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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?"
"will Comcast's VoIP quality be better than their competitors such as Vonage, which relies on third party Internet connections to carry their VoIP?" how about "will a human be able to notice???"
All the torrents you could want.
fristage postage xd
Hey, this is the first post. Pretty cool, I'd say.
Oooh we dont have comcast.. just time warner :(
~Tad
Comcast pushes VoIP to prime time
By Ben Charny CNET News.com January 10, 2005, 9:54 AM PT
Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, on Monday began selling its version of Internet phone service in three markets, kicking off one of the most significant challenges traditional local phone companies have ever faced.
Initially launching its Digital Voice service in three cities--Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Springfield, Mass.--Comcast plans to reach 20 markets by year's end. The Philadelphia-based company says it intends to make the service available to all its 21 million customers six months after that.
Aside from an aggressive rollout schedule, Comcast has a lofty goal for the number of subscribers the service will attract: 8 million customers in five years, or eight times the number of Internet phone subscribers currently in the United States, according to Rian Wren, Comcast's senior vice president of voice services.
Comcast is the latest, and perhaps most important, addition to the roster of companies selling unlimited domestic dialing to any phone number using voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which sends calls over the Internet or private network. The technology is cheaper for consumers because it avoids the heavily taxed and regulated traditional local phone networks built and controlled by the Baby Bells--the four regional operating companies formed after the breakup of AT&T. While other cable companies and a host of upstarts such as Vonage Holdings have been selling VoIP since 2002, Comcast is considered the most daunting for the Bells because of its size, financial backing and political muscle.
Wren acknowledged that Comcast is introducing its product months, if not years, behind the rest of its cable competitors, as well as VoIP start-ups such as Vonage and copycats such as AT&T, with its CallVantage service. But the wait was worth it, he says.
"What we've been trying to do is come out with equivalent or better service than traditional phone competition," he said Monday. "You only get one shot at this, when it comes to quality of service." Michael Sims is a worthless piece of shit.
Comcast's long-anticipated push into VoIP illustrates the cutthroat competitiveness between cable and the local phone providers. Both sides are trying to become the primary pipelines for delivering an array of entertainment and communications services into households, including broadband Internet access, multichannel television, high-definition programming and voice calling.
After investing an estimated $75 billion upgrading their networks during the 1990s, cable companies are reaping the rewards for selling their "triple play" of voice, data and video into homes. The local phone companies, realizing their disadvantage, have realigned their attention to target cable's success and plan to invest billions of dollars to upgrade their decaying copper network with speedier fiber-optic lines.
Later this year, regional phone providers such as SBC Communications and Verizon Communications plan to introduce their own video service in hopes of stealing customers from cable. But with Monday's announcement, Comcast hopes its VoIP service, cheaper than unlimited calling plans offered by the local providers, will keep customers from defecting.
At $40 a month when purchased with Comcast's cable and broadband service, $54 a month on its own, Digital Voice is more expensive than what competitors such as Vonage or AT&T offer. Unlimited domestic dialing plans from other VoIP providers often costs as little as $25 a month.
While it remains to be seen whether the price will be lowered, Wren said "we're not trying to focus on niche or cheap priced phone service."
It's that lower cost--as little as 50 percent of traditional landline rates--that has made VoIP a threat to the traditional phone companies. Already the Bells have seen
'Cause their first implementation is pure shyte.
Comcast has a major disadvantage that the other VOIP providers don't have, that you can't move your box and phone to any IP connection, you have to be on the Comcast network. And since VOIP only requires about 90kbps any broadband connection should be able to handle it.
now that we've got that one out of the way...
So why's Comcast doing it this way and adding the complexity of converting too and from IP?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Hi, I'm the phone company, I've decided that you have no choice but to use me for phone service, so I'm going to screw you. Oh wait, you suddenly have a choice... I TAKE THAT BACK, I'm your best friend, look here's some free stuff, here's a discount, just don't leave, PLEASE!!!
I love competition
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
While I realize that bundling will get them somewhere, how can they compete?
