VoIP Price War Declared

gardel writes "Voxilla reports that a VoIP price war was declared today. An announcement that AT&T would drop its prices for its CallVantage Service from $34.99 to $29.99 per month was followed quickly by an announcement that Vonage would drop the price on its unlimited calling plan to $25 a month from the previous $29.99. Analysts say the price cuts show the VoIP market is not only competitive, but it's serious."

Comments

Any VoIP users?

[NoInfo]

Has anyone used Voxilla or AT&T's VoIP services?

Any reason why someone would pay want to pay more for AT&T?

Re:Any VoIP users?

[SpiffyMarc]

AT&T is a huge behemoth of a company, that isn't going anywhere. Vonage is a start-up.

For us, Vonage is a household name, but not for many outside this circle.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[danimal67]

I use CallVantage. I've read many reviews that compare to Vonage and other competitors. A good portion of the reviews have said that they think CallVantage is less prone to distortion than competing services. I believe it is in part because the TA has to sit directly behind the cable modem and priortizes the packets. Apparently a recent firmware revision lets the TA sit behind routers, but I haven't moved mine. I don't know if this negates the positive audio qualities that reviews have cited.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[SubnetLiberationFron]

Just wait until they throw in a free webcam and 500,000 free minutes usable only in the first week of service.

But seriously, why doesn't anyone sell a regular-looking phone wiht two jacks, one for a phone line and the other for ethernet. Plug in the phone line and it works like a normal phone. Plug in the ethernet and it uses some standard, open, free VOIP direct connection to whatever IP address or domain name you type in. These would be cheap to make and involve nomonthly fees. IP addresses aren't any harder to remember or speed dial than phone numbers.

I'll tell you why nobody makes it. It's because the're all a bunch of filthy dumb fucks that couldn't run a consumer-friendly business if you shoved hundred dollar bills up their asses all day long.

p.s. somebody should set up an anonymous VOIP peer-to-peer phone sex site.

p.p.s. ha ha look at me posting again after my subnet was banned! suckers

Re:Any VoIP users?

[djdavetrouble]

Do they use your existing data line (dsl cable etc) or do they install a dedicated line?

Re:Any VoIP users?

[djdavetrouble]

never mind i read some of the links...
So i guess i have to turn off my iroffer bot
when i want to make phone calls....

Re:Any VoIP users?

[Herschel Cohen]

A bit of perspective:

1.) What goes down is soon goes up with AT&T.

2.) Vonage has its faults:

Vonage has been difficult to contact to resolve a problem with my voice mail. I cannot connect to a human there even with three tries by phone. Moreover, despite over a week from the date sending the first email (two emails sent to date) I have gotten no response other than the automated answer. At this point I just need to recycle my voice mail to reset and record the pin number. Obviously I created the problem, but a reset should not be that difficult to obtain.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[The-Bus]

Vonage let's their hardware act as a router (poorly) or sit behind a router. Vonage lets their hardware do QoS and packet shaping. I don't think the hardware makes that big of a difference.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[timsch]

Why pay those monthly fees at all when http://skype.com/ lets you

(1)talk to other skype users for free.

(2)ring any other telephone (including cell phones) in the world for 1 euro per hour (about $0.02 per minute)

It works surprisingly well on a dial-up connection, small (8 MB), and clean with no spyware or other junk.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[satguy]

I've been deploying VoIP since 1999 - if packets arrive in a QOS-optimized order at the router, that single router won't impact the QOS downstream if the downstream path isn't heavily loaded (and the QOS bits aren't stripped or ignored by that router)

Re:Any VoIP users?

[FictionPimp]

I just called them last night (my callerID hasn't worked in a week, even after multiple reboots) and got though after about 30 seconds of hold.

Didn't get a solution, but did get to talk to someone.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have decent cable modem service (4M down, 384k up) with 5 public IP addresses. So I have the AT&T CallVantage TA and my router at the same level in the network (both plugged into a 4 port switch that is plugged into the cable modem). Set up this way I have had zero problems with quality or drop outs.

I am sure the speed of the conenction has a lot to do with this success. I have no problem being on the VoIP phone while surfing the web, listening to streaming internet radio, or actually watching a 500kbps streaming video feed.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I use VoxFlow and I'm pretty happy with it.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[rebel47]

Wow, that's real service (tongue firmly in cheek). You could have saved a call and just talked to a friend or someone in your family and you would probably have had a better conversation and be no worse off than you are now.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[bearwayne]

AT&T is a huge behemoth of a company, that isn't going anywhere.

I wouldn't be so sure. AT&T is a mere shadow of what it used to be (after the divestiture) thanks to horrible management and really, really bad marketing decisions. I think AT&T sees VoIP as it's last chance for survival since it insists on staying in the telephone business, an industry where there's lots of competition and not much money to be made.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[Treebeard the Ent]

Just saw this comment. I had the same problem with my Vonage. I'm guessing you have the Motorola device because there is a known issue with that device where it loses caller ID info. If this happens, I have been told to log onto the Vonage web site, disable call waiting, save changes, then re-enable it. It has something to do with getting an update. I believe vonage push out a firmware update to fix this, but I'm not sure.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[FictionPimp]

Yea, I have the motorola device. I'll give that a try tonight and see if that fixes it. The support seemed to act like they had no idea what I was talking about.

Thanks for the help.

Competition...

[mtrisk]

...is a good thing.

3 Cheers for Free Markets

[stinerman]

Even social democrats like myself can appreciate good free-market competition like this.

If only all markets worked this way, I might be a Libertarian. . .

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[druhol]

Hell, if just a few of 'em did I know I'd be happy.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[rnd()]

All markets do work that way, it's just a matter of perspective. Markets don't naturally create a welfare state, for example.

It's kind of like gravity, you may not like it all the time, but it is a consistent phenomenon.

p.s. Markets are not a perfect way of allocating resources and capital, they are only the best way yet discovered by mankind.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[Anonymous Coward]

Name one thing which only one company can provide. Currently today no product we have is controlled by a monopoly. Not even Windows .. because guess what you can buy Apple or Linux.

Dont like MS Office? Then use Open Office or WordPerfect .. seirously though MS Word is the superior product. Wordperfect sucked feature wise .. WordPerfect should have had a better product before complaining how MS Word was beating them. It wouldnt have cost them billions to make a better rpoduct than Word.

So please .. all this talk of how a corporation can get a monopoly and then raise prices is hooey.

I'm not trolling .. have an open mind on this.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[homer_ca]

I'm not so sure how free this competition is. AT&T presumably has other, profitable lines of business so they could afford to cut prices below costs to eliminate competition. However, since they're still $5 more than Vonage, you can't call this predatory pricing. Price wars have a way of carrying momentum beyond just the equilibrium price of the free market (I know, that's a highly theoretical concept and I have no idea what the equilibrium price might be for this service). Still, price wars often result in a shakeout and consolidation.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[wdd1040]

What if AT&T is already below costs and can't afford to go lower? Whereas, Vonage is a startup company and has less overhead than a large conglomerate like AT&T?

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[Anonymous Coward]

• PC Hardware
• Food (our problem now is that we have so much, we pay farmers not to grow it)
• Publishing (the price of books is
• Automobiles (gotta thank the Japanese

Shall I name more?

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[BobPaul]

Doubtful. They don't seem to be offering any areacodes ourside of what vonage does (actually fewer in many states it looked like) so they aren't even taking advantage of their existing networks. And, since AT&T owns massive infrastructure, they will be renting most of their bandwidth from themselves at cost, rather than other companies at markup the way Vonage and others have to. There's no way AT&T has a lower profit margin than Vonage...

I think AT&T is just betting that people will pay more because they are familiar with the AT&T name, but isn't quite matching other companies deployment because they are taking VOIP cautiously and don't want to invest a whole lot until it becomes more profitable. Vonage, a startup, must invest whatever they can cause they have no other products or services to fall back on.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[stinerman]

I'm unsure how to interpret your post.

If you mean that whenever there are more vendors that sell a particular product, the end result is ultimately better for the end-user, I agree.

I could definitely be into free markets so long as there were sufficient government (or any other entity) safeguards that made sure that no vendor had too much influence on prices. I could name probably 50 corporations off the top of my head that I believe have too much power in their market.

The problem is that laissez-faire economic policy has the same fallacy as Leninist communism. In theory, they are supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, but in reality they simply don't work as advertised.

In short, if markets behaved as they are always prophecized to behave, I would have no problem calling myself a free-market Libertarian. Then again, if Marxist communism worked according to theory, I'd be a Marxist.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[RicktheBrick]

At the present time these voip are only in the most profitable area codes. That is the ones with alot of population. Now lets consider what would have happened if the present telephone system did not have to provide service to rural areas and small cities. I think a large segment of our population would be without service. So how long do these companies get until they are required to provide service for all the people? If we leave it up to the free market it will not happen. That will leave the old system there and will probably mean a large increase in cost for them. It is just like the bus system. They voted to deregulate that system so what happen where I live? They totally stop all bus service. With the execption of a boat which makes trips across Lake Michigan half of the year there is no means of transportation to other cities other than the personal automobile. Our freeways would not have been built if the people in the rural areas were forced to pay for their section of the freeway. There are more examples of services that should be regulated so that they have to provide for all the people.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[karmatic]

Thank you. Firefox's exe handling has always bugged me.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[Anonymous Coward]

The only "natural" thing to do would be to team up and earn more with less work.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[1029]

All markets do work this way. Well, free markets that is. It is gov't (or rather, "unnatural") intervention that makes it seem as though some markets need help. Pretty much any serious market analyst or economist will agree that unregulated/unrestricted markets work to generally provide service at the level the most users will enjoy.

And this isn't a big suprise. Both free market enthusiasts and big gov't interventionists agree that people will do what is best for themselves. But this is why free markets work so well. Cutting prices, adding incentives, and making the customer feel happy all play into making more money, gaining more power in your share of the market, and generally being better off. In a free market, even the bad side of human nature ends up benefitting all.

It's really sad that most people don't realize this and want the gov't to play nanny. Thus far gov't intervention has only resulted in poverty, class wars, and general unrest.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[rnd()]

If one firm has "too much" influence over prices, that means that there are one or two possibilities:

1) the price is "too high": other firms will want a piece of the action, and all the government has to do is stand aside while the temporary high price is resolved.

2) the price is "too low": It is hard to identify where harm is caused by this situation, since consumers are getting something at an artificially low price. Nonetheless, fraud is sometimes involved, and I agree that government intervention is occasionally warranted.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[rnd()]

You are neglecting one simple fact:

Choices have consequences. If someone moves out of the city into a rural environment, that person will save money on housing and property costs, but will likely have to pay more for garbage disposal. That person may also have to build a septic disposal system on his/her own propery b/c there may not be any sewer lines going all the way out there. The same applies to water, the person may need to dig a well.

Maybe the net result is -500 on housing, +600 on all the other stuff, and -100 on taxes. So the cost of living is equal.

I don't think people deserve for everyone else to buy all of the wire needed to string phone service out into the boondocks.

Suppose that person is a farmer, and all farmers would benefit from phones but phones in rural areas (hypothetically) cost a lot. All farmers would be faced with the same cost, and all would buy the phones, and all would raise prices on their crops. Consumers of the crops would then pay the extra cost. If having a phone did not help the farmer do business more efficiently, some would forego a phone and be able to sell their crops cheaper, and would thus make more profits.

The same applies to highways and any other government project.

If you had to go over 200 miles of dirt roads to get to your rural house, the additional damage to your car's suspension might add up to more cost than the money you save by living there, and so fewer people would live there.

The government's job is to allow the people to create public works that benefit all. If 99% of people live in a 1 mile radius and the government is going to provide wifi, for example, at a cost of $1 per taxpayer, adding the additional 1% of people who live 10 miles away will add a huge amount of cost, making it necessary for everyone to pay $2. That is not fair to the majority of people, in fact it is the exploitation of the majority by a minority.

Free market capitalism helps to prevent this kind of exploitation by accurately pricing goods and services so that nobody gets exploited.

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[geminidomino]

2) the price is "too low": It is hard to identify where harm is caused by this situation, since consumers are getting something at an artificially low price.

If the price is too low, product quality tends to decline as vendors try to cut costs. Of course, this is self-correcting too. When quality gets too low, it reaches the point of "Shit is overpriced at any price" and demand drops below maintainence levels, when the company has to do something to fix things or go under.

This is, of course, assuming against anti-free-market activity, such as government bailouts, fraud, etc...

Re:3 Cheers for Free Markets

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent's Parent's Sig used to read:
Don't fight Firefox! Remove the Kiddie Gloves!

Still about $20 too much

[metamatic]

The problem I have with my phone service is that the fixed per-month charge is about 5x what I pay for the actual calls I make.

