VoIP for the Masses!

SkywalkerOS8 writes: "Vonage has begun offering Voice-over-IP(VoIP) service to residential broadband users. I've had the service since Friday and the quality is indistinguishable from a regular phone line. It's only $20/month for 500 minutes or $40/month for unlimited service. They include Cisco equipment, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Caller ID and Voicemail (which you can check online) in the service price. You can read more about it in this article in Time. It works fine through my Linux NAT firewall/router and my monthly phone budget has now dropped from $60+ to $20."

Comments

Why????

[sqlrob]

At these prices, what is the point?

Unless it includes international, you can get almost the same deal on a cell phone which you can carry with you and 911 works.

And considering how flaky broadband providers are, do you really want to trust your phone service to them?

Re:Why????

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Not to mention that DSL users can't cancel their main phone anyways...

Re:What's the bandwidth usage?

[SkywalkerOS8]

They say you need at least 90kbps up and down. I haven't run any test to verify that that is what it uses.

Speaking from experience...

[sethadam1]

I work for a large US Naval organization and we've had a large VoIP solution in place for over a year (I believe it's the largest commercial VoIP rollout through Cisco so far...ever). The phones are great, they offer plenty of cool features that make them "really cool" and they are cheap to run (save the bandwidth costs). They are eseentially little routers - they use Cat6 twisted pair and can even run XML scripts. It's also nice to have your voice mail delivered to your e-mailbox instead of an answering machine.

My question is, with the low service reliability of broadband (mine needs a reboot once a week or two and it goes down every few months for a few hours), what will you do when your phone lines go out for 4 hours on a Sunday for a small "service problem?"

My take: it's too early for residential VoIP. Adam

Re:The problem with VoIP

[SkywalkerOS8]

Talk to people who were in Manhattan on 9/11 about how well the phone lines and cell phones worked compared to Instant Message. I think if VoIP was in place, it would have been able to handle the load.

Re:PPP over VOIP?

[ZxCv]

When I told a former employer that I was using my home phone line solely to dial in for work purposes, they agreed to foot the bill for it (granted, it was less than $25/mo, but still). If you haven't already, I'd try this tactic with your employer.

Multiple Phones?

[n-baxley]

My biggest problem with replacing the land line phone with a cell phone or VoIP is that each phone unit is expensive and, in the case of cellular, small. I like to have a permanent phone in many rooms with one cordless that I can roam with. And the cordless is never where it's supposed to be when the phone rings! So can I use all of my regular phones with this?

From the article: Hook your cable modem or DSL line up to one end of the box, plug any ordinary phone into the other end, and you're ready to go.

Can I then plug the "box" into my existing phone network and enable all the phones that I currently have in the house? I think that might sell me right there. I'd be really interested if someone has found a way around the expensive cell phone problem also.