are cheaper, if you make a lot of calls. If you want to send and receive calls, you can do that for $8.95/month, or $10.95/month for a toll-free number (first hour is included, extra minutes at $0.10/minute). I don't, however, need my own phone number. So, here was my decision-making process, in a nutshell:

With Vonage, if I don't need my own phone number, too bad, no discount; I get a phone number anyway. I still can't tinker with the Cisco ATA, and I still need to give it back (it's not like I could do anything with it anyway, since it's locked down). $39.95 for unlimited calls to the U.S.

With iconnecthere, if I don't need my own phone number, then I don't pay the extra $8.95/month. However, I need to buy the Cisco ATA. Assuming a cost of $170, it would cost me $14.16/month to pay for it. Taking the cost of the Cisco into account, $39.95 buys me 1404 minutes/month, or about 47 minutes/day. Without the cost of the Cisco, it's 1767 minutes/month, or almost an hour/day.

However, I don't make a lot of calls every day. So, with iconnecthere, I can just pay by the minute. Assuming I make about 15 minutes of calls/day, that's $24.16/month including the cost of the Cisco as above, or $10/month not including the cost of the Cisco (with their 1000 minutes for $10 plan). Plus, I have the fun of being able to hack around on the Cisco ATA, and it's mine to keep.

So, in conclusion, if you don't want to hack around on your Cisco ATA, you don't mind giving it back, and you make over an hour's worth of calls every single day, go with Vonage. If you want to hack your Cisco ATA, own it, and make less than an hour's worth of calls a day, iconnecthere seems to be a better option.

One thing I don't like about Vonage is that you have to use their Cisco ATA-186(the "POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo" you mentioned). Of course, they password protect it and provision it themselves, so it can only be used with their service. This means you don't get to play with this nifty device, 'cause they've locked you out. Goes against the hacker spirit, seems more like the Microsoft "we've set this up for you for your own protection" thing. I even emailed them to ask if I could use my own ATA, here is their response:

"We do not currently offer service on devices that we do not provide. We do include the Cisco ATA 186 free of charge. We do appreciate your interest in our service. Please do let us know if we may be of further assistance."

Why would you want to configure the Cisco ATA yourself? Well, you might want to try Free World Dialup, or you might want to play with VOCAL from vovida.org. Or whatever.

What I did was to buy a Cisco ATA-186 myself from YesMicro for about $170 with shipping. Then, I got an account at iconnecthere.com and set up my ATA using their setup instructions (it's a Word file, oh well...). I pick up the phone, and it works. When I make a call, they just charge me by the minute (2.9 cents to the U.S.). They have other plans that are cheaper, if you make a lot of calls. If you want to send and receive calls, you can do that for $8.95/month, or $10.95/month for a toll-free number (first hour is included, extra minutes at $0.10/minute). I don't, however, need my own phone number. So, here was my decision-making process, in a nutshell:

With Vonage, if I don't need my own phone number, too bad, no discount; I get a phone number anyway. I still can't tinker with the Cisco ATA, and I still need to give it back (it's not like I could do anything with it anyway, since it's locked down). $39.95 for unlimited calls to the U.S.

With iconnecthere, if I don't need my own phone number, then I don't pay the extra $8.95/month. However, I need to buy the Cisco ATA. Assuming a cost of $170, it would cost me $14.16/month to pay for it. Taking the cost of the Cisco into account, $39.95 buys me 1404 minutes/month, or about 47 minutes/day. Without the cost of the Cisco, it's 1767 minutes/month, or almost an hour/day.

However, I don't make a lot of calls every day. So, with iconnecthere, I can just pay by the minute. Assuming I make about 15 minutes of calls/day, that's $24.16/month including the cost of the Cisco as above, or $10/month not including the cost of the Cisco (with their 1000 minutes for $10 plan). Plus, I have the fun of being able to hack around on the Cisco ATA, and it's mine to keep.

So, in conclusion, if you don't want to hack around on your Cisco ATA, you don't mind giving it back, and you make over an hour's worth of calls every single day, go with Vonage. If you want to hack your Cisco ATA, own it, and make less than an hour's worth of calls a day, iconnecthere seems to be a better option.

One thing I don't like about Vonage is that you have to use their Cisco ATA-186(the "POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo" you mentioned). Of course, they password protect it and provision it themselves, so it can only be used with their service. This means you don't get to play with this nifty device, 'cause they've locked you out. Goes against the hacker spirit, seems more like the Microsoft "we've set this up for you for your own protection" thing. I even emailed them to ask if I could use my own ATA, here is their response:

"We do not currently offer service on devices that we do not provide. We do include the Cisco ATA 186 free of charge. We do appreciate your interest in our service. Please do let us know if we may be of further assistance."

Why would you want to configure the Cisco ATA yourself? Well, you might want to try Free World Dialup, or you might want to play with VOCAL from vovida.org. Or whatever.