More
Simply another reason to charge more.
FROM THE ARTICLE:
"At $40 a month when purchased with Comcast's cable and broadband service, $54 a month on its own, Digital Voice is more expensive than what competitors such as Vonage or AT&T offer. Unlimited domestic dialing plans from other VoIP providers often costs as little as $25 a month."
$40 Bucks a month? I could have a 2nd line (with a virtual London area code), and a separate fax line from Vonage for the same price.
Doesn't seem like much of a CallVantage
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
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
From what I've heard Comcast is going to charge a whopping $39.95 per month for its service. That doesn't sound like too much of a deal to me compared to Vonage's $24.99 a month deal.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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
And it offers schematics for free & firmware for free! This is truly open-source device! Read more about it HERE!
e matics .zip
Why Neuros is releasing the schematics for its device
The manufacturing world has changed dramatically in the nearly ten years since I started Digital Innovations. The tools for creating advanced designs have fallen in price to be accessible to virtually any engineer in his garage. Further, the globalization of the economy has put manufacturing tooling within the affordable range even for individual inventors. We all owe it to ourselves to understand the great entrepreneurial opportunity that this creates for all of us. Back in '95, new tools meant that we could bring the SkipDoctor to market for an amount small enough that it didn't require the involvement of professional investors. Today that would be a fraction even of that amount, and within the reach of personal savings for many individuals. Even if you don't consider yourself an entrepreneur, the new companies and products that these changes enable will create exciting opportunities for everyone that embraces them.
As exciting as these changes are, the real reason we at Neuros are releasing the schematics for our device are the more immediate implications these trends have for our business. In the nearly two years since the release of the Neuros, it's clear to see that what divides the winners from the losers in the audio device market is the details. From the UI to the synchronization to the feel of the buttons, it's the details even more than the features that set apart each device. While many companies eagerly protect their intellectual property, it's only a select few details that really distinguish one device from another. For innovators like Neuros, the standardization of the components that comprise a device allows us to focus on those few details that really distinguish the product.
Of course there are many good commercial software and middleware companies who chose to keep their software proprietary and indeed Neuros has benefited from the use of many of those products. But our experience over the last two years has convinced us that one of the best sources for 3rd party applications and tools is the open source community. As an example, the various forms of embedded Linux available today are mature and robust. Not only are they free from licensing fees, but more importantly they are usable without commercial contracts and the often elaborate negotiations and/or restrictions that go along with them. In fact, the defining open source principles guarantee that we are free to innovate with components, not at all a guarantee with some proprietary software.
By releasing the schematics for our device we hope to attract new developers and engineers and enhance our support for those who are already contributing to our device. In fact, in the two years since the release of the Neuros, we have already received and honored many requests for the schematics and benefited from the resulting modifications from hobbyists and professionals alike. Today's official public release is recognition and expansion of what has already been our practice for some time.
The release of such documentation is a relatively new practice and one that remains quite controversial, much of the concerns similar in nature to the ones raised years ago when open source licenses were new. In the future we believe such practices will become more and more common, particularly for products facing end of life. The restrictions on the use of such documentation will vary greatly as more and more companies experiment under different circumstances. But the overall effect, we believe, will be greater comfort levels over time and the significant advance of products and technology resulting from the more open flow of information.
The schematics can be downloaded from
http://open.neurosaudio.com/extra/NeurosSch
The Linux Revolution Is Dying
In light of the disastrous 2.6 development model that has given sysadmins everywhere a headache by introducing development code into a production line, Linux has signed its own death knell. With more and more people looking to alternatives like FreeBSD 5.x, OS X, and DragonflyBSD, Linux is slowly shovelling the dirt beneath its feet to dig its own grave.
Linux And Windows
Quite simply, the revolution against Windows has run out of steam. While Linux was a viable alternative in the days of Windows 98, when the rallying cry of geeks everywhere was "Down with M$, Linux never crashes," we now have the majority of the Windows userbase running NT-based operating systems. Except in cases of hardware or driver issues, reliability is no longer an issue in the comparison between Linux and Windows.