I'd much rather have more expensive calls, and a lower per-month fee. I have no trouble with paying 5 cents a minute to make a call; it's paying $25+ a month for no calls that pisses me off.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[DrZaius]

You're probably in the minority. My guess is that most people would prefer to have lower per minute rates than monthly rates.

I supposed the ideal would be having different packages -- the more you pay flat, the less you pay per minute..

Re:Still about $20 too much

[angle_slam]

Vonage has a plan that gives you 500 minutes for $14.99 per month.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[angle_slam]

I should have added that additional calls are 3.9 cents per minute.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[bleckywelcky]

Imagine if we only had to pay $50 or $60 for a phone, internet, and cable combination service. That would be great. But I'm sure we would need more than the 1 local cable company we currently have in most areas to do this. The government should buy or seize (since cable companies have probably made back their investment in profits already) the broadband infrastructure or force the sharing of the infrastructure (as it has been with phone lines) to open up the markets to more providers. Then we could have 20 or 30 companies offering all these services together and prices would get pounded into the ground while the quality of services would keep rising. Man, that's a pipe dream.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[angle_slam]

Just did some calculations. At 3.9 cents for additional minutes, if you use less than 884 minutes per month, you're better off getting the 500 minute plan and paying overage charges.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

What, like a cell phone?

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the parent was referring to all those taxes,fees and other mandatory charges that you see on your bill.

In my case, for example, they amount to more then 50% of the bill.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

They call $30 and $25 a deal, thanks to the price wars?!

I use packet8.net and I pay $20/mo. If someone is paying more than $20, they're getting ripped off.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean it's "5x what I pay for actual calls I make"?!

Where can you even get a basic telephone service for less than about $30/mo? I know I can't get that with Qwest. Just to have the telephone service and the phone turned on and be able to make and recieve phone calls and have a long distance carrier (even without using it) runs about $25 to $35 with Qwest. That's $25 to $35 BASIC. That doesn't count making any long distance calls, using voicemail, call return or anythign else.

For $20 (much less than I would even pay for basic telephone service with Qwest), I'm able to get ALL of the services that the phone company offers, including voicemail, call return, caller ID, call forwarding, call blocking and every other service *PLUS* I can make unlimited long distance calls to anywhere in the United States *AND* Canada. *PLUS* fees to places like the UK and Hong Kong are between 1 cent and 3 cents per minute.

I DARE you to get even basic incoming/outgoing service for less than $20 with the traditional phone companies.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[sportal]

Then switch to a VoIP provider with that pricing model. Like VoicePulse Connect http://connect.voicepulse.com/

US Per Minute Rate:
2.95 / minute

If you want an Incoming phone number tied to your VoIP line:
Incoming phone numbers:
$7.99 / month (each)

Incoming rate:
0 / minute

If you don't have an incoming phone number, no monthly fees, only usage fees.

There are other that offer this also, like:
TerraCall http://www.terracall.com/
NikoTel http://www.nikotel.com/

Re:Still about $20 too much

[extremescholar]

How about setting up your own Asterisk server (yes, it's Linux, but it works, get over it). Then you can use VoicePulse Connect! to get a cheap rate for an incoming line.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[radish]

And I love it. I used to pay over $60 to Verizon, now I pay $15 and get a ton more services. Nice.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[pwinkeler]

With Voicepulse Connect http://www.voicepulse.com/ I pay $7.99/mo for an unlimited minute incoming phone number and 2.95 cents/min for outgoing calls (local or long-distance). Even with a wife and two daughters my call accounting tells me I would spend less just paying by the drink than my SBC local analog line at $34 (taxes, fees and caller-id included) by almost $20/mo!
In short, you'd be surprised how few minutes you really do use.
On top of that you might want to consider Voicepulse connect because I now get multiple incoming calls and multiple outgoing calls at no extra cost other than that the meter runs for outgoing calls.

The catch? You gotta run Asterisk http://www.asterisk.org/ and get at least one FXS port card from Digium http://www.digium.com/.

Anything over $15/mo is robbery in my opinion

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Alrescha]

"I'd much rather have more expensive calls, and a lower per-month fee. I have no trouble with paying 5 cents a minute to make a call; it's paying $25+ a month for no calls that pisses me off."

I use 'iconnecthere.com'. I pay $8.95/month + 3.5c per minute.

This $8.95 includes:
a pots-number in the city I choose
unlimited incoming calls
caller-id
voice-mail (that I can listen to on my mac)

Call quality is generally good, once in a while some latency is noticable. There is no 911 service that I'm aware of - it wasn't on my list of required features.

A.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[CoreDump]

Most VOIP providers have lower priced plans, if you don't need a massive number of minutes.

For instance, VoiceEclipse has a $12.95 Plan for 500 minutes. Additional minutes are still only 3.5 cents per minute.

This is the plan I've got at home. Cut my bill from SBC in half.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? $2.95 / minute? Spend 10 minutes on the phone, and you're already over the price of the rest of the providers for 50x as many minutes. And I'm sure 99% of the people that say they want this kind of pricing plan STILL spend at least 10 minutes on the phone, for just ordering pizza if nothing else. Geez

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've maid 3,135.7 minutes worth of (mostly long distance) calls in the last 30 days. Even at 3 cents per minute, that would run me $95. I'd much rather pay my $20/mo for my VoIP service and leave it at that.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

er... I meant "MADE"

Re:Still about $20 too much

[pwinkeler]

Wow - Are these personal calls or is this business?

Assuming you work 8 hours of every day (no weekends off) that means you spend a full fifth of your time on the phone. Impressive.

If you spend that much time on the phone outside of work you might want to get out a bit more (unless you don't sleep, LOL!)

Re:Still about $20 too much

[metamatic]

What do you mean it's "5x what I pay for actual calls I make"?!

I mean that I make a few dollars' worth of calls per month at my current long distance rates. The fixed monthly charge is way more.

I DARE you to get even basic incoming/outgoing service for less than $20 with the traditional phone companies.

Yes, that's the whole point. I pay $30 a month for phone service. That's $30 for zero calls, $30 and 5 cents for 1 minute of long distance calls, $30 and 10 cents for 2 minutes, and so on. It's the $30 I want reduced, not the 5 cents.

Right now, VoIP involves a lot of hassle and unreliability, in return for pretty small savings. It makes more sense to switch entirely to my mobile phone; the base charge for that is $20.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always telecommuted - but rarely needed the phone for any business purposes.

Now, I'm unemployed (laid off from Sun - yay!) so I have more time to talk to people I used to put off. :)

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Move to England, I hear they have a system similar to that in place.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[The-Bus]

Lingo offers $7.95/m plus $0.03/m US (thanks aacool). Calls to other Lingo customers are free. Seems like this should cost you under $9/m.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[shplorb]

That's because the main cost in making calls is the billing. Here in Australia, the incumbent telco Telstra has been rising monthly line 'rental' charges from about $15/month a few years ago to about $30/month now. At the same time, the cost of making a call has dropped, and continues to do so.

This is because packet-switched networks are cheap. It costs too much to try and meter and bill the data (though Telstra persists) so now we're seeing a move towards a monthly access/subscription charge to use the network, with the data essentially being free because there is essentially unlimited capacity in the fibre traversing the country.

My ISP no longer charges for excess data, they just throttle my 512Kbps connection to 64Kbps after I've chewed through 16GB... which truth be told I've yet to come anywhere near in using up. This is because they don't pay their upstream suppliers per unit of data, they pay per unit of capacity.

Telstra gets about 50% of their revenue from calls, and they're shitting themselves because VoIP is going to annihlate that in the next five years, hence the raising of the line rental to try and offset that decline.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have with my phone service is that the fixed per-month charge is about 5x what I pay for the actual calls I make

You sad man. Get some friends.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[ankleteeth]

He meant 2.95 per minute, not dollars. You would have known this if you would have taken the time to follow the URL he had provided. And in what companies right mind would charge $2.95 per minute? Use common sense, I dont even think any phone company charges more than $1 per minute for calling anywhere short of the moon.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[ankleteeth]

I also ment "2.95 cents" in the previous post. Apparently slashdot doesnt allow the cent symbol.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[beeblebrox87]

I have a mobile phone and pay absolutely no monthly fee. Unlimited incoming calls, outgoing calls around $0.40 US a minute local and $2 US a minute international, with the result that I usually spend about $10 a month on prepaid cards. I have yet to see a VoIP plan that would save me money.

Note: If the rates seem odd, it's because I live in Tanzania.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[mla_anderson]

Not to be an ad for Vonage, but they have a fifteen dollar plan as a result of this price war. That's 500 minutes, so you would probably pay no more than the $15. Yep it's still 3x as much as you might want to pay, but it's down to the price of a POTS line with no extras. If you have cable or dsl over a dry pair you're going to have it pretty cheap.

Now I need to go to Vonage and see if they've dropped my monthly price as well.

Re:Still about $20 too much

[pnutjam]

This sort of price model is much easier with VOIP. Just buy your own adapter or use a softphone and there a plenty of places that will sell you minutes.

I'm not sure I'm the majority

[Spytap]

I'm not sure i'm the majority, but I'm really only going to care when they're making these services available in a handset that works not just inside my home, but outside in the rest of the world too. Fancy home calling services are nice and all, but I'm frankly not there that often, I need these fancy services (and higher calling quality) on the phone that sits on my hip all day wherever I go.

Re:I'm not sure I'm the majority

[angle_slam]

They have invented them. They're called cell phones.

Re:I'm not sure I'm the majority

[Night Goat]

They've invented this already. It's called a cell phone. Get this- NO WIRES!

Re:I'm not sure I'm the majority

[Anonymous Coward]

How many cell phones do you know that do VoIP, and all the cool stuff said protocol allows you to do?

Oh yeah.... That's right. THERE ARENT ANY.

And we will never see one, either--at least until southeast Asia pushes IPv6 ahead, because, get this: this is the one freakin technology that will allow IP phones to work, and all of us Americans with out huge IP space devoted to a relatively few select instutions are FAT and happy with the way it works now.

I guess in the meanwhile that I'll just have to be pissed that I can't call cowboineal.cowboyneal.org from my IP wireless phone that's compatible the fucking world over, and that I STILL don't have a goddamend flying car.

Re:I'm not sure I'm the majority

[gl4ss]

** How many cell phones do you know that do VoIP, and all the cool stuff said protocol allows you to do?**

none, but that's not the point.

you buy a similar service, engineered for use as a device that allows you to walk around the country and speak from where you happen to wish. it being voip or not is highly irrelevant, technology underneath doesn't matter for the consumer.

(anyhow, for quite these reasons it's going to be extremely hard to make a service that would be cheaper than cellular phone networks and still be reliable and have as vast networks. in the future these networks may though just degrade into just providing the ways of transferring the data.. but for all practicalitys sake hopefully not soon, the state of things around here are quite well apart from edge/gprs transfers being expensive if you intend to do them in the large scale)

anyways... for long marathon talks and crap like that voip is great. but for normal phoning cellular is quite ok and cheap enough(and a fact of life being that most of the phone calls one would make over here would go into other cellular phones.. most of the time it being cheaper to use an another cellphone to make the call).

besides.. just code the damn voip client for your celly if you want it(already there's few where it would be possible, outrageous data transfer fees making it quite pointless in most cases).

Re:I'm not sure I'm the majority

[Anonymous Coward]

And you hit the nail on the head. It's not that voip is technically better for voice transmission, compared to other things. It's that it's lots more flexible, and the use of voip would lead to the commoditization of their proprietary networks, in much the same way their internet offerings have gone.

They don't want you to have inexpensive internet access everywhere you go, because that's one part of the market where they make an absolute killing.

But, I think that they have lost sight of the fact that their networks are inherently valuable because they are so big--it's a tremendous barrier to entry for any company, basically opposite that of traditional internet, where anyone with some money and technical ability can setup shop..

If I, as a wireless user, need a network with coast to coast coverage of metropolitans, and rual areas alike, I'm likely to chose the largest network, even if it is more expensive. This is one of the same reasons I still keep an AOL account around. I travel often, and require internet. Not many companies offer modem pools EVERYWHERE, for no added cost.

If I could get a decent wireless internet service, that was reasonable in cost (sanely priced per-hundred megabyte charges, up to unlimited plans), had wide coverage, had an average speed of ~150kbps, I'd be all over it, as I'm sure that many others would be..

Re:I'm not sure I'm the majority

[evilviper]

No, he said it had to work...

But...

[Sanjuro]

Will you still get snooped?

Re:But...

[MarkMcLeod]

They won't listen...atleast no right away. The government is trying to push for recording are they not? Say the magic words, "bomb", "assinate", "bush", and it'll get flagged for future review.

