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Switching from Phone to Voice-Over-IP?
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?"
Linux support-wise, Vonage supposedly supports Linux, though honestly I'd go with one of the hardware VoIP phones anyway, just for matters of simplicity (like when it comes to devices grabbing your hardware and fighting between mp3 playback and phonecalls, and just simple matters of Linux audio sometimes being a pain to deal with).
Personally I just use a cellphone for my primary phone line, but it sounds like you make way more calls than I do.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
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
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..
I used to be a Vonage customer. I will detail my reasons for leaving at the end of this post.
As far as Vonage and Linux goes, Vonage will supply you with an ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) that plugs into your existing network. Run a patch cable from your router / switch to the ATA, and a telephone cable from the ATA to a handset and you're good to go.
There is no interaction between the ATA and your desktop systems. It doesn't matter if you're running Windows / Linux / MacOS / Amiga / Whatever.
As for why I left Vonage, I was unimpressed with the call quality. I had Road Runner Business Class (I think 1.5M down, 768k up, although I might be mistaken) coming into my residence, and I would occasionally get static and dropped calls. Also, about 1 out of 10 calls the other party would not be able to hear me at all and hang up in frustration (assuming it was a crank caller or the like).
Two other problems I ran into were getting my assigned number and a "cancellation fee." When I signed up over Vonage's site, I was told that Vonage would automatically cancel my existing land-line service. However, my area code (513 - Cincinnati) was not offered, so I went with 614 (Columbus).
I found out later (when Cincinnati Bell kept billing me) that since I didn't transfer a number Vonage didn't cancel my existing service. The wording on Vonage's site did not lead me to believe that this was the case. To Vonage's credit, after I complained about this they credited my account for what I had to pay Cincinnati Bell.
I was disappointed when I eventually cancelled my Vonage account (to move back to Columbus and just use my cell phone as my only number) that Vonage charged me $41.19 as a "cancellation fee." They refunded this upon me shipping their hardware back, but I was very put off by being hit with that. I told Vonage that they should reword that as a hardware deposit or something more palatable.
I'm not angry with Vonage for my experiences, but I'm not falling out of my chair to recommend them. I want to see VoIP continue to mature and eventually become ubiquitous. Whether it's ready now or not is up for discussion.
Hope this was helpful!
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
As a geek, it's a knee-jerk reaction to turn instantly to a new technology to solve the problem. But depending on why your phone bill is expensive, Voice over IP might be a difficult/costly solution to your problem.
If your main costs come from calling someone long distance (particularly for long stretches of time), may I suggest one of the many 1 cent (or your denomination of choice)/minute phone cards? I used them in the past with someone with whom I would have long (2+ hours) conversations, and once the initial connection fee of 30 odd cents was paid, I could pretty much talk as long as I wanted. My phone bill went down from $60-80/month to one phone card ($20) per month or less (2000 minutes is a lot of minutes).
There are also 3-4c/minute phone cards with *no connection fees* and just a weekly "mainenance" fee on the card of 35c or so.
Many of these cards are now also rechargeable through the Internet or over the phone.
My experience has been that the sound quality of these cards is pretty adequate for voice conversations. If you're using the phones to swap recordings of symphonies, then I wouldn't suggest it.
Finally, my understanding is that there are many phone plans offering *unlimited* minutes for a reasonable rate. This may do the trick for you as well.
My point is, there are a lot of solutions to your problem that don't involve tossing your phone.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
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.
Yup, it sure sounded to me like he was interested in the latest in research on VoIP technologies.
/. for help.
Oh, wait a tic. He wasn't.
He wanted human-readable information about what the relative costs and reliability of VoIP was; whether he could receive incoming calls to his current number; and what some of the "gotchas" might be in switching to VoIP.
None of which were addressed by the matches to your search.
The only possible question that might have been answered is what VoIP providers support Linux. I have a feeling that since he already pointed to Vonage, he has done *some* preliminary research on Google. No doubt he wants assurances from those who have actually tried VoIP, not just companies trying to sell it, that they actually support Linux.
If the most helpful comment you have is to tell someone to use Google, then keep quiet. Unless the slashdot is something along the lines of "What is the definition of blah-blah?" or "Where is a good place to buy computers?", the person has probably googled it, found that the results weren't useful, and turned to
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
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!