Eventually, the movement because one of security. In the years after its release, Windows XP was discovered to have several high-profile security flaws. Microsoft underwent a major code audit and released SP2. The rallying cry for OSS was now about security.
However, the community has discovered major flaws in the Mozilla software suite, including bugs marked "confidential" for years at a time. Additionally, major security holes have been appearing in the 2.6 line of Linux kernels, some having existed for years and affecting the 2.4 line. Declaring Linux to be the secure alternative is no longer as true.
Worst of all, the Linux kernel developers have no clear process, nor any clear contact person, when it comes to security issues.
Evidence: http://lwn.net/Articles/118251/
Evidence: Long-time shell-provider SDF used Linux until they got hacked into. Now, it's a 64-bit version of NetBSD.
The New Linux Development Model
With the 2.6 line of kernels, a new model has been adopted that is considered easier for the kernel developers. Instead of branching a 2.7 line, following the model of odd-numbered version numbers denoting development code, everything is now being thrown into 2.6.
"Not all 2.6.x kernels will be good; but if we do releases every 1 or 2 weeks, some of them *will* be good. The problem with the -rc releases is that we try to predict in advance which releases in advance will be stable, and we don't seem to be able to do a good job of that. If we do a release every week, my guess is that at least 1 in 3 releases will turn out to be stable enough for most purposes. But we won't know until after 2 or 3 days which releases will be the good ones." -- Ted T'So
In other words, this Linux kernel developer believes it is perfectly fine for one in three kernels of the stable line to actually be stable. The new development process is anti-user. "Release early, release often" has outlived its reliability and applicability to the real world.
The excuse given is that Linus is only one man, and there are only 24 hours in a day. If that is true, than Linus needs to address this shortcoming of the process; otherwise, the process is poorly managed.
The Community Has Regurgitated Itself
In a frenzy of newbies, the Linux community has grown, with Slashdot as its rallying center. The cycle of self-feeding groupthink has created a userbase unable to see outside its own perceptions. This leads to unrealistic attitudes about the safety and stability of Linux and its applicability to various solutions.
Contrast to the BSD community which employs a more academic approach. Instead of a cabal of kernel elite who pick and choose patches while the rest of the community watches on, BSD accepts volunteers from all over the world and maintains a calm, rational approach to development and advocacy. BSD users remain quite and non-vocal for the most part, content to simply make their OS the best it can be. The Linux world, on the other hand, is entirely focused on Windows and Bill Gates and leveraging itself with ten different filesystems.
A Decade Later And Nothing's Changed
That fiber rollout won't coincide with Comcast's map of 3rd party DSL connections... not at all!
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...
*BSD is DEAD! Fuck you, you fucking BSD LOSER!
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.
I cannot recall in my LIFE picking up my home phone and not hearing a dial tone. Even with a power failure the phone keeps working.
By contrast, every month or so I will sit down to use the internet and find my Comcast service completely down or the service degraded significantly. When the service is down it can be for minutes, hours, or in a few cases, days.
How sucky would it be to have unreliable phone service? I just can't risk it right now.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
I have been a VoIP user for about a year now and must say that I don't think it is really ready for prime time by the masses.
For my purposes it's great since I'm a Swede located in California for now and I still have a Stockholm phone number that I can call (And get called) by all my friends from back home. The problem is however that the VoIP traffic is very sensetive to high loads on my cable service. I have no doubt I'm an above average user of my network, but it can't be unheard of that people actually saturate their cable modem.
As long as you don't run a quality of service setup (Which can never saturate the cable modem since they are usually set up with really weird buffers giving you around 3 second ping times if you start filling with both up and downloads at the same time) you can't use your VoIP solution. Pretty much any P2P application will cause your VoIP to go down as soon as you start it for instance.
Setting up QoS is not something that everyone will be able to handle and in that case I think they will be disappointed with their VoIP experience.
What are they smoking? They already own an existing network, fed by a monopoly no less.