Re:But...

[MarkMcLeod]

Assinate. Watch out :)

Re:But...

[Grendel32]

If you mean wiretaps, yes VOIP serives can be wiretaped, but it is technically difficult, and there are probably legal difficulties. I do know in the US there is something that is starting up in government to try to set regulations for VOIP providers. So that things like wiretaps and access to 911 services in the actual physical location are easier. From what I understand of VOIP its kind of hit or miss if when you dial 911 if you will get a 911 operator. I know that was the case with vonage, but that might not be true now.

Re:But...

[spitefulcrow]

Oh great, you just said it. Now they're going to shut /. down for being terrorists.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you can get snooped, or etherealed. But ethereal only decodes G711 AFAIK, and the only time you'll catch that used in VoIP is the occasional fax.

Re:But...

[alt-j]

YES! I have tested a Vonage setup for this and was able to output an audio file directly from ethereal for each direction of the phone conversation. Combine the two audio files and you have a copy of the phone conversation.

I keep asking all of these providers when they are going to start encrypting their voice packets and have only found one that plans on doing so in the near future. (I don't recall which one it was)

I don't care about the gov't listening in on the provider end, but I don't want some l33t hax0r sniffing packets somewhere along the route.

VoIP prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

$25/mo? Lets see Walmart offer VoIP.. I'm sure they could make it go lower.. then we'd really see the masses come... Heck, why not have Walmart take over the world? They might be able to lower the price of earth.

Re:VoIP prices?

[druhol]

Yeah, but then they'd put those goddamn 'greeters' in all the delivery rooms. Way to traumatize the babies.

Re:VoIP prices?

[olaf973]

earth? Thats cheap as dirt anyways

Re:VoIP prices?

[DupyMcCopy]

yeah, But then no one would be able to afford to buy any thing from walmart because they are paying everyone so litte. I have only once been into a walmart. It was to by a tomis guide(Big Map Book) to figure out how to best get out where walmart was the only store that sold Tomis Guide. Okay, I in reality I had to live out there for some work and needed a really good map.

What about broadband?

[Flizesh]

Never see a price war with broadband.. esp. recently. Is it because of the monopolies had by Time Warner and other giants? Last sign of competition i've personally seen was TWC increasing from 2mpbs to 3 one year ago.

Re:What about broadband?

[telemonster]

The infrastructure costs for broadband service require real money. While the VOIP services take server space and equipment to handoff to conventional switches (Do they actually drop gear in every NPA???), chances are the costs are no where near that of maintaining a metropolitan coax cable network (cablemodems) or paying the local telco to rack out DSLAMS (DSL).

If it follows web hosting, maybe phone service will go down to $3/month? I totally don't get that, for $3 a month I wouldn't answer someone's problem, but these dumb companies come along trying to outprice each other... then eventually the entire market ends up in the toilet, with these companies hoping that one can outlast all the others after they all go out of business. A million exist, hundreds dissapear daily... but people go for the walmart prices.

As someone else pointed out, cell phones are really the killer. The one thing that bugs me -- is cell phones suck so bad. Look at the older Motorola AMPS bag and handheld phones. The analog ones. The sound quality was better (in my opinion) than the modern day uberdigital CDMA sets. Alltel charges $6 a month for their crappy voice mail service, which out of bad design *always* reports an invalid key entry at the top of the menu even though nothing was hit. *GHETTO* I'd like to see serious competition on the cell phone world -- I wish we could outlaw the 1 year / 2 year contracts, that could potentially help. The contracts screw things up, since people get stuck with substandard service. Also a unit to provide a real FXO port from a cell phone!! That provides ring voltage and all. Drop your phone in the cradle and the calls come thru the house phones or a PBX port or whatever (And not that stupid thing that auto-forwards the calls to landline #).

What will this do to ILECs? Verizon and Pacific Telesis and SBC aren't going to be able to compete, especially with the taxes. I love the lack of taxes, that is so funny! Either the laws will be updated, and the VOIP services will look less attractive, or the ILECs will be hurt heavily. Verizon's fiber to the curb is the right idea, keep up or go extinct!

Another thing I haven't looked into. Norfolk Virginia supposidly has stupid high taxes on phone circuits. With Vonage or Packet8 or AT&T, you get around that. If Virginia imposes taxes, and you just order your Voip endpoint registering it in a different area code, then avoid all the taxes? The usefulness of area codes to determine location is about to change.

The real question is... without the need for landlines anymore, what are we geeks to do with the PBX's installed in our houses?

PS - VOIP conf bridges! Oh yes, like the old days of Alliances, only legal! Can we get 23 channel VOIP PRIs from Vonage for $50/month yet!?

Enough rambling, presidential debates in 20!

Crazy times!

Re:What about broadband?

[ankleteeth]

"The real question is... without the need for landlines anymore, what are we geeks to do with the PBX's installed in our houses?" Simple, all you have to do is replace all your landlines with VoIP lines! And you will even save a bit while you're at it. Nothing greater than having hold music on my VoIP lines!

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Two companies dropped prices by five bucks, the Price War officially considered declared, film at eleven!

Another article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Claims this isn't true...

http://traceroute.zoy.org?voip

What's the 411 on VOIP?

[toupsie]

How is the quality of the VOIP services? Are there delays? Dropouts? Access to local 911? What happens when the power goes out in my house?

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Osrin]

I've been using Vonage for over a year now, and it's excellent... no loss in quality, 911 works etc.etc...

I have my cable modem and vonage box on a cheap UPS in case of power loss. Never seen it kick in though.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

then you use the force

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[danuary]

I've had Vonage for a little more than a year. In that time there have been -reported- outages -- none of which affected me. My phone has had dialtone every time I've picked it up and I've had to do basically nothing special to get it working. My service even worked during the Aug 2003 blackout in NYC -- had my Vonage box and cablemodem on a UPS and everything worked fine. The one time I've had occasion to dial 911 was at 5 in the morning when someone attempted to break into my apartment when I was in it asleep. 911 location is set up via Vonage's web interface; when I called 911 the operators were a little confused -- something about how the call came into them -- but the location was passed along and I had three cop cars in my door in 30 seconds flat. I perceived no difference between Vonage and a traditional land line. In short -- couldn't be happier. Works great for me. Little perqs like being able to get your voicemail e-mailed to you as a wav is fantastic -- as is being able to take the box with you and have free phone service anywhere you have ethernet.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[defile]

How is the quality of the VOIP services?

They're as good as POTS. In some cases the signal is louder.

Are there delays? Dropouts?

I don't notice any.

Access to local 911?

Nope. But a gun is faster way of handling most emergencies.

What happens when the power goes out in my house?

Celebrate! You have a great excuse for not picking up the phone when someone tries to call.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[angle_slam]

I've had Vonage for 2 months. On and off (mostly off) echo problems. No dropouts. No delays. Haven't had a chance to call 911, but set it up to transmit my address to 911 operators. When power goes out, I'm screwed. Then again, my only phone is a cordless, so I'd be screwed anyway. You can always get a UPS, but I don't know how long you have power through those (will they work in multi-day outages, like in Florida?)

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[jgalun]

Access to local 911?

Nope. But a gun is faster way of handling most emergencies.

I just hope I have enough ammo to shoot the fire out.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. But a gun is faster way of handling most emergencies.

My first reaction is: like heart attacks?
But then, it does work for those! Makes the problem go away, in any case.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[CoreDump]

Quality? Better than cell-phone in most cases.

Delays? Not really.

Dropouts? I get dropped more often by my cell provider than my VOIP provider. And yes, this includes standing still while on cell and having call dropped.

911? The industry is still figuring out how to support this properly. Some carriers sort of fake it today, but nobody really supports it "natively". This should change in the next 6 months as the 911 standard/method for VOIP carriers is being finalized in the next few months.

Power? I've got my cable modem and VOIP adapter on a UPS, so not much happens to me. Assuming that your DSL/Cable is still up in a power outage of course. If your net connection goes down, your phone goes down, might be power, might be your provider, might be the lawnmower.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Vonage for over a year.
It didn't start out 100% like a regular phone, but pretty close, but maybe 70%. At first you had to dial all 11 digits even for local calls. 911 was and is still a free working feature, but you must activate it through your account settings on the website so they know your address.

Today, it is more like a regular line including 7 digit local calling, so closer to 90% now. I have two Vonage lines in two different locations. I have already got one in my sister's house, and so far it has been reliable enough for her not to notice any problems (3 months and going) and for her friends and family to start to take notice.
I plugged in a coupler into the walljack, and cut the wire outside to the telco so the whole house is using a dialtone from Vonage, phone number was changed in less than 30 minutes.

Even with the free Voice Mail (which forwards to your email), Caller ID, Call hunt, to name a few. It is dependant on your cable modem, your cable carrier, and the internet connection between your carrier and Vonage, and the electricity to keep all of these things running.

So, if you do not have a cell phone as a backup, which you can configure Vonage to forward to incase of such an outage, then you may want to consider keeping your POTS.

I love Vonage so far, Now with QoS my local intenet traffic doesn't interfer.

Things that still don't work:
[*]Outbound Caller ID says Vonage Holdings for my name, I hope to have the ability to change this to whatever I want.
[*]Faxing to anything faster than 9600bps is unreilable or impossible sometimes, so you need an ancient fax machine that has an 'Overseas Mode' to get it to work reliably.
[*]Impossible to use dialup for the rare occasion I need to dial into a client to repair a network outage.

My favorite feature is, telemarketers don't seem to know these numbers exist. No phone directory, numbers not listed anywhere. Have not received a single unsolicited call. Perhaps they are from the same pool of numbers used by wireless carriers.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can call 911. You can get your local 911 office. You can have all your information made available to 911 operators just as if you were on a landline.

Ignore the poster saying you can't. Full of shit.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[rpdillon]

Vonage does support 911 - but you have to manually update your current address since the system cannot track your location. Instead, they look it up (automated, obviously) when the call comes through. If you do not update, then you'll have a problem, but otherwise, its transparent.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[fiji]

To find out how your net connection is for VoIP try the free service http://testyourvoip.com/. The detailed stats can tell you about delays, dropouts, perceived quality and much, much, more. Try it at several times of the day (and week) to get a good picture of your connection.

-ben

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, even if your cable modem is on a UPS, that doesn't imply that the cable companies' equipment is.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[The-Bus]

My replies, possibly redundant.

How is the quality of the VOIP services?: Pretty good... sometimes there's some complaints on the other end, and it is half-duplex, which means if you're not saying anything the person on the other end hears nothing, as opposed to just a soft hiss. Vonage had a pretty serious problem the other day which wasn't fixed until the end of the business day. Not good for any critical work.

Are there delays?: None in calls. The delay is the three days it took me to set up my Vonage service so it actually worked.

Dropouts?: None.

Access to local 911?: Sort of. Vonage says:

Vonage routes your call to the Public Service Answering Point (PSAP), which provides emergency services in your area. The appropriate PSAP is determined by the physical address you supplied when you configured 911 on your web account. Therefore, if we do not have the correct address, your call cannot be routed to the corresponding PSAP for your area. Another difference between Vonage 911 Dialing service and traditional 911 service is that the Vonage call will be routed to the PSAP's general access line, which is different from the 911 Emergency Response Center. You will need to state the nature of your emergency promptly and clearly, including your location and telephone number, as PSAP personnel will not have this information at hand. PSAP personnel can help you effectively and will take necessary steps to provide you with the appropriate assistance, such as dispatching police, an ambulance and/or a fire truck. Behind the scenes, the call will go to your local Public Service Answering Point immediately, if you have provided your address by configuring 911 on your web account. If you have not configured 911 on your web account, you won't be able to dial 911 at all.

What happens when the power goes out in my house?: Do you still have an internet connection?

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[llefler]

If you're on cable or DSL, a small UPS would probably power the 'modem' for days. The problem is, at least for me, if it's an area outage and not just a power outage on my block, RoadRunner's network equipment goes dead. They apparently have no UPS capabilities on their neighborhood equipment. Even though I've had power to my local net, my internet access dies.

So in a situation like Florida, it wouldn't even help to have a generator. Granted, getting hit by three hurricanes probably takes out the POTS and cell towers, but at least those companies understand carrier grade reliability and I'll bet they have their networks repaired weeks before the cable companies do.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't call 911, call me! I'll come over and watch, maybe I even bring some beer. I don't want to miss someone trying to shoot out a fire, from a safe distance.

Note to self: bring binoculars along.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[jroysdon]

How many people these days don't have cordless phones? The power goes out even with regular POTS and you still have no working phone unless you've got a regular wired phone plugged in somewhere. The only reason I have a regular phone is because my fax machine has one built in, otherwise I'd be SOL during a power outtage (of course, I have my cell).

