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NYT Reviews VoIP: Vonage, Packet8, VoicePulse
securitas writes "The New York Times Technology section reviews VoIP services Vonage, VoicePulse and Packet8. A second article rounds up the competition including VoIP start-ups, cable companies and traditional telcos. The review primarily focuses on Vonage and it's an enlightening review particularly because the reporter isn't a techie. Most interesting is the comment from Vonage's CEO Jeffrey Citron: 'We're not that happy with the level of service today.' The outcome of the review and CEO's comments really do indicate that VoIP is still at the bleeding edge - and not for the average consumer - but the technology is maturing quickly. It will be interesting to see if the telcos do any better with their QoS (quality of service) - which has historically been a critical differentiating factor and competitive advantage - when they introduce their VoIP services in 2004."
As a Vonage subscriber, I'd like to mention my experiences thus far.
Excellent!
Although, the service did take over a month to get turned on, now that it is, I haven't had any problems. The one or two occasions that the Vonage VM had to pick up, was while I was dinking with my router, and was blocking everything by mistake. I'm still working on getting QoS to work on my side, and thus improve performance, but so far the only drawk back is that I cannot be uploading at the same time, else it sounds muted when not speaking.
I can download all day long and still recieve excellent quality voice.
The other drawback I see, however, is the ATA. I would perfer a better way to incorporate it into the existing phone wiring, but no good. I've since purhcased a dual handset cordless phone, and no problems since, going forward, it'll be easy to take with me whereever I go. Just get the broadband access connection, and walla.
Thinking ahead, I'm sure I can incorporate it into my home phone wiring, as soon as I get a home, currently living in an apartment, but again, minor.
my 2 cents.
harryk
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
thats not interesting or informative, its a troll. check your facts before modding posts like this up.
All communication lines going to any endpoint (home, business, sensors, etc) are quickly moving to an IP based data network. Unfortunately, there are two problems that governments and current telephone companies face:
:-)
1) Roughly 50% of their voice revenue stream comes from per minute connection charges, other carrier access charges, & regulation charges (govn't). These will evaporate when subscribers move to data driven VoIP (ie: you pay a flat fee for DSL or cable modem bandwidth now, and it can run all your voice calls to anywhere in the world). Eventually the PSTN connection part will no longer be necessary, so Vonage will disappear as we know it today, but it has finally woken up the telcos to what the future will bring.
2) Pretty much the other half of their revenue stream comes from the 'premium' voice feature services (call waiting, text messaging, etc), all of which are quickly moving from the class 5 switch into the phones themselves (aka: free).
What do you do when your primary revenue stream evaporates? Fight it in the courts or with govn't officials. Remember, govn'ts have been taking a nice chunk of that revenue for themselves as well.
We will have to move to a bandwidth & quality of service (QoS) based payment style. A minimum bandwidth is given for a flat rate (which will include -all- voice), and extra bandwidth will be provided on demand at an agreed QoS. The higher the bandwidth & QoS, the higher the fee.
Things to watch out for: VoIP everywhere, SIP phones/services, VoWLAN, current voice carriers moving their infrastructure to their IP networks, and govn't regulations dictating that comm lines (called data services & unregulated) become regulated for QoS.
The companies that move to this model last will not survive. They aren't going to like this.