Then again, perhaps we should be happy they're not offerring it @ $20. They'd run out all the other competitors and then we'd be right back to a full monopoly.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
VoIP is great technology, however, it has to come up with a viable 911 service that can reliably identify your physical location or it can't be a true replacement for other forms of telephone service...
I just subscribed to this service and got my first ever clean, real 56K v.34 connection to my AOL! Thanks VOIP, and so long, 33.6!
Letter
I have a Comcast flyer, advertising a price of $23.99 - of course that's before any kind of taxes, after that it ends up being just around $31.
I'm going to try them out for a little while and see if they are any good, possibly switching to Vonage in the future when they get 911 all squared away (don't know how Comcast is in that regard). I can't understand why a light use local telephone service should really cost more than $10.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In 1998 we finally got our broadband via AT&T. In 2000 AT&T promised us VOIP by 2001. Then in 2001 Comcast bought AT&Ts cable service in our area. NOW they're finally going to give it to us before 2006? About time.
Until Comcast upgrades their infrastructure, and has oodles of bandwidth to shovel out to its customers, I'd be hesitant to switch. I have VoIP myself with Time Warner - Roadrunner in central New York, and it's nothing to write home about. With VoIP sucking on my modem's limited upstream bandwidth, (thank you again Time Warner for the mammoth 384kbps upstream) you start to notice the packet loss in your conversations, along with the frequent disconnects, and the nice lag you notice on your cell phone but shouldn't have to worry about on your land line. Before you jump ships and think VoIP is some sort of messiah, just take a closer look at what you're getting yourself into.
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
assumes that Comcast can give better service than what we had in my area. With horrible TV channels and the Internet service going down three or four times a day and calling comcast to get the "its not on our end, you and your whole block must have all done something wrong at the same time" speech it's no wonder why everyone in a three block radius of my house is now on DSL.
They've been offering phone service in Alexandria, VA for some time already. They probably think that by making it look like it's a limited offering more people will sign up so they can say they are on the "bleeding edge" when in reality they are somewhere around the elbow of the hand holding the knife.
I don't think Comcast would be delivering this service unless they could address teh QOS issue. Indeed that's possibly a good reason to sign up with Comcast rather than other providers if you have Comcast as a bandwidth provider. The downside of course is Comcasts known qualities regarding network stability (I have problems also somewhat frequently). But they cannot suffer the massive overload of service calls they will get if the phone stuff hiccups (phone service problems are a lot more likley to generate calls than internet service dropping).
You might expect your cable internet quality to suffer someone as more people sign up with Comcast for VOIP and bandwith starts being prioritized to calls!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Its the services that make the money, not being a commodity provider of bandwidth. What of IPv6 and stable VoIP for any service provider? Seems like they would be against it; all the better to lock in their customers. We should be looking to a market where we can get cable tv, phone, etc.. from any 'net provider rather then from the seller of our connection. Thats why we have an ISP market in conjunction with broadband providers.
Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
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
As a Comcast user for about a year now, I've had my fair share of problems with the service. Most notably :
1) DMCA letters
2) Outages at exactly the same time every night
3) Prompt, yet horrible, customer service
I expect VoIP from the same company to be on par, if not worse, than their cable service. If I could afford a decent DSL package that offered me 3mb/sec I'd do it. I have a feeling a lot of people use Comcast because they have no other HSI choice in their area, which is really sad.
The market is just begging for competition right now, and companies just can't dole out the cash to provide & maintain a competent, COMPETITIVE residental high speed network.
The only other option I have (greater chicagoland area) is SBC - which is about 1/3rd of the bandwidth Comcast offers for the same price. Looks like I either have to move, or stick with Comcrap for the rest of my suburban life.
(Click Here Were taken ov3r Are you GAY
Denver? Now that amazes me. Here in Broomfield, the lines are all underground and rotting. When I had Comcast digital cable it went down on a regular basis and had lousy reception. I switched to Dish and it was like getting a new television.
On DSL I block comcast.com since it only spews spam and viruses. My Qwest DSL connection and phone connections are extremely reliable. I have three phone lines, all of which qualified for DSL.