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Buelldozer]

Are you absolutely sure that half duplex means what you think it does?

I'm pretty sure that half duplex, or conversely full duplex, refer to the ability of a unit to transmit and recieve at the same time.

In other words if your VOIP service is half duplex that means both parties cannot talk at the same time, like a walkie talkie. It's talk then listen, talk then listen.

Full duplex on the other hand allows for both parties to talk, and hear, at the same time. Sorta like if you had two walkie talkies each. :-)

I could be wrong on this, but I doubt it.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[The-Bus]

Actually, you're right. It's more of the encoding, in that it has a pretty high noise gate*.

* My 2nd stab at terms I don't know.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[blueorder]

This is a very pessimistic view and could also be applied to the 'regular' phone company...the regular phone line could go down too...

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nope. But a gun is faster way of handling most emergencies."

Ahhh. Honey, the pain is intolerable!

OK, I'll get my gun.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Diamon]

Access to local 911?

Nope. But a gun is faster way of handling most emergencies.

Yep.

"Quick, call 911 Grandma's having a heart attack"

*BANG*

"Not anymore"

This is bad news...

[Arcanix]

Personally, I'm against all this competition.

What is clearly needed here is for the government to step in and start dividing up different areas of the country and assigning monopolies to the various telecom companies. I think we can all attest to the wonderful customer service and prices that a government sanctioned localized monopoly provides.

Re:This is bad news...

[stinerman]

I think we can all attest to the wonderful customer service and prices that a government sanctioned localized monopoly provides.

In cases where monopolies naturally occur, a government monopoly is as good as it gets.

Energy deregulation was supposed to lower bills by adding competition to the equation. If you lived in California, prices skyrocketed due to the fact many energy producers (see Enron) were keeping production off-line in order to artifically inflate prices.

In cases like these, I like my government-granted and regulated monopolies. In cases like this (VOIP), I'm inclined to agree with you.

Re:This is bad news...

[hambonewilkins]

Don't argue with the Libertarians. In their world, Sudan is utopia!

Re:This is bad news...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh. there is always that one person on slashdot that has no understanding of sarcasm

Re:This is bad news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think the government should own the 'last mile' telephone lines (between the local switch and individual houses). This is where the monopoly is. As long as SBC owns the wire to my house, there is no free market for (wired) telephone service. Let the government take it over, and bid out maintenance to private companies, and let all phone companies service the customers equally.

Re:This is bad news...

[GlenRaphael]

Energy deregulation was supposed to lower bills by adding competition to the equation. If you lived in California, prices skyrocketed due to the fact many energy producers (see Enron) were keeping production off-line in order to artifically inflate prices.

Nonsense. Prices skyrocketed primarily because it was a weird parody of a market rather than the real thing. Companies were forbidden by law to make any long-term contracts; they had to buy all power in a short-term spot market. Which naturally meant we got greater volatility.

Also, there wasn't really enough spare capacity to meet existing demand a few times. Rates were still regulated at the consumer end; had PG&E had been legally allowed to pass on the expense to customers, the higher prices would have choked off demand; people would have voluntarily reduced use on the worst days.

Government-regulated monopolies are the worst of both worlds: The regulation causes shortages or gluts due to pricing mistakes that an unregulated monopoly wouldn't make, and when new technology inevitably makes competition practical, the government doesn't permit the existing operator to lose business or go broke as it naturally ought to.

If it ever happened that there was a market which was a natural monopoly, "as good as it gets" is to let it be a private monopoly that regulates itself rather than getting government involved. The monopolist will still be in competition with itself, with substitute and near-substitute goods, and with all the potential competitors in the world. Paying "the monopoly price" for just a little while while the economies of scale happen to outweigh the diseconomies is probably a better deal for consumers than having to pay "the regulated price" now and forever.

(Example of a "good" free-market monopoly: Alcoa Aluminum. It produced all the original aluminum in the world, but couldn't charge very much for it because if it charged too much people would melt down and recycle previously-made aluminum or would substitute some slightly-less-good alternative such as steel, wood, glass, plastic, etcetera.)

Re:This is bad news...

[GlenRaphael]

Actually, I think the government should own the 'last mile' telephone lines (between the local switch and individual houses). This is where the monopoly is. Ick! I want competition for the "last mile" so that if one service provider is unreliable I can switch to the competition. People who really really need high availability should be able to subscribe to BOTH local providers, so when a tree falls or somebody digs a hole that knocks out one line, there's some chance they still have service.

Re:This is bad news...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're saying is that you want someone to string a second wire to your house (and from a different direction, so as to avoid having both lost at the same time.) That's just not cost effective for anyone, and you'll have to pay for it yourself.

What I'm saying is that I don't want SBC to own the (single) wire going to my house, so that I can choose any carrier I want equally.

Re:This is bad news...

[GlenRaphael]

What you're saying is that you want someone to string a second wire to your house (and from a different direction, so as to avoid having both lost at the same time.) That's just not cost effective for anyone, and you'll have to pay for it yourself.

What I'm saying is that i want the option of having someone string a second wire, yes. In places where people have that option, they tend to see lower utility rates and better service even if they don't subscribe to both (or all) providers. It is an urban legend that "the last mile" is a natural monopoly; the cost of laying a little extra wire is a tiny fraction of the overall cost of serving a customer. The extra efficiencies that are brought about through competition far outweigh the slight inefficiency of that wire. Specific example: local cable television competition - rates in competitive areas were about half the price per channel as in similar areas that had a regulated-monopoly provider, according to a survey in Consumer's Digest magazine some time back. Also: local power competition in Texas. There was a town where one provider shared lines with the telephone company and the other shared lines with the cable company; rates were among the lowest in the country.

If local utilities were a natural monopoly, it would be more expensive in areas that have competition in that domain, but it isn't.

What I'm saying is that I don't want SBC to own the (single) wire going to my house, so that I can choose any carrier I want equally.

Right now, if your cable stops working, the last-mile providers are notoriously unreliable at getting somebody to come out and take a look at it. I don't understand why you don't want the right to switch to a competitor. To say, "I've had it! Cancel my service, I'm taking my business elsewhere!" to your last-mile provider when they fail to deliver the goods in a cheap, efficient, effective manner.

Re:This is bad news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we agree for the most part, you're just wandering in a different direction than I am.

It is an urban legend that "the last mile" is a natural monopoly; the cost of laying a little extra wire is a tiny fraction of the overall cost of serving a customer.

This is the point of contention. I don't have numbers, so I have to admit that I might be wrong... but this is Slashdot so that doesn't mean I have to stop talking. :)

I live about 2 miles from the call center, about 12 from the substation. I don't know where the rest of my utilities come from. For someone to run another line from the call center to my house would cost thousands, and they would not make it back on my phone bill for years. Plus, since SBC is already there, there would be competition, and it would take that much longer to make their investment back. I don't see it as being a good investment for them, and that's not including all the regulations and hassles of stringing wires over land owned by dozens of different people.

It would be more cost effective to wire the whole neighborhood, since you share wires until the last 100m or so. Again, they would have competition, so the much larger investment would result in far fewer customers than were wired. Plus, what about the third or fourth man in, who get an even smaller return on their investment?

So, based on the assumption that nobody is going to run a second wire to my house unless I pay for it, and that I am not going to own the communal wiring along the poles, I would rather that a neutral party owns the 'last mile' wire, allowing free competition for the service provided through the wire.

If that assumption is incorrect, and companies are willing to string new wires in entrenched marketplaces, then it might be better to keep the wires privately owned and let each company string new ones. I don't really want a dozen phone lines to my place, and I don't want people wandering the property all the time stringing new wires. I also don't think it's fair that SBC got their wires with government subsidies, and Sprint is going to have to pay for theirs, but that's the way it goes.

Vonage rocks

[Reality Master 101]

I'm signed up for the 500 anytime minute Vonage plan for $14.95. I've been extremely impressed with the service so far. They sent out the box right away, I plugged it into my network, and it "just worked". The online control panel is really slick, too. Very well designed, all the options right there, including listening to voicemail.

Even transferring my phone number was painless. I just faxed them a phone bill and they took care of the rest.

I was a little concerned with "voice lag", where you get that delay effect, but so far it's been unnoticeable. (but I also have a four megabit cable modem).

In short, Vonage has rocked so far. I had my doubts about VoIP, but no doubts any longer.

Re:Vonage rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

goddamit I hate people who pimp vonage it really rocks my boat.

Re:Vonage rocks

[Bedevere]

I agree. Vonage does rock! As a college student living in an apartment for the year, it's much cheaper and quicker than getting a real phone installed. The 500 minutes are nation-wide, so long distance isn't an issue. And even if I go over them it's only about 3 cents / min.

The quality is very good. Even with 5 other people sharing our cable connection, I haven't had many problems. I did have a dropped call once, but I think a roommate was downloading from BitTorrent. This wouldn't be a problem if I could put the Vonage box in front of our router, since it prioritizes voice over data. But for some reason they don't think my phone calls are more important than their downloads ;-)

One of the coolest options Vonage offers is the ability to have your voice-mail sent to your e-mail box. Whenever someone leaves a message for me, I get an e-mail with a WAV attachment!

It still sounds expensive to me.

[genericacct]

I realize Americans have the all-you-can-eat mentality more so than the rest of the world, but is an unlimited domestic long-distance plan really the only way they can compete? I don't make enough long distance calls to justify that much for land-line voice service, and I have broadband. I suppose it's cheaper than a POTS line plus unlimited long distance, but of the people with broadband, I don't see a huge market to compete within. Please enlighen me if this is really a fast-growing market segment, because I just don't see it.

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[Spytap]

Well on a personal level, I make lots of calls to New York and Chicago, and on a business level, I make nearly all my calls to New York, Chicago, Philly, Miami, etc.

It would be great for me if they just integrated it into my cell phone that I have to pay nearly a hundred bucks a month to use.

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[Qzukk]

I don't make enough long distance calls

"Your ISP called, they said you owe them $3000 in long distance internet access for September. They rattled off a huge list of out-of-town websites."

When you're calling over the internet, is there such a thing as long distance anymore?

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[Vellmont]

I don't make a lot of long distance calls (practically none) but as of late I've been talking more and more locally. I don't have a land line and only use my cellphone, which chews up minutes.

It's to the point now that I have to either increase my cell phone minutes, or get some form of landline (POTS or VoIP). It's looking heavily like that option is going to be VoIP since there's so many other advantages (extreme portability, blocking services, etc). VoIP is a bit cheaper than POTS, and I like not having to worry about going over minutes, etc. I can also probbably decrease my cell phone plan as I'll be using it less.

Essentially for me unlimited local VoIP is a good comprompise between the more expensive, pain is the ass to get going POTS line (and around here, unreliable). I get a nice old fashioned physical phone line, so no worrying about keeping my cell phone charged all the time, or finding the cell phone, etc. Plus I keep my cell phone for what it was intended, communication while on the go.

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[ikeleib]

The reason this is popular in America is because mobile phone rates are so cheap and frequently include free long distance. That's why Americans don't use SMS. If I wasn't doing lots of calling, I wouldn't be interested in flat-rate VOIP; I'd just use my cell phone.

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[bitslinger_42]

I've been on 8x8 for about 6 months now. Service is good enough that I canceled my POTS service after about 30 days. Only had one instance without phone service after a lightning strike toasted the VoIP gateway, but 8x8 sent a new one right away and I could forward the calls to my work cell, so no big loss there.

We already had a cable modem and were going to keep it anyway, so I count that as a null cost. So, effectively my phone costs went from $30/mo for the local service with metered local calling (really crappy company) plus our long distance. Under 8x8's unlimited service, all my normal calls are just $20/mo and my wife's been able to switch off of calling cards to call China since 8x8's rate is $0.03/minute to call China.

All in all, if you've already got a cable modem (I hear that the DSL providers get a bit froggie if you try to cancel the POTS but keep the data connection), I heartily recommend switching to VoIP!

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[silas_moeckel]

OK I have Vonage's middle plan unlimted regional calling 25 bucks a month or some such. My Local telco charged me 70 something for less features (12 bucks a month for caller ID with name etc etc etc) To add insult to injury because of how the zone local calls calling somebody 2 towns away is long distance but only a 5 minute drive because they sliced the state up in to narrow slivers (CT) of local calling and those slivers are opposite of the major highways meaning people dont travel much in those directions. A pots like with unlimited long distance simply is not avalible in my state.

Anyway VoIP is a good match it offers all the features that the phone co is getting fat off of and provides much better levels of service if you can deal with the ocational cut by the cutting edge tech. Give it a few years and we will see VoIP boxes with built in batteries to deal with any power outages, built in DSL and Cable Modems to become that one box that stays online and links you to the world.

