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Qwest & Cablevision Launch VoIP Service
securitas writes "Qwest announced that it will be the first RBOC to offer VoIP service to its customers, starting with Minnesota. Not to be outdone, Cablevision launched VoIP service for its '1 million high-speed Internet customers in the lucrative New York market.' Cablevision's Tom Rutledge said the company plans to take advantage of last Monday's FCC local-number portability ruling that lets customers keep their phone numbers when switching service providers. Qwest plans to challenge the local-number portability ruling. It looks like the disruptive technology hype that surrounded VoIP in the late-1990s is about to see its first real litmus test."
What a suprise..When will companies learn that lawsuits are not the best way to deal with new technology...
Adaptation is the best way to deal with new technology. Lawsuits are just a way for companies to try to cover their behind until they either understand or are ready for the need to adapt.
The Law of Falling Bodies
The consulting firm that I work in has been observing the ebbs and flows in the VoIP market for the last 12 years, ever since Corel released "RemoteSpeak" has trial version in Newfoundland, Canada. At the time the quality of the data was fairly poor due to latency in the early stages of the Internet (certain conversation were packed in taped and shipped to Oceania for instance) but it showed some great promise in the BBS world of FidoNet.
We are now agressively working towards a partnership with AvenTail to compete with Netscreen and Cisco. Our goal is to make phone access a commodity; we will target the content of the phone conversations as a potential revenue source or provide it as medium for advertisers. Our initial research showed that people were willing to tolerate commercials of certain amount of length in return for crystal-clear free (or very inexpensive) long-distance calls.
We have the product and with some luck we'll be able to get the cooperation of smaller CLECs in the mid-western area for a pilot.
Which is nice.
Anybody know how VoIP 911 access works?
Does it link your number (ip?) with your address?
I think 911-protection is keeping a lot of us from switching...
Maybe now that we can transfer our phone number... we'll soon be able to transfer our 911 protection as well.
Davak
Has VOIP missed it's window of opportunity thanks to the continued proliferation of cell phones and favorable calling plans? Both my wife and I have unlimited long distance built into our cellular plans which eliminates one of the biggest "plus's" for VOIP (international calling not withstanding). So for us, VOIP is an utter non-issue. A few years ago, it would have been since we both have family scattered about the US that we called frequently. And with unlimited night/weekend minutes and scads of "plain ole minutes", it makes it even less compeling.
So have the telcos won due to the long gestation period of wide spread VOIP. Other than international callers, or those who shun cell phones, what reason would one have for going with VOIP. Personally the one thing that keeps me attached to my land line, is more of the "comfort" of having such an old tried and true technology around "just in case" (redundancy good). That and it still serves as the "family" phone number for inbound calls. And with cellular home distribution gadgets coming online, even that use will slowly be eliminated.
If you can't beat them, sue them!
Seriously thought, VoIP isn't a new thing. I myself use it frequently to talk to my fiancee in the US - as I've have broadband I don't pay any extra to call her, and as she don't pay for local calls* she don't have to pay anything either. The option - picking up my phone and dial her number - would cost me a staggering 9 cents a minute, as well as gobbling up her 'long distance minutes'** (I would have to use her mobile phone; as much as I like my motehr in law, I don't want her to be able to listen in, and as the phone is in the kitchen...). I'm happy to see that the US is taking up numberportability thought - somethign we've enjoyed for years now. The next step they are introdusing here seems to be the ability to take your number along even if you move from one end of the nation to the other.
_*) This is the one issue which I think the US telecomsystem is better than the norwegian one.
**) What kind of idiot decided that _you_ should pay when someone calls you? As long as y'all accepts that, you'll be getting screwed bigtime by your telcos.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
But if you use local-number portability,
then something with your VOIP doesn't work,
you may not be able to switch things back.
Or am I missing something here?
Cheers, Joel
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Vonage and most of the other consumer-oriented VoIP providers offer a forwarder which hopefully connects you with emergency services when you dial 911 from your handset.
You almost always have to enable the service, after you've signed up, by providing a real physical address to your house. The service provider then determines your nearest Public Safety Answering Point (called PSAPs), which is what operators used to do when you dialed "0" and said "HELP!"
This is not the typical "911 Center" that most people would think it is, and they don't automatically have your address when you call. You'll likely have to state what type of emergency you have, wait on hold, and then provide them with your address.