A lot of people around my area are switching to DISH.
I cannot recall in my LIFE picking up my home phone and not hearing a dial tone. Even with a power failure the phone keeps working.
I have - it's called rural telephone service. Sometimes you wait a day or two.
Even in the city I've had the phone out once or twice...
I have had cable internet fail more often, granted, it will be injteresting to see if peole are willing to accept a slightly lower quality standard for service uptime or if Comcast will have to shore up the network a bit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Optimum Online
I get 8.5mb down and 1mb up... for $29.95 a month. Can you beat that with DSL?
I can see some obvious advantages for Comcast over the other VOIP companies. They have an established billing and tech support system, an established customer base, and name recognition. I would think they probably don't have any technical advantages, but I'm not sure. If anything I'd say they were at a disadvantage; if the customer complains about the quality of service, they can't tell him to blame his ISP.
from Betting a Billion: Bob's Predictions for 2005
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Later this year, regional phone providers such as SBC Communications and Verizon Communications plan to introduce their own video service in hopes of stealing customers from cable...
I was expecting to see this sentence go a bit longer:
"...while Qwest sits on it's big shiny blue ass and watch the market free fall away from it."
Disgruntled user trapped behind Qwest residential splitter, AKA "DSL-proof firewall".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cute, but I do have a cell phone... and neighbors also with phones (hopefully not all with Comcast!)
Why have a physical phone? Good question!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I live in Broomfield...
I am in a six-year old subdivision, so possibly teh Comcast lines are not rotting yet.
What I do have is a residential splitter so any kind of DSL is out of the question. So, my only option for high-speed internet is Comcast. They have some problems but I would not say more than once every few months thinking back on it... though my stupid router seems to dislike the service and requires a power-off about once a day to reaquire the network.
I also have Dish, long ago having seen the advantage of not using Comcast for cable. Soon to be VOOM I think though...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why are all these VoIP packages aimed at replacing the "old" way people use phones? What I want is a low cost VoIP solution that has no long distance and provides a bridge for local POTS calls. It should also provide an easy way to make IP-IP calls. I have a cell phone that gives me free long distance.
If a service only costs 5 bucks a month, but offered no long distance, I could talk my parents and distant friends into signing up and we wouldn't have to use POTS at all.
I just received my Vonage router and hooked everything up today, and it works great. I'm currently using Comcast's cable internet service.
The last phone call I received before setting everything up was from Verizon. A rep called me to go over plans in hopes of retaining my business. Before he could start reveiwing anything I told him "If you can give me unlimited calling in the US and Canada for $24.99, I'll stay with Verizon." He wanted to go over all the plans, but I just kept repeating what the same thing. He finally said they could give me unlimited calling in the US (No Canada) for $44.99. He seemed diappointed I was going to keep my $20 a month and switch.
Ummm... what about the (growing ever ubiquitous) cell phone?
You might make the argument that they suck in areas where there's poor reception... but then, you expect these same areas to have kick-ass broadband that you can readily access for cheap?
And with a cell phone, you're getting data services that are getting faster and faster all the time.
UMTS is around the corner with Docomo offerings soon after.
Soon the question might be "why have a wired connection at all?" instead of "which broadband/VoIP combination gives me the best price?"
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
I just bought the Siemens SX 66 (Cingular) a rebranding of the HTC Blue Angel phone. I've used VoIP for a while via Skype/etc. but somehow doing it through the computer always made it much less convenient, or at least feel that way.
Now with a phone that can run Skype, I've been blown away by the convenience, simplicity, and quality. It's just awesome. I only wish I knew more people in more distant lands who had VoIP software or phones, seems such a waste not to talk to more people!
(I know there are also VoIP phones which you can plug into a network or your computer, I'm looking into getting some for relatives/etc.)
Anyway, sorry, I know I'm not contributing much to the conversation, but, being geeky, I wanted to share my excitement about my new phone/PDA (sorry, it's not Linux-based, but in defense I probably would have bought another (already owned one) Zaurus had they not pulled out of the US market).