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like this,
My mom pays $30/month for the POTS line then something like an additional $60 to $120/mo in domestic LD charges.
So does my brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, etc...
Even with email it cost money to keep large families in touch.
Paying less than the local Telco, and with all the features they would want $59/mo for, for a fixed $25 + some $1.50 tax with unlimited LD is very attactive and very easy to budget and no dreading opening the phone bill.

On a side note, I will never do business with or recommend AT&T as long as I breath air. I used a co-worker's phone to call a friend in the Dominican Republic by dialing a 1+809 area code and got charged $2.97 per minute. While MCI, Sprint, IDC, etc were all charging around $0.50 for the same call I trusted that AT&T would be somewhat fair and competitive and charge something similar, I told him I was going to make a $250-$300 call and gave him the cash. The bill was over $1800 and AT&T utterly refused to make any consideration to lower the amount or switch his account to their specail 'International rate' and at least prorate it. After several hours of painful discussions with their management, it went no where but him cancelling his account even after being a customer for over 15 years.
Yes, I did pay the $1800, and yes I now enjoy Vonage's much lower internationl rates, even though there are cheaper options available, their's seems to be reliable and worth the $0.10/min.

Re:It still sounds expensive to me.

[Seraphim_72]

Something the other posters missed I think is the fact that the US is LARGE. It is very little trouble to have family and friends move hundreds of miles away. My paerents retired from the east coast to the mid west about 4 hours from me. That works out to be about 7-10 "local area"'s away. I have friends literally from coast to coast and in a country this large, and that is not an unusual thing.

Sera

If only the cable company would follow suit...

[kasek]

I have considered vonage, because of the low international rates, but I don't want to dedicate a certain portion of my bandwidth for my telephone service. My upstream is hosed enough as it is, let alone dedicating part of it to phone use.

I would love to see a drop in prices for my cable modem service however. Since i got a cable modem 4 years ago, my bill has gone up 5 bucks. Meanwhile, new subscribers get their first 6 months at 29.95. After that, if they call to cancel, they are given another 6 months at 29.95 (I know this for fact, my dad called to cancel his account, and they offered him this deal).

Meanwhile, a 4+ year subscriber like myself calls, and says they are thinking of switching to Earthlink from Roadrunner, since it is 3 bucks cheaper a month, and they give 6 months at 29.95, they do nothing to try and keep me as a customer.

Of course they don't tell you that it is essentially the same service, since Earthlink goes through the Time Warner lines. So techinically they are not losing the customer. Which begs the question, how can Earthlink charge less per month?

On top of which, Comcast and Time Warner are working on a coop bid for the remains of adelphia, which will only damage competition even further in the cable industry. *sigh*

sorry for the mostly off topic rant, but it bugs me to see services like this that can slash prices left and right in the name of competition, and the cable companies are still firm in their prices.

Re:If only the cable company would follow suit...

[fegul]

I wholly agree. My upload with Comcast is maxxed out as it is, its hard for me to make clear phone calls when I am so limited. I wish Comcast would lower their prices, I like cable, but it gets expensive after a while

Re:If only the cable company would follow suit...

[RobRancho]

Thank goodness for DSL. Competition doesn't have to be strictly from within the cable industry to be effective. In fact, the more services like VoIP push the demand for bandwidth/broadband, the more investment and competition there will be in general. In the long run, bandwidth hungry applications are good for the "Internet Economy."

Didn't lower the costs for all plans..

[sisukapalli1]

I have a plan with vonage that was 25 bucks when the premium plan was 35. The premium plan fell from 35 to 30 to now 25, but my plan has stayed at the same level at 25 bucks. It is an unlimited local plus 500 national minutes free. The remaining option is a basic 500 minutes, which was at 15, and still is at 15.

For some reason, Vonage doesn't want to cut the price on the basic and intermediate plans :(

S

Most impressive...not

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll wait until the "Stalingrad" phase of the price war before I switch over.

Vonage vs. Packet8

[caldwell]

Vonage at $25/month vs. Packet8 at $20/month... This makes me slightly less happy with my choice to use Packet8. Although, I am very happy with them... their web interface is an extreme example of bare-bone. I might be willing to pay the extra $5 for Vonage's feature rich account controls. Also, their extra voicemail routing options would be nice.

Re:Vonage vs. Packet8

[BP9]

I've been using Packet8 for about 6 mos, the latency is fairly bad but no worse than a bad cell phone.

I called my analog line from the Packet8 line and made some noises with a storage scope connected to a mic to time it: the one way latency calling my analog line is around 300ms (oddly enough it was closer to 200ms going the other way). This is long enough that I end up stepping on people I'm talking to and vice versa, but not so long its unmanageble. This is about the same using my cable modem (Time Warner) or DSL service.

Packet8 had me run some ping tests to San Jose, the bulk of the latency was in Level 3's network between Chicago and San Jose -- apparently Packet8 has a gateway in San Jose that everything goes through (even local calls). I got a phone number in San Jose and that helped some, I don't pay the latency back to Minnesota to get back on the POTS network (most of my calls are outgoing so this works fine).

All that said I've gotten used to the long delay, just pretend you're using a push-to-talk walkie talkie and its not so bad. The actual audio quality is excellent.

My sister uses Vonage and I never notice the delay when she calls my analog line with it.

VoIP Price War Declared

[Anonymous Coward]

All are trying to get market share with VOIP to PSTN
and remember this is on top of broadband costs.
The future is IP to IP and none of these big
players support it. So give me an honest providers
like Pulver and Iptel who do free IP to IP first,
to arbitrary destinations and provide PSTN second
for a fee.

Thumbs Up for Vonage

[Omega1045]

I just got Vonage.com about 2 months ago for their $15/month plan (500 minutes plus $0.039 for overage minutes). I really like the service. I had a very small issue with installation and the tech support was very helpful. Pretty much no brainer to get running with my wireless router and cable modem. The sound quality is IMHO better than any traditional landline I have had. I would recommended them to anyone.

AT&T callvantage prices drop to $20...

[Vellmont]

for the first 6 months, $34.99 thereafter. Thanks slashdot submitter for that fully objective and accurate portrayal of pricing.

Re:AT&T callvantage prices drop to $20...

[davemabe]

You are incorrect. AT&T just announced yesterday that the price of their service dropped to $29.95. So that makes it $20 for 6 months and then $29.95 after that.

I like price wars!

[ChiralSoftware]

I'm basically happy with my Vonage service. Only a few minor complaints:

• I can't listen to my favorite Internet stations while I'm making a call. Ok, this has nothing to do with Vonage; I just need a faster DSL connection.
• I can't seem to find a client for it that runs on Linux so I can connect straight from my computer or laptop, without having to use any of their hardware. I know it uses plain old SIP so this should be possible, and I have tried some of the web pages that have instructions on how to do this, but I can't get it to work. Skype has a Linux version ready for download and it works well. I wish Vonage had the same level of Linux support.
• I wish it had better security. I think it uses plain old unencrypted SIP. It should be encrypted at the IP layer. Eventually we need to have end-to-end voice encryption for call security. Again, Skype already has this, albeit without published sourcecode.

If Skype had a service that gives me a phone number and lets me receive calls I might switch to that. I also think that Skype has better sound quality, in my experience.

Re:I like price wars!

[RobRancho]

I can also attest to Skype's call quality. I've only used it and the AIM/iChat VoIP options, so I don't know how they compare with Vonage or CallVantage, but Skype call are typically somewhere between a digital cell phone call and a landline. The AIM voice chat doesn't really compare.

Re:I like price wars!

[Pastis]

Talking about Skype voice quality, I advice people to read what GnomeMeeting developers have to say about it. It's on the front page.

Re:Didn't lower the costs for all plans..

[Anonymous Coward]

General american business plan:

1- Lure People in with new technology
2- Imply that the technology will get cheaper as more people adhere to it
3- Maintain prices at a stagnant level for years(DVDs??)
4- Profit.

know what's funny

[Skadet]

know what's funny? maybe 5 years ago I used Dialpad.com... VoIP, 'cept through your soundcard... and you could call actual phone numbers. (this was in the day before free long distance was a staple in the cell phone community).

The funny part?

It was free.

Re:know what's funny

[zoloto]

I remember this as well and loved it. You could even have a local area number for a lot of cities. I had a local boston number for my girlfriend at the time to call me in NY before I moved there, and she had a local NY number so I could call her there. Very cool stuff. Free long distance, anonymous information and the best part?? 5 years ago, this stuff was only 1/2 second of lag!

I miss the good ol days sometimes.

Re:know what's funny

[StateOfTheUnion]

Those were the .com glory days . . . when companies didn't have to actually make money to be perceived as successful . . . just a lot of users.

Dialpad is still around . . . but it costs money now . . .

Re:know what's funny

[badzilla]

Residents of US and Canada could make free dialpad calls within those countries. Of course the dialpad website was also accessible from the rest of the world and this REALLY rocked - I was getting free London to US calls at a time when POTS was charging 60c/min.

Re:know what's funny

[mla_anderson]

Yep, in 2000 I spent a lot of time in Taiwan. I was in a motel that had a T1 (or equiv) shared between the rooms. I would call home for free, it was really nice.

If I was travelling as much now, I'd probably add a Vonage soft phone to my account and get similar features.

glibc

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is urlich drepper doing with glibc. THe mailing list is private and there are no tarballs of the latest version. open source? how?

any alternatives?

(price) War declared!

[Dhaos]

Does this mean that AT&T is going to invade Poland?

Vonage quality is way down

[Anonymous Coward]

Voice Pulse is still $35/month. As a subscriber, it really makes me want to switch (thinking of packet8). Their call quality dropped over the Summer but seems to have recently improved.

My buddy just dropped Vonage after a year due to serious on-going quality and customer service issues. Though it was only in the past couple months that he became pissed at them. He has been running Voice Pulse for the past three months.

So, yeah, Vonage really needed to do something.

Re:Vonage quality is way down

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it wasnt his pathetic DSL connection?

Pirating MP3s, Software and movies while trying to use the service on a pathetic DSL connection?

Maybe starting out Customer Service calls with "Hey fuck you buddy?"

Possibly pathetic equipment to go with a pathetic DSL connection?

Oddly enough I don't have these problems and Vonage works GREAT for me!

Duh

[2nd Post!]

Your intermediate plan didn't fall in price because they upgraded your features to the premium level.

Why aren't you paying $25 for the premium plan?

Re:Duh

[sisukapalli1]

It hasn't changed to $25 for the premium plan till today. They still say $29 on their web site. Even $4 is a waste of money for me because most of my calls are local/regional, and most of the long distance calls are on the cell phone.

I'd save whatever money they drop on the intermediate plan. The main difference between that and the premium plan is the "allowed minutes".

S

Re:Any VoIP users? - Lingo

[aacool]

I use Lingo as my exclusive phone service - I cancelled my POTS line after two days - SBC was very difficult to cancel when I told them I was going to VOIP

I have had absolutely no problems for the last two months. I get an amazing price - $19.99 for unlimited US, Western Europe & Canada, and the first three months absolutely free.

I can't imagine not having the convenience of VOIP. The online bonuses - email voicemail, detailed billing, etc are good too. Ob. referral - contact my id for a ref bonus:)

The rates to the rest of the world are good too

Go Vonage!

[signe]

This makes the third time in the last 2 years that Vonage has dropped their rates by $5 a month. We signed up at $40 a month, and it was a good deal then. At $25 a month it's pretty amazing.

Quality is good. You do have to keep an eye on what your upstream bandwidth is (we're at 128 kbps, and given that that's not guaranteed, I think we're pushing it a little at times), but a QoS router will take care of that nicely.

-Todd

Re:Go Vonage!

[trolman]

Same here, 128kbs up, and use a Cisco Router with QOS to give the phone line the packets. QOS routers is probably the Number 1 tech hurdle in delivering VOIP to the masses.

Re:Go Vonage!

[Mistah Blue]

I use the Linksys router with 2 phone ports on it. It does QOS. This router occasionally goes in to lala land (both phone line lights go dark and no traffic flows even though the data lights are blinking - power cycle fixes that).

what value is added for $25 per month?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how charging $25 per month for "phone" service can be justified much longer. You are just sending and receiving data packets over your broadband connection, which is already paid for. If you consider a phone number is a lot like a IM ID name or a email address, what's the real difference between your phone ringing and getting a IM message window popping up? One costs you $25 per month and the other lets you talk for free. Why don't we just make things that look just like a phone, ring when you get a message, and emit a dial tone when you pick them up and let you dial a number instead of a IM ID or email address? Why pay $25 for this? People think it's a great deal but that's because they are comparing it to the old phone service which costs more and charges by the minute for long distance. Compare it to how you use Yahoo messenger for example and you wonder why pay anything at all for it?

