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Comcast Begins Rollout of VoIP
rufey writes "Comcast is beginning their rollout of their Internet phone service, according to a press release released today.
It seems that the increased competition has gotten the attention of the baby bells, who "have realigned their attention to target cable's success and plan to invest billions of dollars of their own to upgrade their decaying copper network with speedier fiber-optic lines". With Comcast owning the network that the voice calls will traverse (until it gets to POTS, if needed), will Comcast's VoIP quality be better than their competitors such as Vonage, which relies on third party Internet connections to carry their VoIP?"
With Comcast owning the network that the voice calls will traverse (until it gets to POTS, if needed), will Comcast's VoIP quality be better [...]
PSTN, not POTS, please.
POTS = Plain Old Telephone Service. It's an electrical and signaling specification: Two wire, 24v DC supplies, ringing, pulse/tone dialing, cabling and line impedence standards (typically CAT3), etc. RJ and other connectors. POTS, and customers attached to the PSTN by POTS, are a (large) subset of the PSTN but far from all of it.
PSTN = Public Switched Telephone Service. It's the whole telephone ball of wax. Customers attached by POTS, ISDN (basic or primary rate), Tn with SS7, and several cellular standards, etc. Common numbering plan. Division of effort between long-haul, local, and cellular system providers. International carriers and standards. I could go on.
POTS is a wire connection standard. PSTN is The Telephone Network.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As a user experienced with a cable companies(Time Warner) VoIP offering and with Vonage, I can clearly(pun) state that Vonage wins hands down. Odd since it is still carried over Time Warners cable network.
I really put the blame on the cruddy Scientific Atlanta equipment they chose to use. I went through three "modems" in the course of a month. I quit after the third died, went with Vonage that same night, and I haven't looked back. The calls are ten times clearer on Vonage.