Beyond all of this, Vonage, in particular, highly advises you to not depend on their 911 service. An outage on their behalf, upstream from them, of your broadband, or of your electricity would eliminate your ability to dial 911 from your Vonage service. There are many weak links in that chain, and they're smart to tell you so.
I read earlier that someone suggested picking up a wireless phone that has good signal but isn't subscribed to any particular service. Cell phones almost universally will dial 911 if they can, subscribed or not. (Double-check that, though.) There again, though, remember they'll likely not have your physical address.
All that said, if you have some higher-than-average-reason to need 911 services, I'd not depend on anything but an ILEC landline. (Even CLECs tend to save money by ditching the E911 tandem, which, even though unlikely, could cause a problem.)
justen
It connects to the same public emergency switchboard that you reach via cell phone 911. However, there may be extended information available with some quick digging as you must register your physical address of the number you will be dialing from and it must be confirmed as valid. Consult the FAQs or customer service number of the service you are considering for the best details as always.
Until then however, your 911 is not activated and you must wait for a confirmation email once you do register confirming your information has been entered into a database.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It is not clear, if this will be a service offered directly to consumers, or wholesale deal with phone card companies- which Verizon has offered for years.
...are required by law to open/sell/lease thier networks to foster competition and choice. In theory, the Mom and Pop's could purchase access to this technology and resell it ala DSL.
The cable companies however don't have to open anything on thier networks, and locally, they have just as much a monopoly as your RBOC's. They get to sell cable, data and now telecom without ever having to allow competition onto thier networks-what a bargain.
I am glad to hear the propagation of VoIP with a cable company. This is the type of tie in that is required with responsibility of the used lines for a service to show the public reliability. Additionally this may be the key to getting standard 911 working as it does over the POTS and ease the concerns of some in switching and saving the almighty dollar. However, this also has a downside equal to the involvement of Qwest in this whole mess. Once you start getting these giant corporations involved...won't we get pulled back into paying the right to use us taxes and other fees required to make sure that hard working CEO gets their oh so needed 5.7 million dollar holiday bonus? On the same token, the major restrictions in place for POTS network such as no international calling and other restrictions and absurdities such as your calling list must all be victims of the major coroporation's service as well for you to take advantage of their plan of the month. Call me paranoid...but why can't Qwest offer these services through their POTS? Who is footing any loss of profits for them losing focus on their POT network? Somebody has to be taking the hit somewhere.
This is still a new growing alternative communication technology which is correctly making use of a global connection as everything is fated to do. Cell phones already make use of this and research is working on a better computer to do this and really harness the power of the internet intelligently. I hope major corporate players who seem to have a tendacy to stiffle the competition and development of new technologies in the name of business do not destroy what is shaping to be a very good thing. True, the heavy hand of the government will get involved fiscally for their cut but we should all keep an eye on how corporate giants will try to abuse VoIP and brandish the tools they purchased in congress such as the DMCA.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
This isn't new. I worked for a company here in Kansas City that was doing basicly VoIP three years ago. The customer didn't need a special phone or anything. The company ran their own fiber and heavy coax in the city, the CPE stuff was pretty basic, and was very reliable. It worked much like this:
From the cable node or repeater on the telephone pole behind someone's house a new cable was ran (This isn't some Time Warner thing). Then the customer gets a new box put on the back of their house, the NID. The NID did all the frequency splitting and stuff, and has an IP address in it. All we had to do was hook up the already exsisting cable lines that were in the house and telco lines to the NID, and you had VoIP. You even got high speed internet access.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
Qwest was never an RBOC, will never be an RBOC, and the notion that they ever were an RBOC is laughable at best.
I really hate that hackneyed phrase "litmus test". Do you even know what it means?
This is a pretty good definition:
"A test that uses a single indicator to prompt a decision"
So there cannot be a "first litmus test". There is merely "a litmus test" and it's either "yes" or "no" and you're outta there.
Why not just write "... the disruptive technology hype that surrounded VoIP in the late-1990s is about to see its first real test." ?
thank you and have a nice day.
Does anyone know if VOIP will allow ADT and other home security systems to still function properly, ie., calling out in an emergency and calling out for routine system checks?
Anyone have Vonage and ADT together?
The electric yellow has got me by the brain banana
Well, i mean it is time that the 'traditional' phone systems be changes. I mean, BBS used to be the traditional way to dial into something, now we have the figgin 'internet'. Why dont they see that while they may lose money, they stand to make a great deal. Change the friggin protocal. Or do they think the American Public is so stupid as to not be able to difference.
