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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?"
Comcast has been advertising VoIP service in my area for about two years. I called up four months ago and asked them about it, because I wanted to add it to my internet service.
The woman on the phone responded with nothing more than "what are you talking about?". She had to speak with a supervisor, who eventually just said "We don't offer that in your area. Or any area, actually. And I doubt we'll even have such a service for a couple of years".
Didn't explain why they've been advertising it for eons.
Anyway, they've lost money here, because I went with Packet8.net. Great quality, cheap prices. Unlimited long distance to the states and Canada for $20/mo, including all of the features that most companies would charge a hefty extra fee for (call return, caller ID, call blocking, call forwarding, voicemail, conferencing). And rates to other locations are typically between two and four cents per minute. Can't beat that.
Comcast would have to beat that service by at least 20% to make it worth my time *and* provide the adaptor for free (since you have to buy one with most VoIP providers for about $50).
Primustel in Canada has had a neat VOIP unit you plug a plain ol phone into. You can transfer your existing landline number to it and if you plug in in another city calls from your home area code get to it sans long distance charges. Helps to have fiber optics coast to coast
Now is it- "Hi, I am your cable/internet/phone connection. Only want 1 of the 3, sorry."
I think it is just a matter of time before Comcast decides to block all traffic to and from their VOIP competitors. How is that for competition?
In the article it entions trial areas of Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Springfield, Mass.
However, I got a flyer a few weeks ago for this service - and I live in Denver! In fact I signed up for the service today and have an installer coming out next week.
Mainly I was motvated by a desire to user snyone other than Qwest. I am also hoping to get some kind of price break from also using Comcast for my ISP, though they said nothing about it while signing up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comcast has the advantage of having the last mile connection to the customer. Although Vonage has some great deals on phone service, the quality of that service rests squarely on the shoulders of the customer's internet connection. That connection, BTW, is provided by a company that likely has a competing offering (like Comcast) which lowers their desire to make sure your Vonage connection is good. Unfortunately, I speak from experience...
I'd be pretty surprised if comcast can do anything better than their competitors
That's the glory of having a virtual monopoly and charging me a hundred bucks a month for internet and basic digital cable.
As a Vonage user, I doubt Comcast's first offering will be on-par with existing services, much in the way a new DVR service doesn't quite compare to Tivo (for ease of use and features, anyway). I was considering several VOIP services before I finally went with Vonage (over my cable provider's offering) for two reasons: features (such as Call Forwarding with Simultaneous ring, so the phone rings at your house and say, your cell phone), and the ability to take your existing phone number from your POTS line to Vonage. Can you really expect Comcast's first venture into the field to compare with this?
And btw, no, no one has been able to tell that I'm on VOIP rather than POTS.
That's why for a while most service providers will probably require a fixed service address, so they can hardwire 911 calls from your phone.
Companies are working on it but the issue is tricky. You'll be happy to know that the solution to this problem will also enable companies to make sure of your physical location on the network before watching things like canadian TV in the US...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cablevision and Time Warner have been offering VoIP for a long time now and I can personally attest that Vonage is better then both.
I was a low level net admin at Cablevision when they rolled out their VoIP product. Sure out network was great but no one had any idea how to setup a VoIP infrastructure. Mind you Cablevision spared no expence with equipment, all high end Cisco stuff throughout. We brought in Siemans and they set everything up for us. We had four guys on staff 24-7 just sitting around working on it.
NOTHING WORKED RIGHT EVER. They would blame our BETA IOS, they would blame Corporate IS, they'd blame our Software Engineering, etc. No matter how "perfect" (by their definition) we made the environment it still never worked. When it did there would be god awful distortion. This was blamed on freak RF anamolies.
Vonage only does VoIP, they do it realy well. It works the same as when other companies (Like earthlink) Piggyback another Cable Co's modem. Once you get passed the UBR you hop onto another network entirely. If your "On Demand" works ok and your screen doesn't pixelate you should be fine. From the RF point of view all things are created equal. The only differences that you see will be directly attributable to the VoIP provider.
For the record I understand that Cablevision's VoIP is still crap and Time Warner hasn't done a full blown release yet. If the submitters point of view was accurate these companies would have a far superior product and they would have released it full blast by now without hickups. After all the have network insight that no other company posseses. It would seem obvious that they would be able to make the better product.
Another side issue is that most Cable Co's have trouble handling the overhead outbound of all these VoIP calls. Think how many Cable Providers Cap uploads low, or cap people after long periods of heavy upload. Guess what happens when you hand out VoIP modems like candy. With TCP/IP an insane network up screws up everyone's down.
Has anyone seen a Cable Co launch a VoIP service successfully?
I boycott signatures
Does anyone have any suggestions for home alarm systems? the alarms that are monitored by ADT and the likes seem to need a telephone line, but i would rather not have one. Is there a way to do this over VOIP or something else without a POTS?