Re:what value is added for $25 per month?

[Trigulus]

I am a vonage user. Most of my friends, family, coworkers, businesses I deal with etc.. are not uber geeks and do not wish to be forced to communicate with me in some strange and unusual way (IM, computer phones,proprietary sip services etc.) With vonage they pick up their phone, dial my number and we communicate. Anyone out there on traditional phone lines can reach me without any inconvienience to them. And it costs me very little compared to the same service from those traditional phone lines. You dont seem to live in the real world or at least communicate in it. At work we have completely switched our phone lines to vonage. 15 lines!. We have a 100MB internet connection so we dont even feel the lost bandwidth but we save over $2000 per month! and our customers have no clue. in fact most of the employees are unaware of the switch. To me that says it all. My only complaint is vonage limits a "company" account to 10 lines so we had to set up 2 accounts. And that is very minor.

Re:what value is added for $25 per month?

[n6mod]

So do you have 15 ATAs lined up in a row, with analog patch cords to your PBX, or does Vonage have a real business service that they don't advertise? (say, SIP or IAX directly to a VoIP PBX?)

I ask because I'm about to build an Asterisk box, and I really want 4 trunks and a dozen DIDs for a small office, delivered over IP.

Re:what value is added for $25 per month?

[Trigulus]

Actualy that is close. Each vonage unit supports 2 lines so its 8 devices. We put up a litte shelf for them in our telco closet. Vonage does not have a "real business service" as you describe it. We didnt have to make any adjustments in our case. We had a bunch of analog CO lines coming in and we replaced them. We have a single cable going from the vonage shelf to the punch block. We have a good relationship with our phone guys and they set things up so when our numbers ported all we had to do was yank 2 connectors and plug 2 different ones in that were wired for thew new vonage circuits. We were unfortunatly unable to do anything about our DID circuit which we have been unable to convince McCleoud USA that not only is the circuit not a T1 but its also not in the city they think its in. Bunch of dumb-asses over there. But we aslo only use our DID for faxes.

Re:Competition... Lingo

[liquid stereo]

What about Lingo? I've been using it for 3 months now and its $19.99/month with unlimited local/long-distance (including Canada, the Caribbean, and western Europe).

HA HA! HA HA HEH!

[techsoldaten]

When I signed up for Vonage, it cost me $40 a month which was a huge savings off the $60 a month I was paying for traditional service.

Now the price is going down to $25 a month? This is amazing. I was briefly considering building my own VoIP system, this news makes it not the worth the trouble to go out and buy the parts I would need.

Now I have time to focus on all the other projects I've been thinking about.

M

Re:HA HA! HA HA HEH!

[Deliveranc3]

Until it's free all information warfare must go on!

Death to opacity!

Lingo

[higginsm2000]

I have been very impressed with Lingo, and it seems to me like these services still have a way to go to match it. $40 activation, $20 unlimited US/Canada and Europe(!) calls, second month free (with voucher). If you have friends/family in the UK, you can even get a UK "alternative" number so they can call you in the US at local rates ($10 a month extra). This service is also available in other countries too.

So far, service has been excellent. Great sound quality with no delay at all - indistinguishable from cellular. Setup was easy, and the unit will power your home phone wiring so that the transition is straightforward.

Apparently customer service sucks though, but hopefully you won't need it.

Sorry if this sounded like an Ad :-)

Re:Lingo

[Visceral Monkey]

We use lingo and while the quality is decent, it's not great. Worth only paying $20 a month for? Yes. However, we keep having to unplug and replug the equipment they sent us because the phone just stops working. Very annoying.

Re:Lingo

[liquid stereo]

I've been using Lingo for 3-4 months now and I've only had one problem and it turned out to be an issue in my apartment. They were great, the features are good and its cheap!!!

Worth noting

[prostoalex]

There are now almost 1 million Americans subscribing to VOIP services on their broadband lines and Vonage has 200 000 subscribers. They say by 2008 the number will be 17.5 mln.

As more move to VoIP

[stratjakt]

At what point is the cost 0? I'm thinking once the link to POTS is redundant.

That is, buried in my internet pipe. I don't pay for any other protocol, after all..

Stunning savings on international. . .

[Sialagogue]

(Pre-rave disclaimer, I'm unafilliated with Vonage except as a customer.)

I set up Vonage for our company - we're running 4 lines over a 5Mbps DSL with only occasional stuttering problems.

But the real benefit comes from the fact that although we are a small company, we have offices in five countries in Europe which we speak to on a daily basis. So, we signed up with Vonage for five new lines each tied to a New York number, then when we received the adapters we turned them right around and shipped them to the outer offices. They plugged them in and bingo, all five offices are now accessible with a local call. Plus, that local call is free because all in-network calls with Vonage are free.

That plus the super-low international rates for our other business calls have saved us close to $1,000 a month, which for our sized company is huuuuuge.

Just a week ago I used three-way calling to set up a conference call between London, Prague, and New York and ended up paying 6 cents a minute total. Crazy.

Only downside has been number transfer - they haven't made any progress with cutting our lines over, so we're still having to pay Verizon 80 bucks a month for forwarding - but even there Vonage siad they'd credit our service for any time over 40 days.

I'm a fan so far. . .

Re:Stunning savings on international. . .

[radish]

Interesting what you say about getting the LNP transfer. I just signed up with Vonage (loving it too) and they transfer from Verizon for my 212 number took just over a week total. Much smoother than I expected.

Re:Stunning savings on international. . .

[whyne]

The international rates are good to commonly called countries but not as much to the others. My wife is from Argentina where the majority of her family no longer has a land lines, just cellular. My POTS carrier charges me $0.16 per minute which is not cheap. I just called AT&T because they conveniently left the rate off their site. Probably because it is $0.24 cents per minute, as a comparison Vonage is $0.22. So unfortunately my phone bill is still going to hang around $300.00 US per month for now. If I can figure out why the small CLECS are always $0.06 to $0.08 cheaper on this rate I would be much happier.

broadvoice is still cheaper..

[Urgo]

Well thats all well but broadvoice charges $20/mo. I've been using them since August and have been very happy.

Broadvoice+Sipura from voxilla+asterisk=awsome home phone system.

Re:broadvoice is still cheaper..

[sirsampson]

And to think, without help from some frineds, you would be stuck with vonage.

Re:broadvoice is still cheaper..

[mla_anderson]

Check you're usage, if you're consistantly under 500 minutes a month then Vonage is cheaper.

And...

[ImaLamer]

What about us who use the phone for Internet service?

My phone bill is under $100 including landline, DSL and cellular. Do you think I'm going to go with cable + internet that reaches well over $100 on it's own for a few free long distance minutes?

Just trying to play devils advocate.

Re:And...

[radish]

I don't know about where you are, but here (NYC) you can get cable internet without cable TV. Costs around $40 I think (and is IMHO a better service than DSL). Add Vonage basic service at $15 and it's looking quite competitive to me. But, of course, YMMV.

Big news, but not for the consumer.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I've had VoIP long dist for well over a year now through a small company based in Portland, Oregon. But for the most part all the plans are targeted at commercial customers.

Do you know why the Big Boys don't want to offer VoIP to residential customers? Because residential customers have no pull, we can't really pick and choose and tell our providers to hit the road, we are a Cash Cow stranded in their coporate corral. Big Biz customers CAN and DO dictate what they are willing to pay. Once again, Joe Blow get's screwed.

What minority?

[Penguinoflight]

"You're probably in the minority." Actually, the very fact that so few have moved to VoIP is a strong sign that this "minority" is pretty big.

Most people go with POTS because for most the service is cheaper. Think about the projected market for VoIP, it's mostly cable internet users. For these users a budget VoIP service would be optimal, especially considering all the *cough* red tape *cough* taxes on POTS administered by the FCC.

Re:What minority?

[llefler]

It could also be the lack of reliable e911 service. Or the fact that when the power or cable go out, you'd lose VOIP but not POTS.

Re:What minority?

[evilviper]

Or the fact that when the power or cable go out, you'd lose VOIP but not POTS.

Hmm... Looking around, I have a cordless phone, and an answering machine with built-in handset. If the power goes out, POTS won't be working for me, either.

Most of the people I know are in the same situation... In order to get added features, phones need to be connected to house current, and those features have become so expected, that few people ever buy a plain telephone anymore.

I wonder just how many people around here would actually be able to make a call when the power goes out.

Then again... I could wire a switch and a bulb up to the POTS line, and dial 9-1-1. I wouldn't be able to talk, but they'd send somebody out.

Re:What minority?

[weeble]

In the UK all wireless phones sold have to have batteries by law in the base unit to allow them to be used when the power goes out

Re:What minority?

[bertybassett]

Thats bollocks - I just bought one last week, and it doesnt have batteries

Re:What minority?

[llefler]

Hmm... Looking around, I have a cordless phone, and an answering machine with built-in handset. If the power goes out, POTS won't be working for me, either.

But that is your choice. When I had POTS, I always kept at least one phone wired, usually my desk phone, because I used to call my bank to transfer funds. Wireless is insecure. Also, most people I know that still use POTS keep regular phones because a) they want one phone in a specific place all the time (kitchen, bedroom, desk) and b) cordless phone batteries die at the most inopportune times.

With VOIP you can UPS your local equipment, but if your broadband is cable (or wireless), most likely the CMTS, radio, or router that your ISP uses is going to go down. Simply because they are not regulated, they are not required to maintain a service standard, and they are not familiar with the environment that a common carrier operates in. I don't trust ISPs for essential services.

Re:What minority?

[swillden]

It could also be the lack of reliable e911 service.

Is the 911 service provided by Vonage, etc., unreliable?

Re:What minority?

[DrZaius]

I wasn't saying that's why people haven't moved. Given a choice, I would sooner pay less per minute than per month. The cost would be one factor in moving to voip.

I think there are a lot of reasons people haven't moved. I don't own a land line and having VOIP is useless to me.

In Vancouver, BC we have a service called CityFido. You get flat rate cell phone usage -- I pay $45 a month for my phone no matter how much I use it and long distance packages are fairly competitive.

What's the point in VOIP when I can use my cellphone cheaply anywhere?

Re:What minority?

[Penguinoflight]

That's definatly a good point. If anything cellphones have hurt adaption of VoIP. Most cities don't have a service that competitive, but long distance is usually better on cellphones.

The internet is serious business!

[batkiwi]

Analysts say the price cuts show the VoIP market is not only competitive, but it's serious. http://img1.exs.cx/img1/598/seriousbusiness10.jpg

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[davemabe]

I've recently switched from Vonage to AT&T. The call quality on Vonage was not very good. There is often a nagging local echo and there were several times that I had to reboot the telephone adapter to get it to function. This was unacceptable. Everything about AT&T's service has been better so far: call quality, customer service (much lower hold times!), and more features (locate me!).

Also, AT&T's telephone adapter sits on the internet side of your home network - this allows the device to perform QoS functions by prioritizing the voice packets. Vonage's device sits behind your router and therefore can't do anything about a busy connection. There will inevitably be dropped calls if you use your internet connection heavily while on the phone.

Dave

+1 Same Here

[radish]

I have had the exact same experience. I'm saving $35 a month and getting more features. Plus international calls (the only ones I end up actually paying for) are super cheap.

What About SIPPhone

[thundergeek]

Check out http://www.sipphone.com/

It has all the VOIP companies beat, and running scared. I use it to talk with my mom close to 4k miles away, with very little stuters. DSL Dial Up.

You can use your own phone, computer, or buy a special SIP Phone that works with your regular phone as well.

And from what I can tell, you only pay for over seas calls.

So don't get locked in to VIP Phone, they are playin the M$ game against SIPPhone. And they charge an arm and a leg. Must be the same manager's school teaching these guys, and M$.

Napster

[junkgoof]

Considering the tough parts of the technology are tracking and billing how long before it gets Napstered? A handset with wireless plus a SIP server is about all it would take. As it is you should be able to plug a phone into your laptop anywhere wireless is available. Take your home phone wardriving.

There are servers you can run easily on a home linux box. If you have net access there is no need of a phone co.

The tough part is to get a critical mass. Once you have lots of people with phone service approaching free it should snowball. The first guy with a phone with free calls to no one will regret his purchase. Phones sold in pairs might work.

Cheap wireless access is becoming ubiquitous....

ISP's will probably be giving VOIP out free soon, anyway. Or bundled close to free.

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[DA-MAN]

Also, AT&T's telephone adapter sits on the internet side of your home network - this allows the device to perform QoS functions by prioritizing the voice packets. Vonage's device sits behind your router and therefore can't do anything about a busy connection. There will inevitably be dropped calls if you use your internet connection heavily while on the phone

The new vonage connectors use the motorola that does the same thing.