Why dont they do what a great number of other countries have done (if not more or all of the first word), and denote cell phone networks by a different are code.
They cant really expect the Phone systems in the US to be able to keep the 7 digits in the furture. Especially with all the families that own a land-line phone and a cell phone
Check the hours for those unlimited nights and weekends. For me, in the NY metro area, nights start at 9pm. That means I'm burning minutes between the time I get home at 5:30 and 9pm. That's why I keep using my land line.
Developers: We can use your help.
Now my cable modem will be even more slower :) Great.
This conversation needs to take a geekier turn: what equipment vendor are they using, I see they are using Cisco for some of it. Any details on the handsets or configurations, etc?
Well, considering that they bought out USWest, infrastructure and all, they can be considered to be "the RBOC formerly known as USWest". When I was with a certain long distance phone provider a few years ago, it was well known that dealing with Qwest on either long distance OR local was frustrating and oftentimes fruitless, but they were definitely on the RBOC list.
The only company more irritating to deal with was (at the time) Bell Atlantic.
Oh, and don't bother calling 911 any more...here's the real number (hands over a card with "912")
Raucus Booty On Campus?
Doesn't everyone know all the acronyms?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
With this move, it seems that the existing cable industry *wants* to be labeled a telecommunication service. Quick! Somebody go tell the Ninth Circuit Court that it was right before it's too late!
Let's hope when you hear your neighbor shouting "Oh God he isn't breathing" from the street at 2:17 AM, you can be calm enough to walk into the other room to find the one phone you taped this set of numbers on -- and you haven't worn the numbers off in your daily use so that you can't read them in the dim light without the glasses you can't find. When I heard that voice, I was damn glad it was just 911.
911 is the magical number you call and theoretically you're supposed to get help. In reality, they just send over a man with a gun who's got more emotional baggage and a bigger chip on his shoulder than you do.
(Thankfully I'm not living in an inner city situation, so the paramedics came right quick. The guy didn't live, though. Heart attack.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Having number portability would be a *huge* boon to VoIP. I was signed on with Vonage for a year, and intended to make it my primary phone when I signed up...but the fact that at the time I couldn't get a number with a local area code (and this in the Washington, DC area, too, not some tiny town in South Dakota) killed that in a hurry.
Of course, a larger part of the problem for VoIP solutions is that most of them are now being sold as an add-on to your existing telco service, something that's great for free long distance. With long distance costs falling like they are, though, unless VoIP providers can start acting as CLECs -- in other words, you buy their service, your phone needs are taken care of completely -- I doubt if many VoIP companies will survive. Though I'm not sure how this will happen as long as you have to provide a phone number before you can get broadband hooked up...
How To Get Humans To Mars
Not to troll, and perhaps I'm missing the point, but can someone explain to me the hoopla over VoIP? I understand the tech, having worked on it a little myself in the past, and I understand the initial advantage being free voice calls over the net. However, if it's now going to be a paid service, and it introduces all sorts of issues regarding 911 service or home security systems, for example, then what is the advantage over POTS? I understand that it will open up more competition with the bells (at least until they wrest control away from broadband providers), but what is the real benefit to the customer? I see that it is somewhat cheaper on a monthly basis, but I'm not so convinced that it's enough to get folks to migrate over en masse.
i know this is way off-topic, but i just want to say thanks for posting this article because my cell phone bill is due today and i would have completely forgotten about it. thanks tim!
The main players in VOIP right now offer free nationwide long distance for a flat rate - $20 a month for Packet8, $35 for Vonage. They also offer huge discounts on international calls. If you have, say, family in another state, or are in a long-distance relationship, or for some reason make a lot of long distance calls, it can be a good deal.
I just signed up for Packet8, haven't gotten the equiptment yet. Previously, I've just used a cell with nationwide long distance, but I get awful reception in my new apartment, so $20 a month seems like a good deal for long distance.
I have blog like everyone else
Lucky for me, I live in Minnesota and Qwest is our phone provider. Unlucky for me, Qwest is a bunch of a~~holes who provide DSL in my area, but just not at my house. Not only that, but half the time, it sounds like I'm talking on a cell phone in a tunnel. It gets really scratchy, and sometimes dial-up doesn't even work. On one hand, I want it to fail, because I hate Qwest. On the other hand, I want it to succeed because it'll make VoIP bigger than it is now. Decisions, decisions...
incripshin
1. Get broadband. 2. Buy X-Box and Live V2. 3. Make free VOIP phone calls. 4. ???? 5. Profit.
Just to clarify ... Qwest isn't first. Time Warner has been offering VoIP in the Portland, Maine area for at least a year now. TW probably has VoIP service in other areas as well.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I'm sure Qwest is thinking, "If Vonage can get away without having their service taxed, so should we!"
