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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 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
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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
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....
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
Now my cable modem will be even more slower :) Great.
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.
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...
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