VoIP telemarketers

[programgeek]

*beep beep* Telemarketer: Hello I am a representative from Voxilla, and this is? John: Who the... Telemarketer: We can offer you extreme savings from your current VoIP service! John: How'd you get my... Telemarketer: IP's are just numbers, I had no information what so ever that your service providor is Vonage. John: How the hell did you find that out -- Connection Drops --

VoicePulse has had those prices for a while

[Grue]

VoicePulse has had prices that low for a while, and they allow you to setup your own VoIP reseller type service, VoicePulse Connect. It works great with Asterisk, which they push as a solution. Very geek friendly.

--
Josh

Why have yet another service?

[Anonymous Coward]

So tell me again -- why do I need a VoIP "service" when I already have broadband service?

My current broadband service already gives me IP packets -- so why can't I just use those IP packets right now to carry my voice?

Seriously -- why can't VoIP be just another Internet application? Why does it need a whole new type of service provider?

Re:Why have yet another service?

[zentec]

Because 99% of the rest of the world still uses circuit switched data. You're paying the service provider a fee to convert your IP into circuit switched data so it can traverse over the POTS network. Unless you only talk to the other 1%, you need an interface into the past.

That's it, end of story. Consider it a tax for being on the bleeding edge of technology until the rest of the world catches-up to you.

When the rest of the world does catch up, they'll hawk the rental of phone switch services as a convenient way to prevent SPIM.

This market shouldn't even exist.

[Don Tobin]

Everyone is missing the forest for the trees on this one. We already pay a fee to connect a device in our homes to a network around the world.

$25/month is $25/month too much for VoIP (when you already have a cable modem).

What is it that we want to pay for exactly? Is it that we want to rent the VoIP hardware phone? Are we insecure putting our voicemail on our PCs at home instead of a SAN at some over-hyped corp?

Stop, think, repost.

Re:This market shouldn't even exist.

[vtechpilot]

What you are paying for is the cost to terminate the call to POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines. You may not realize this, but everytime a call terminates to a POTS line, the long distance carrier must pay a fee to the local carrier that operatates the POTS line. So what you are paying for is the service of integrating the IP network with the POTS network. by the way 24.95 a month is the target price for USA Datanet's VoIP service. But um, I'm not supposed to know that.

Re:This market shouldn't even exist.

[chadimus]

I figured that there would be some cost involved in integrating it into the older phone network. What about all those fees or taxes that you pay (I think theres one for 911, for instance), do they apply? How is the call routed? Can you ever use the same IP address as you're machine (the one I use at work doesn't)? How much bandwidth does an average quality call take up? Even if there were no POTS network and the IP phone was fully integrated to the point where it was nothing more than a peripheral capable of accessing all the services a regular phone can access, there would likely be some additional expenses there. How much is beyond me though.

Re:This market shouldn't even exist.

[The-Bus]

I paid $25 to get a box that would work. I don't have time to fiddle with settings, etc. I ended up wasting a good amount of time after all was said and done, so maybe I should've tried it myself. Only question is, if I don't have Vonage, what number do I give to people?

Re:This market shouldn't even exist.

[sonofagunn]

You're paying for a phone number as well. Also, a service to route that phone number from the POTS system to your IP phone (and vice versa). If *everyone* had broadband and we just used IP addresses, then there would be no need to charge for VOIP.

Re:This market shouldn't even exist.

[jonbrewer]

Everyone is missing the forest for the trees on this one. We already pay a fee to connect a device in our homes to a network around the world.

$25/month is $25/month too much for VoIP (when you already have a cable modem).

What is it that we want to pay for exactly? Is it that we want to rent the VoIP hardware phone? Are we insecure putting our voicemail on our PCs at home instead of a SAN at some over-hyped corp?

We pay to allow the rest of the non-technical world to use POTS to call us. And to allow us to call said rest of world. We likely also pay so we don't have to depend on a soft-phone on our likely unreliable home PC. We're not all living in our mom's basement, you know...

European VoIP?

[waynelorentz]

I had Vonage for about a year and thought it was great, especially taking a home number with me into hotels that had free high-speed internet. Then I moved to another city where local phone service was included with high-speed internet in my rent, so there was no point in keeping it.

But now I travel a lot, and it would be convenient to have a VoIP service with a European POTS phone number. Does anyone in the /. crowd know of a VoIP service that provides European numbers?

Re:European VoIP?

[Minux]

I think Lingo provides international numbers. But its at an extra cost. Some people I know off have just bought there service in various overseas markets and then just used them over here. Depending upon the plans offered by the VoIP companies some don't charge you anything to some charging you STD call rates for moving the phone out of the country. There are also some people who trade/exchange services. I would check the VoIP forums at dslreports. I think that's where I read about that.
Hope that helps.

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[Scowler]

Why would you want to put the telephone adapter on the internet side? The newer routers (including the fabulous WRT54G) can already do QoS, and probably a better job at that.

Also, you can use just about any adapter on the market with either VOIP provider, in either configuration (with a little work). I have the Vonage adapter on the router (with QoS) side of the network and have had no quality issues.

I'd rather have a sliding scale like this ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I'd rather have one of these:

- A really low per-minute rate.
- A really low per-minute rate with a minimum charge for a (rather small) number of minutes (to cover connect costs).
- A small be-connected charge plus a really low per-minute rate.
- Any of the above with a per-minute rate that starts really low and then drops still further with large volume usage.

These plans with a big prepaid lump followed by a larger per-minute rate for overages, or a big prepaid flat-rate lump, are nuts. They don't track the company's actual costs and create a perverse incentive structure for the user. This may be perceived as bottom-line enhancing by PHBs, but it actually makes for nasty financial weather.

IMHO the first company that switches to a model like one of the above will eat the lunch of any others that don't follow suit.

If none of them switch (and the flat rate doesn't get so miniscule that it's no longer a pain and voice doesn't get included in flat-rate internet service) the world will eventually switch to peer-to-peer VoIP (with a toll-call model to contact anybody stuck on the PSTN) and it will be all over.

why pay for VOIP when you have ....

[2mcm]

skype !!
Or if you are going to communicate with some one remotely just send an email , it has many advantages one of them being that whoever you are sending to doesnt have to be home at the time.

Need to proofread...

[Anonymous Coward]

Publishing (the price of books is...

Less than 25% of what they were a century ago, in terms of a percentage of median wages.

Re:Need to proofread...

[aussie_a]

Actually, that's the price for publishing traditional books. Since I've got my PDA I've been enjoying e-books and while the commercial books cost the same as traditional ones, there are a lot of good free e-books out there :) So the cost of publishing can be VERY small (although not $0)

Have Vonage, will probably drop in favor of Skype.

[rthille]

I've got Vonage, but since I'm on DSL, I'm paying for a phone number anyway, and with the amount of calls I make Skype is a much better deal.
Now if only I could get some hardware (like my vonage/cisco ATA) which would do Skype instead of vonage....

I'll move to VOIP when...

[Howard Beale]

I can find a provider that *officially supports*:

- faxing - No efax for me, thanks!
- Brinks security system - keep the bad guys away!
- local number - I don't mind a number within my area code, just don't only give me one that's 60 miles away. Now all my local calls have LD calls to make...

Re:I'll move to VOIP when...

[Anonymous Coward]

1 faxing - No efax for me, thanks!
2 Brinks security system - keep the bad guys away!
3 local number - I don't mind a number within my area code, just don't only give me one that's 60 miles away. Now all my local calls have LD calls to make...

1 Vonage, can even use DUN to connect
2 Vonage, activate second port on Cisco ATA switch and have the installers run a phone line to it
3 Vonage, pick an area code

Any questions class?

Re:I'll move to VOIP when...

[aardwolf64]

Done... for a one-time fee of $135, AT&T will install the wiring in your house so that you can use your regular phones in your regular phone jacks.

$25? I smirk in your general direction!

[Cleetus Freem]

I use onesuite.com and pay 2.5 cents a minute within the USA. I pay that same rate for calls to China.

That means that for your "competitive" $25 a month, I could make over 16 and a half hours of calls (to just about anywhere in the world... from any phone... at any time of day... on a regular, echo free phone line no less... and no I don't have to enter a bulky code every time I call... calls from my home automatically bypass the need for a code).

None of the options presented here are that cheap and convenient and until they can at least come close, I will stick with my onesuite.com (which I've used for 2 years now).

Re:$25? I smirk in your general direction!

[I-R-Baboon]

Oddly enough...

With Vonage I don't pay for local calls and long distance and that includes calls to Canada! I'll take unlimited to x.x/minute anyday. I never use a code aside from 1+AreaCode and my phone switch is my home phone company allowing me to take "local" calls from my broadband connection at home or from a hotel with broadband in Italy. I also use the options for virtual area codes and elminated large chunks out of the phone bill for my family. All these benefits PLUS the packages you pay out the wazoo for at the traditional POTC such as call forwarding, waiting, voice mail, caller ID etc. HELL YEAH LET A PRICE WAR HAPPEN! I get great service and great service cheaper, this is a fine wine not often served.

With price wars and growth however, how much more appealing of a target to the FCC has VoIP become?

Vonage works with SIP clients?

[BillTheKatt]

I've been trying to get a clear answer on this to no avail. A couple months ago Vonage was offering a $25 a month plan that included the softphone (Xten).

Now all they have is the $29 a month plan and it's another $9 or $10 a month for the softphone and 500 minutes.

Does anyone know, if you sign up for just the $29 unlimited service if you can use your own softphone/SIP phone? I keep hearing maybe, but I'd like to know for sure before I sign up. And their support can't seem to figure out the answer.

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[The-Bus]

Vonage's hardware can sit in front or behind your router. It all has to do with how you configured it.

That being said, it's not 100% service. But it's a lot, a lot less frustrating than using a cellphone.

8x8 VOIP

[Demultiplexor]

8x8 Inc. is another VOIP provider cheaper than both with anytime unlimited LD at $20.55 bottom line per month.

They also offer 911 service that I haven't tried for an extra $3, you just have to make sure you provide your latest address.

I have been pretty happy with it, reception is better than my cell phone. They recently have signed deals to offer hardware with many online retailers, most notably amazon.com and buy.com.

False information

[Anonymous Coward]

The vonage adapter sits on the internet side of your home network and performs QoS functions, and has done so for the last 8 months that I have been using Vonage for my phone service. I never hear any echo. Sound quality sounds exactly like a traditional land line.

How come no mention of packet 8?

[Danathar]

I use Packet 8 communications at $19.95 with no problem. Since it's cheaper than either Vonage or AT&T why was it not mentioned?

Vonage user past 5 months

[The-Bus]

Recently I was switched over to working almost full-time from home. I can easily be on the phone 500 minutes in one day, so only unlimited service would really do. Here's my experience, abridged:

• Set up with Vonage. I decide on them because they are the biggest and well-known. I only have a couple days to research, so I order the damn thing. I get to pick a number which is supposedly in a certain town here but I don't recognize the exchange.
  
• Installation. It comes in the mail a couple of days later. I set up and *bingo*, it just... doesn't work. The next day I figured out the phone was plugged into "Line 2"... Who puts "Line 2" on the left hand side of "Line 1"? Doesn't make sense. My mistake.
  
• So now it works. Sort of. The router is still not part of the equation. The hardware is an awful router, so I eventually decide to put it behind the router. Forward the right ports, etc... Bingo. Works perfectly.
  
• No wait, it doesn't work. What I didn't mention was that a large part of my job has to do with faxing. Well, the POTS fax protocol used (excuse my butchering of telephony terms) doesn't play nice with VOIP. I can get faxes fine but I can barely send them. Everything drops out. No matter where. This will not do.
  
• A long difficult period. I contact Vonage tech support for help and no matter what I say they put me on L1 where they check to see what version of Windows do I have and do I have the router set up right etc. etc. eventhough my phone calls work just fine!!! Argh. Over the next week or so I literally spend 20+ hours researching this issue.
  
• Finally, an agreement. I turn down the send speed of my high-speed fax, I do a bunch of hardware and software tweaks, and now about 70% of all faxes work. Not a terribly high ratio, but I've learned to rely on other forms of sending documentation now.
  
• Over time. My only major complaints is the complete lack of support for faxes. VOIP natively is not good at handling faxes. If you ever really really need to send a fax, VOIP is not for you. Call quality was perfect except in one major teleconference call, and there were no outages until last week when outgoing calls where butchered for the entire day.
  
  Overall, I'd give it a B+. I've probably saved $100 or so over the past couple of months, at the expense of a really bad headache. Still, if I ever go anywhere I like to know I can take my Vonage box with me and have my number be there.