Of course in reality, it's not "getting away" at all. VoIP is an internet-delivered information service, a similar-behaving but entirely different animal than the legacy local service which has been delivered entirely over company-owned lines.
So, bring on the VoIP contenders! Competition and innovation are good.
qwest certainly provide some semblance of a local phone service here in Oregon. that is, if your expectation of a phone service is based on previous experience in a former communist state or region undergoing extended civil war.
What always irritates me is that their on-line billing system shuts down on weekend evenings. That is right, you cannot pay your bill from 8pm saturday. Now I know I should be going out and having fun on a saturday, but sometimes I dont, and on those days I'd like to pay my phone bill, rather than get a 'service unavailable message'.
Why any company? What's really needed is an open source solution. Just type in phone://111.111.111.111/ and there you have it. No need for a phone company, just broadband. The only reason want a regular phone number is for interoperability with the old numbers, which are only kept for interoperability... So why should we let qwest or anyone else get rich off of interfering with progress.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Does anyone else remember a few weeks ago when Vonage & friends got screwed in Minnesota over taxes? The courts in Minn. ruled that VOIP's could be taxed & fee'd the same way that phones are. So there's your answer to why Qwest waited until now, and why they're doing it in Minnesota. All about the dollars, yo. -wd
Qwest was never an RBOC, will never be an RBOC, and the notion that they ever were an RBOC is laughable at best.
Qwest (which bought USWest) is at least as much an RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) as Verizon (formed by the merger of BellAtlantic and GTE) and SBC (PacificBell, Nevada Bell, Southwestern Bell and Ameritech).
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Let me tell you a bit about Cablevision. I am, after all, a customer of theirs. This company cannot do anything right. Several years ago they upgraded most of their infrastructure to fiber optics and tried to sell "enhanced" cable TV service under the name of "Optimum IO". If you had a low-end cable TV plan this upgrade would only cost you another $10 per month PLUS another $3 per month for each cable box. Of course, other than HBO and a few sports channels, the regular cable "Family" package already contains about 15 channels you don't want, but they want - in my case - another $19 a month for questionable added value that no doubt would include another 100 channels I don't want. This $19 would be on top of the $60 per month I already pay, and with which I am already unhappy. Recently, the TV guide they send out each week switched over to only show the digital channel numbers. If you didn't buy their ridiculously overproced digital cable package you're out of luck if you want to find out what channel something's on by looking at the TV guide (which you pay for anyway).
When said Optimum IO did not sell like hotcakes, Cablevision stock took a bit of a hit and has yet to fully rebound. Of course, they blame its poor showing on their own failure to market the IO service enough. Please. They utterly failed to grasp the point that people did evaluate their new product and decided it wasn't worth it. God forbid they admit to themselves (or their shareholders) that they miscalculated.
Enough ranting on cable rates. They also launched their own direct-broadcast TV satellite a few months ago. That's right. They think they can compete with Dish and DirecTV. With one satellite. One.
They offer high-speed internet access via their cable system. Their rates have risen steadily over the last few years until now it runs $50 per month. For that you get pretty reliable high-speed web surfing and not much else. Their email system only works about 80% of the time. They classify their email service as being "for entertainment purposes only". It was certainly entertaining when they sold their customer email address list a couple of years ago to spammers. That fun is still going on. Their newsservers work only about 60% of the time and even when they are working, they are not high-speed by any means. You get about the same d/l speed as you would from a dial-up modem. Their average retention times for articles in the non-binary newsgroups average 3 days. Don't even ask about the binary groups.
The principal owner and CEO of Cablevision also owns 2 pro sports franchises: The NY Knicks and the NY Rangers. He lets his son run them. Bwahahahahaha! Nothing more needs to be said about those fiascos. In fact, nothing more needs to be said about Cablevision at all. This is one fucked company and I wouldn't expect their new VoIP venture to be any more successful than the rest. This is a company that has spread itself far too thin across all its different business lines, and they do none of them well.
Why Cablevision. If I've learned anything from the Cablevision/Clearview Cinemas/The WIZ trifecta from hell, it's that within 5 years this VOIP service will cost me $60 a month and will have been canceled for a year somewhere in the middle to pay for adding a sixth Lifetime channel to their basic package.