Don't vote for Eugene Papansanovich for Congress!
Shoot! It doesn't take an MBA to see that once Comcast is managing VoIP packets, they'd be quite happy to prioritize said packets based on their destination soft-switch/router.
SCENARIO: We both have Comcast broadband. You have Vonage. I have Comcast VoIP. Your VoIP calls are choppy , echo-laden, and drop frequently. Mine don't.
Guess what - if you want better VoIP quality, you'd better drop Vonage for Comcast.
Vonage, AT&T and Packet8 will get complaints. They'll take their complaints to Comcast. Comcast, basking in the glory of an unregulated sub-market, will claim those complaints are unsubstantiated and unprovable. And in the meanwhile you'll drop your Vonage account due to unresolved poor quality. You might even sign up with Comcast VoIP, because, hey, even at $40/mo, unlimited calling via VoIP beats the Bells.
ENDGAME: Broadband monopoly maintained. Score one, Comcast.
Why the ***k can't the FCC, FTC or anyone else see that it's just plain fscking DANGEROUS when the OWNER OF THE PIPE is the same party as the PROPREITOR OF THE SERVICE OR CONTENT???!?!?!?!?!?
Makin' money, makin' friends, makin' whoopee and wearin' Depends
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?
I see this 1st-party vs 3rd-party VoIP playing out like Tivo vs In-house PVRs. You can either get the generic crap from the cable co. or you can opt for the nicer 3rd party stuff.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
*chuckle* How can Vonage complain? They are riding a rather expensive last mile broadband network for free. Not even a fare the well from those theives! Of course, if they paid some percentage of their service revenues in the same way Terminating and Originating Access Tolls work ...
I had a Comcast technician out to my house yesterday because their new dual tuner HD DVR box (Motorola 6412) broke again (this is literally the 5th time!). He was telling me the perks of working for Comcast like free cable, pay channels, internet, etc. and he mentioned that Comcast employees are piloting their new phone service. He was quick to say how awful it was and how many problems he had with it like not always getting a dial tone. He also told me a story about some emergency that happened at his coworker's house and when his daughter went to pick up the phone to dial 911, there wasn't a dial tone and she had to run next door to her neighbor's house to call 911 from there. If their phone service is even half as bad as their new dual tuner DVR box which I get replaced an average of once every three weeks, I would steer clear of any new Comcast services for at least a year before they iron out all the bugs.
The Comcast contracts I have seen said they can limit any traffic they want to since they are not legally Common Carriers.
You sure you didn't sign up for their regular cable phone service? I've had it for 2+ years here in MN...it works just like regular phone service, except you connect to the PSTN via Comcast's cable connection instead of the LEC's copper. It's pretty much regular phone service.
teeker
I was never a fan of digital cable, and some info that was recently brought to my attention makes me dislike it even more. Even if you have digital cable, the first 125 channels are still analog!
- Internet: Mediacom 3Mbps down, 256K up cable modem. Quite reliable, down probably for 10 minutes a month, maybe less. About $45 for that.
- VoIP Provider: BinFone Service through Binhost Technologies, a company I'm a part of. We're small but we know our shit, we're cheap, and we have geeks running the entire show. We are more into reselling VoIP but also do individual IAX and SIP accounts. Rates are $0.03/min for USA, $0.05/min for Australia (wife is Australian, we call there a lot). More info here.
- Phone: Grandstream Handytone 486 SIP phone adapter. A very cheap ($65, I believe) phone adapter, but has a web interface, good features, and does what I need it to. It is plugged into the network via CAT5 and into the phone patch block via standard POTS wire.
- IAX Server: I run my own IAX server (Asterisk) in-house. It talks to Binhost's server through the IAX protocol (Asterisk proprietary) which is very efficient. I have an X100P FXO PCI card in it that allows connection to the PSTN (my landline) and a NIC to talk to the network.
- Firewall: All of this sits behind the firewall, a simple Pentium 233 running Slackware 9.1 and using iptables and QoS scripts to regulate traffic. The QoS designates packets by the MAC address of the Grandstream as highest priority so my VoIP packets always get through quickly.