Research THEN rant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cable companies often times get a bad rap that they do not earn.

CATV brings channels to you, channels that they have to pay licensing fees on and then resell the service. Same with broadband internet as they pay for chunks of bandwidth from the backbones they access. Well if the company that owns the channel or backbone jacks up the rates, would you rather start losing channels you can't pick and losing quality of service? Cable companies don't want their quality to suffer, so they take the shafting they have to and those price increases are passed to the customer so they don't lose anything in the level of service they are used to. Nobody wants to raise the rates, it is not like the CEO gets up, stubs his toe and screams "SHIT now I am gonna hike those rates up!"

Look at ESPN and how they extort their obnoxious fees, they know they are a network not easily dropped due to the amount of things people actually somehow manage to watch. ESPN has a history of jacking up their rates as often as they can as high as they can without getting a court involved. Eventually buffers are eaten out of the budget for this and a price increase has to come. If you are worried about the price of your cable services, contact some companies that own the channels you watch and contact the backbone providers and see if they can rationalize THEIR hikes which snowballed downhill to the customers.

If you have problems with US bandwidth turn off P2P and call your cable company to complain and have them check out saturation and your return signal to noise ratio.

And this has what to do with VoIP?

Landline companies need to drop THEIR prices!

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to VOIP a couple of months ago for one reason: price. I went from Bellsouth at $37/month with caller ID and no other features - to $16, which includes voicemail (if I wanted it), call waiting (if I wanted), call forwarding (ok, sometimes I want it). Add a call log on their website - good for spying on the kid and useful for a small claims court issue I'm dealing with - and this is a pretty good deal.

Now Bellsouth calls me every week begging me to come back, offering me all sorts of more expensive special package deals that I didn't want before and still don't want. They've a slight limited-time discount and even CASH, but they still haven't caught on: I DON'T WANT MORE FEATURES FOR MORE MONEY!

I want them to realize that I need basic services at a low cost, and that caller ID shouldn't be a $8 add-on when their competition is giving it away for free.

To be honest, my wife is wanting me to go back to wired service, because we do have some issues: dropped calls, a nasty echo (but only when she talks to her mother - imagine that), and a few other minor problems. But I'm sorry, Bellsouth. If you want me back you're going to have to compete in today's world!

Is security a concern?

[sonofagunn]

Since many people still don't use firewalls in their home networks is their a security problem here?

Does your phone get assigned an IP address?

Will spammers have an easier time making unsolicited calls to VOIP customers?

I need to know this stuff before I consider switching. Someone help me out.

Re:Any VoIP users? - Lingo

[Mustang Matt]

I was signing up for lingo but halfway through the registration process:

Page Flow Unhandled Exception
Exception: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException
Message: java.lang.ClassCastException@e3cc61

A java.lang.IllegalArgumentException exception was thrown and not handled by any Page Flow. See the console for the exception stack trace.

Re:Any VoIP users? - Lingo

[cmorriss]

I've also signed up for lingo, but to be honest the quality isn't as good as a POTS line. I get echos and have had a few dropped calls. The first night I had it, the service was out for two hours. Technical support said their servers had crashed.

Overall, though the quality has been "good enough" and the price makes it all worth it. My wife gets to spend hours talking to her family in Italy and the quality on international calls is the same as calling next door.

bandwidth hog

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read several threads with peoples experience of using VoIP, and i have to ask this,
but why does noone ever mention the amount of bandwidth VoIP hogs ?
Unless you are all on T1 connections or don't use your internet connections at all then this is a real concern.
Most residential Cable/DSL lines have 'criminal' upload caps, and if you like BitTorrent then you have to seriously cap your upload while on the phone or you get get blackouts during conversations.
Just my 2 cents.
I'll still keep my Lingo line because unlimited calls back home to england is worth a bit of hassle.

International issues

[thogard]

As an American living in Australia, I like the idea of a Vonage like service where I can have a US phone number ring a phone here. The problem is Vonage seems to have its gateway on the East Coast which is just to far away.

Does anyone know of a service that has their gateway on the West Coast? I can get ping times of about 258 or 340 to vonage while I get pings of 270 or 230 to ServerPath in San Jose. From what I can tell, 250ms is useable for VoIP and much more than that isn't.

I know there are also terms of service issues about using it overseas but I'm willing to see how far I can get away with that.

Re:Any VoIP users? - Lingo

[Augusto]

Lingo has the "right" price, however I've heard their customer support is horrible. Have you had any experiences with their support?

Why bother with VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

My SBC phone bill is just $12 a month - it's not unlimited call, but I dont make tons of call either. Still cheaper than paying $29 a month.

And if you have regular phone + DSL - why would anyone subscribe to VOIP? isnt it kinda redundant?

Re:Any VoIP users? - Lingo

[Anonymous Coward]

*sniff* *sniff*

My troll nose smells 'turf.

Nothing more to see (or smell here)...just 'turffin'.

Beat it, you Lingo mouthpiece.

What a moron.

[Anonymous Coward]

You really think that someone is going to build out infrastructure for the entire US and charge the same rates everywhere? What do those poor losers in Bumfuck Iowa do when they want VoIP? Wait... I guess they need some kind of internet connection. Hmmm.

Ma Bell invested billions of dollars building out the entire country's telephone infrastructure, and they were price-controlled for over 1/2 a century. The government breaks them up because idiots like you complain, and then you complain and whine about the result?

It's morons like you that are never happy. You piss and moan about the problem, then you piss and moan about the solution. Why don't you just leave the US and bother someone else. I suggest Moscow.

See what it's like to live in a 3rd world, you piss ant!

Re:What a moron.

[Arcanix]

I do live in the third world, what planet are you living on?

All well and good but ...

[RWarrior(fobw)]

... my DSL provider apparently won't allow competing dsl providers to service my line, even though I have DSL service and it's supposed to be competative.

This means that I'm stuck with being required to have a POTS line, unless I want to dump DSL and go back to cable where the service is so bad the administrators can't manage to keep DHCP servers online (and have been having trouble with them for two years running). So much for the utility of VOIP for me.

Network effect

[Doc Ruby]

Vonage has now dropped their prices from $35:mo to $25:mo, which is about 29%; their profits must be dropping by a much larger percentage, accounting for the costs covered by revenues. If they drop much more they'll start to reach their minimum profit. So will they start competing on features, like opening their VoIP and account protocols to outside apps, like web services?

faxes and voip

[Anonymous Coward]

To get faxes working over public IP-network is very hard task. Any packet drop will probably kill the page receiving. To make faxes work over IP you need to use special protocol called T.38. There are some ATAs which do support this, BUT they are very expensive.

Whenever I see that people are trying to make faxes work over IP, I think it is not work the trouble unless you are a company customer willing to pay for these T.38 endpoints (and your service provider supports them too).

Serious? Overpriced, really

[saikou]

I don't believe instant pricecuts indicate "serious market".

VOIP at current prices is severely overpriced. 1000 minutes of voice termination at wholesale rates in US hardly costs $10. How many users actually use more than a thousand minutes? Probably not 90% of them. Additionally, incoming calls reduce that rate even further. Given that most providers started with $30 a month, they can easily drop rate till $19 for unlimited plans.
Of course the situation will change radically once FCC forces everyone to pay $6 per line fee, plus extra taxes (for the same of schools and libraries, no less, so that small regional school could be easily lured into buying Catalyst with maintenance contract, and the rest'd go to Bell companies)...

Vonage Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Vonage charges a $30 setup fee. They also charge a $30-40 dollar cancellation fee unless if you mail back the hardware they send you (costs you about $10 to ship). Customer service is rude and hold times are forever. Their service use to be great when they were a small company. You could call them and there would be no wait time. Someone technical would answer the phone. It's just not the same company anymore.

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[little_blaine]

>Also, AT&T's telephone adapter sits on the internet side of your home network - this allows the device to perform QoS functions by prioritizing the voice packets. Vonage's device sits behind your router and therefore can't do anything about a busy connection.

Not true about the current vonage telephone adapters. I signed up about 6 months ago, and the motorola box that they sent can sit either in front of the router and perform QoS, or behind the router with no QoS.

I still haven't given up my POTS line, although I've reduced to the bare minimum service with no features. Problems with echo and occasional service disruptions made me hesitant to switch to VoIP exclusively.

$29.99 w/first month free as of Oct 1, 2004

[wodelltech]

I was about to order last night. When I checked this morning (just refreshed the browser), the offer changed. I don't know where you saw $20/month, though. Even yesterday (Sept 30), it was $29/month for 6 months ($35/month thereafter)

Re:$29.99 w/first month free as of Oct 1, 2004

[Anonymous Coward]

No, The old plan was $19.99 for the first 6 mo., and $34.99 thereafter. The new plan is a month free( if you sign up before Jan. 31, 2005 )and $29.99 thereafter. You get better features, service, and quality ( they own their own nationwide IP backbone) than vonage.

Re:$29.99 w/first month free as of Oct 1, 2004

[Vellmont]

AT&T couldn't get their act together and change a website in time. I tend to trust what's on a websites front page more than a news article on slashdot, or some fool reporter.

Anyway, you're right. It's not $29.99 a month, but it was $20, then up to $35 after 6 months.

A Note To Vonage Customers:

[Treebeard the Ent]

As I am an existing Vonage customer, I checked to see if the rate went dow on my plan (Unlimited Local/500 Long Distance Minutes) which was $24.99/mo. Vonage seems to have discontinued that plan, but my plan was not automatically upgraded to the unlimited plan. So, I went ahead and changed it myself.

This is good news for me as I am getting ready to have to make a lot more long distance calls than I did before.

<shameless plug>
Also, anyone who is looking to get Vonage can contact me and I can send you an invitation. You will save on your fist bill, and i will save on my next bill
</shameless plug>

Broadvoice is a good choice

[outcast341]

you can get unlimited to any where in the USA and Canada for $19.99 and you can use Asterisk with it.

Packet8 is still cheaper at $19.99

[Anonymous Coward]

Packet8 is still a better service at a cheaper price. I've had it since february and disconnected my regular line because it worked so well. Checkout www.packet8.net

What about per minute costs?

[AgentPhunk]

VoicePulse Connect! has a low monthly rate, but its $2.95 per minute for US connectivity. Holy Crap!

No volume commitment
Prepaid pricing model
Get started with $10
Incoming phone numbers:
$7.99 / month (each)
Incoming rate:
0 / minute
US long distance rate:
2.95 / minute

Re:What about per minute costs?

[Big Boss]

You're reading it wrong. It's 2.95 CENTS per minute. So $0.0295/min ...

Pretty reasonable..

Re:Didn't lower the costs for all plans..

[mla_anderson]

Actually it seems they have stopped offering their intermediate plan. When the premium plan was only $4 more per month we upgrade our intermediate. You may as well upgrade your plan if you're going to pay the same rate. Log into your account and check your usage history, 500 minutes basic may work just fine for you. Add up your in plan and regional minutes, if you're typically under 500 just go with that.

Lingo discussions on Broadbandreports..

[the_rajah]

Broadbandreports forums

It sounds very interesting and might give it a try myself, but I'm not quite ready to dump all the POTS lines into the house just yet.

"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain

Re:Any VoIP users? - Lingo

[aacool]

First level tech support is terrible - I call up their techie staff - got their number when I needed help setting up my network. Those guys are very knowledgeable.

AT&T CallVantage

[Anonymous Coward]

I had Vonage for a long time before getting rid of it due to drops and voice quality. Problem is that they use the public internet for their traffic from their PoPs.... I switched to AT&T (who has their own fiber network nationwide and can do QOS, etc)... I haven't had a problem with their service at all and comes with UNLIMITED local/nationwide. I'd rather stick to their service, they have more features that I like and service quality is MUCH better than vonage.

Vonage for India calls sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried vonage for about 3 months now (calling India, in particular) the call quality sucks! Locally within the US is works fine.

I have to believe its their gateway in India that might be bad or something. Issues are, I either don't get through at all (the line just keep ringing) or even if the call goes thru', the quality sucks. Worst of all, even the calls which don't get thru' get charged, so I have tons of 1-2 minute calls which I have to pay for.

Customer services says, they are signing up a 1000 customers a day and so their gateways are a little bogged down..... Nice going guys. (That has to go down in some worst customer service response list)

Calling india, currently is best with http://www.relianceindiacall.com/ for now (for me atleast)

VoIP service

[sethspears]

The best VoIP service I've seen is from the biggest company that no one's heard of, Lightyear Alliance. http://www.lightyear.net/voip/index.ly?agent=2073& rep=290471& For $29.99 you get unlimited calls nationwide, including Canada, and rates under $0.10 per minute to Europe. They seem to have a brilliant marketing plan as well, targeting personal marketing rather than national advertising.