What I did was to buy a Cisco ATA-186 myself from YesMicro for about $170 with shipping. Then, I got an account at iconnecthere.com and set up my ATA using their setup instructions (it's a Word file, oh well...). I pick up the phone, and it works. When I make a call, they just charge me by the minute (2.9 cents to the U.S.). They have other plans that are cheaper, if you make a lot of calls. If you want to send and receive calls, you can do that for $8.95/month, or $10.95/month for a toll-free number (first hour is included, extra minutes at $0.10/minute). I don't, however, need my own phone number. So, here was my decision-making process, in a nutshell:

With Vonage, if I don't need my own phone number, too bad, no discount; I get a phone number anyway. I still can't tinker with the Cisco ATA, and I still need to give it back (it's not like I could do anything with it anyway, since it's locked down). $39.95 for unlimited calls to the U.S.

With iconnecthere, if I don't need my own phone number, then I don't pay the extra $8.95/month. However, I need to buy the Cisco ATA. Assuming a cost of $170, it would cost me $14.16/month to pay for it. Taking the cost of the Cisco into account, $39.95 buys me 1404 minutes/month, or about 47 minutes/day. Without the cost of the Cisco, it's 1767 minutes/month, or almost an hour/day.

However, I don't make a lot of calls every day. So, with iconnecthere, I can just pay by the minute. Assuming I make about 15 minutes of calls/day, that's $24.16/month including the cost of the Cisco as above, or $10/month not including the cost of the Cisco (with their 1000 minutes for $10 plan). Plus, I have the fun of being able to hack around on the Cisco ATA, and it's mine to keep.

So, in conclusion, if you don't want to hack around on your Cisco ATA, you don't mind giving it back, and you make over an hour's worth of calls every single day, go with Vonage. If you want to hack your Cisco ATA, own it, and make less than an hour's worth of calls a day, iconnecthere seems to be a better option.

There is a security flaw which can be exploited in some Cisco ATA-186 boxes to get the password. You might want to read this article, where this technique is used to set up two Vonage accounts on the same ATA.

Another alternative is deltaThree, a.k.a. iConnectHere.com. They are on the verge of offering VoIP via Cisco ATA-186 boxes. You buy your own box, then configure it. Here are their steps for configuring the ATA-186. From the looks of it, if you already have an iConnectHere.com account, it should already work, even though they have not officially started selling ATA-186 boxes yet. (I haven't tried it, so I don't know, although I have used their regular software-based stuff, and the quality was good on a 256K DSL line.)

The price of the service is only $8.95 a month (look toward the bottom of the page), but you pay per-minute charges on all outgoing calls (except for toll-free numbers). But, for calls to the U.S., this is only 2.9 cents per minute. The nice thing about having your own ATA is that, theoretically, you could change providers in the future, and simply reconfigure your ATA. However, Vonage will not let you use your own ATA (I asked them), and perhaps other providers in the future will be the same way. I guess their strategy is to make you pay for an ATA many times over, over the course of a few years... reminds my of cable companies that won't let you buy your own DOCSIS modem.

There is a security flaw which can be exploited in some Cisco ATA-186 boxes to get the password. You might want to read this article, where this technique is used to set up two Vonage accounts on the same ATA.

Another alternative is deltaThree, a.k.a. iConnectHere.com. They are on the verge of offering VoIP via Cisco ATA-186 boxes. You buy your own box, then configure it. Here are their steps for configuring the ATA-186. From the looks of it, if you already have an iConnectHere.com account, it should already work, even though they have not officially started selling ATA-186 boxes yet. (I haven't tried it, so I don't know, although I have used their regular software-based stuff, and the quality was good on a 256K DSL line.)

The price of the service is only $8.95 a month (look toward the bottom of the page), but you pay per-minute charges on all outgoing calls (except for toll-free numbers). But, for calls to the U.S., this is only 2.9 cents per minute. The nice thing about having your own ATA is that, theoretically, you could change providers in the future, and simply reconfigure your ATA. However, Vonage will not let you use your own ATA (I asked them), and perhaps other providers in the future will be the same way. I guess their strategy is to make you pay for an ATA many times over, over the course of a few years... reminds my of cable companies that won't let you buy your own DOCSIS modem.

There is a security flaw which can be exploited in some Cisco ATA-186 boxes to get the password. You might want to read this article, where this technique is used to set up two Vonage accounts on the same ATA.

Another alternative is deltaThree, a.k.a. iConnectHere.com. They are on the verge of offering VoIP via Cisco ATA-186 boxes. You buy your own box, then configure it. Here are their steps for configuring the ATA-186. From the looks of it, if you already have an iConnectHere.com account, it should already work, even though they have not officially started selling ATA-186 boxes yet. (I haven't tried it, so I don't know, although I have used their regular software-based stuff, and the quality was good on a 256K DSL line.)

The price of the service is only $8.95 a month (look toward the bottom of the page), but you pay per-minute charges on all outgoing calls (except for toll-free numbers). But, for calls to the U.S., this is only 2.9 cents per minute. The nice thing about having your own ATA is that, theoretically, you could change providers in the future, and simply reconfigure your ATA. However, Vonage will not let you use your own ATA (I asked them), and perhaps other providers in the future will be the same way. I guess their strategy is to make you pay for an ATA many times over, over the course of a few years... reminds my of cable companies that won't let you buy your own DOCSIS modem.