All right -- big deal, you say. But wait, there's more!The phones in the entire house are connected to the phone patch block through the patch panel and a 66 block. The VoIP adapter is also connected to the phone patch block as well as the network. The Asterisk box is connected to the network and to the PSTN landline. So. When I pick up a phone (any of the three in the house), I simply dial a number. The signals from all the phones run through the Grandstream VoIP adapter to the Asterisk box. The Asterisk box figures out if it's a local call or long distance. If local, it uses the FXO card to send out the call on the PSTN. If long distance, it communicates via IAX to the Binhost server and places the call over the Internet. No intervention is required on my part as to where it goes, it just does it right.
If the Internet connection is down or otherwise inaccessible, it automatically falls back to the landline so calls can still be placed.
The end result is that I get much cheaper phone calls than I would if I used my long distance on the landline (7 cents US/12 cents Australia vs 3/5), yet I don't have to inconvenience myself with having to worry about which phone I have to use for a phone call.
Incoming calls are received by the Asterisk box. Assuming I haven't turned on call forwarding or do-not-disturb, it rings through the VoIP adapter to the phones in the house. If nobody answers, Asterisk picks up the line and gives a message and allows the user to pick either my or my wife's voice mail box and leave a message. Very handy.
Costs:
Monthly VoIP service: About $20 for the calls, $5 for the line.
Internet: $45/month
Asterisk: Free
Asterisk server: Free donation
FXO Card: $15 on eBay
VoIP Adapter: $65
Wiring: out of some old box
Firewall: Free donation as well
Landline costs: $17.95/month
So total? $80 in startup, $87.95 monthly for all my phone calls and Internet service. I call that a *deal*.
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Comcast has offered VOIP in Tacoma for the last 6 months.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I would suggest perhaps you made it up yourself.
Whomever made it up did so just to try to cover how PSTN was made up because they didn't like POTS.
Let me give an example:
POTS includes "service". If it were just wiring, it wouldn't include service in its name.
I also believe CAT3 is higher spec than POTS wiring.
It's only $29.95 for the first 6 months.
After that, depending on what other Cablevision services you have, it's either $44.95 or $49.95 per month
It's still "wicked fast", but I wanted to make sure people had the straight dope.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I have the basic Vonage 500 minutes/month plan for $14.99. Cox internet service (4 Mb down,
So for $64.99 month I get my internet access and Voip.
Start up fees for internet were free, for the Vonage VoIP Service it was 29.99 + 9.95 shipping/handling. So lets say $40 for startup.
The linksys RT31P2 VoIP router was included in that price (I understand there is now a wireless version available!). I simply unplugged SBCs line outside, and plugged in a cable from the router to the phone jack in the wall and wallah, phone service using my normal phones throughout the house. For me its nice that the RT31P2 just works, no maintenance, no problems, no ext2 file system to crash, whatever.
So total set up fee $40. Monthly fees for Vonage, $15 (+ some tax so like $16.50 a month). Monthly fee for cable $49.95. So for $67.00 month full internet and phone.
Cable outages happen about once every 2 months. So reliability hasn't been an issue. Voice quality is great, actually there is a setting in the router to adjust the Quality of Service settings for the voip. When a voip call comes in, it automatically adjusts my bandwidth allocation to provide for the phone service, when I hang up, my download speeds/torrents/whatever go full rate again.
Now I just wish Tivo or someone would allow me to have a TV Subscription service, watch what I want, when I want, and only pay for what I view. That'd be nirvana.
All in all I'm pleased with VoIP and would recommend it to anyone.
If Comcast will be more vehement about tracking and prosecuting individuals who harass their customers...
Look. I owe money on a car. I'll be more than happy to pay $50/mo. That's all I can afford. How is saying,"I want to pressure you until you crack" going to raise my salary?
