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Switching from Phone to Voice-Over-IP?

Posted by Cliff on from the searching-for-the-pitfalls dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "I am fed up with the telcos. My last phone bill for one line was over $100 _without_ the $45 for ADSL, so i'm looking to cut as many costs as I can. I've compared my current Voice + Internet solution to one consisting of Voice-over-IP and Cable Internet and it looks like I would save over $50 a month by throwing away my land-line phone and switching to Cable/VoIP. I'm new to the whole changing-from-POTS-to-VoIP process though, so what are some of the 'gotchas' involved with switching? Can I keep my existing number? Will calls suck my bandwidth dry? And most importantly, do any of these VoIP providers work with or support Linux?"

4 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. And is also Windows-only by notsoclever · · Score: 4, Informative
    and doesn't support incoming landline phonecalls

    and doesn't let him keep his phone number

    but other than that, yes, it totally fits the bill!

    --
    There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
  2. NAT nat nat.. by jaredmauch · · Score: 5, Informative
    Your biggest concern with this will be what sort of device you're using for performing your NAT. (See here for some info about consumer routers that have NAT issues) Asking "do these services work with linux" is a very vague question, are you using linux as a router? desktop? You should also keep in mind the underlying issues involved with making this work. In order for your phone to be told to ring, your telecom provider needs to send you a message saying "hey, ring that phone". Depending on what kind of VoIP you're going to do you may also encounter problems if the other person is doing VoIP and is behind NAT as well.

    Most of the commercial providers will solve these issues for you. I'm currently using vonage at home for my second line. I still keep a traditional landline for E911 and other functionality. The whole "where is your service located" issue is quite interesting on this front when you call emergency services. Since I could take my Vonage hardware with me to a friends house if I were traveling, it makes it quite tricky. Plus you don't need to have a phone number that is within your local calling area.

    I'm interested in hearing from vonage (and other) VoIP users that have called 911 and if there were any complications..

  3. Voip Gotchas by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Informative

    The problem with Cable + VOIP is QoS. When your cable goes out, no phone. This includes power outages - and even if YOU have UPS or whatever, the likelihood is that your cable headend doesn't have anything but a few minutes of battery. POTS is generally provisioned to run indefinitely independent of power outages etc.

    Other things to watch out for are 911 service, Caller ID.

    Operating system is generally not an issue - VOIP means installation of a Cisco or some other such box that sits on your LAN.

    Personally I chose AT&T One Rate USA instead. I didn't want to deal with the VOIP teething pains.

  4. Lots of VoIP info... by Gravatite · · Score: 5, Informative

    Playing with the various VoIP solutions is a bit of a hobby of mine, so allow me to share some of what I have learned:

    Vonage is a great company, they have area codes in a lot of places, and they also support number portability. The downside is you're stuck using their equipment (cisco ata-186). It's a nice box, doesn't require a computer, provides a plug for normal phones, and works quite well behind a Linux firewall. If that's what you're looking for, then by all means, go with Vonage. I currently have a personal line, and a business line w/ fax line through them.

    Packet8 is another company where you're stuck with their equipment. I've heard of problems with their service, but I have yet to experiance anything. The price is right, and the quality is good enough, and they also support lots of area codes. I currently have a personal line through them, but I've only had it for about 4 months.

    iConnectHere is another one that supports lots of area codes. The quality is ok, but I had lots of lag issues with them. The price is pretty good, but you have to supply your own equipment. The good news is it works well with most sip devices (I've used an ata-186 with it, as well as a few soft phones). You'll hav problems using softphones behind a firewall though, but the good news is, it integrates pretty well with Asterisk, the open source pbx software. I used their service for a few months, but I no longer have it, the lag issues were too much for me.

    VoicePulse is my current favorite solution. Aside from SIP, they also support IAX (via their VoicePulse Connect! service). With IAX, it integrates extremely well with Asterisk even behind firewalls. They have a pretty good pricing plan, and you get all your incoming minutes for free. You can add as many phone numbers as you would like, but the only problem with their service is their limited area code availability, which will hopefully get better over time. They support multiple inbound and outbound calls simultaniously, and several codecs, so you can balance your requirments of bandwidth vs. voice quality. VoicePulse also has a service that's more like what Vonage offers, but I haven't tried that. As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I'm currently using the VoicePulse Connect! service as my PSTN gateway for my Asterisk PBX, and so far it's been working remarkably well.

    I hope that helps!