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
The flyer does say "Digital Phone Service" though, and has not been offered here as far as I know until recently. I'll have to wait and see what I get from it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As often as comcast's network goes down; if I had this I wouldn't be able to call about the problem. I'll stick with the local telco for phone service and cognistate for long distance, thanks.
"will Comcast's VoIP quality be better than their competitors such as Vonage, which relies on third party Internet connections to carry their VoIP?"
"Setting up QoS is not something that everyone will be able to handle and in that case I think they will be disappointed with their VoIP experience."
Any VoIP provider worth thier monthly fee will provide QoS for you (ie Speakeasy, I don't think Comcast does) if you have to use THEIR internet connection. Otherwise, mom will be on the phone to grandma, and little homer will start downloading all the asian teen porn he can, and all of a sudden grandma will start to gag on a rice cake and mom will never know, because her voice service went all choppy.
There may be a *threat* of competition, but that doesn't amount to a hill of beans to people in my neighborhood - we're still forced to use Comcast or dial-up. It might as well be a monopoly.
We're clearly not in a rural area. Many people in the US are in the same situation, or worse.
the company I work for recently had a discussion around moving to alarm monitoring over the Internet this with the alarm co. I suspect that alarm companies will start with business customers where the margins are better. It won't be too long until home users get this option too. It's cheaper for everyone, plus, they can monitor for "cut" lines easily (i.e. you can ping a router every 5 minutes for free, but you can't have your alarm system take over the phone line to check-in every 5 minutes!).
voice over ip and the telephone service comcast has been offering are two different products.
none of the ads or anything said voice over ip, you just assumed, it's not comcasts fault you didn't actually read what the product was.
I've got phone service by them, and it's not a VoIP connection, but they do come and setup a seperate box, away from my modem, but through the coax. I've had no problems with that, and the Long Distance charges are less than the local Baby Bell, and about half the price. I have no desire to go to a true VoIP service, mostly because of the cost, but also, I don't need another device on my network sharing my limited upload speeds.
The Southern California Linux Expo has announced plans to host a panel discussion on the future of open source and voice over IP technologies at SCALE 3x. SCALE 3x, the Third Annual Southern California Linux Expo is the premier grass roots Linux and Open Source conference.
Panel members will include Louie Mamakos, (Chief Technology Officer - Vonage), Jeff Bonforte (SIPphone), and Darryl Strauss (President - Digital Ordnance). These leaders from the VoIP and open source communities will cover topics relevant to the future of open source Voice Over IP (VoIP) efforts. Subtopics will include the effects of government regulation on peer to peer (P2P) / open-source VoIP projects, current future VoIP standards, as well as technical and legal hurdles.
SCALE 3x will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on February 12th and 13th, 2005. Registration for sponsorship and attendance is still open. Full conference passes are available at a discount with the promo code "newsp", additional discounts are available for students. Exhibit hall passes can be obtained at no cost with the promotional code "free". More information on speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, and the conference schedule is available online at www.socallinuxexpo.org.
Well I talk to our other people at our remote offices over ip all the time. And frankly its quite spooky how clear it is, much clearer than the old pots method. Of course this is over private lines (p-t-p and frame) and uses QoS, requires about 24Kb per call on our S8300 system (a linux based avaya phone system). I also run databases over the same lines that lets the voice through first and I don't have any problems there. Now you take this a bit further and go over the internet and this is where things get interesting, ip problems come from where QoS is not implemented . . . of couse within their own networks running QoS I would say they get about what I do, which is crystal clear voice reproduction.
That's why you have a backup phone - a cell phone. Get a pay as you go plan (T-mobile isn't bad), and you have a phone that'll work during a power outage and emergencies when you're away from home.
I have a verizon land line and I have a terrible time getting a dial tone. my line goes down several times a week. We get crossed lines and regular calls with no one there (followed by loss of dial tone). I have reported the problem (which was a pain in the @ss) and they supposedly came out and fixed it, but it's still happening. We've had conversations with the person who's line is crossed with ours and he's pretty pissed too.
We are about to switch to Vonage, but I'm checking these comments before making a final decision. I have comcast internet and cable service, but I think I'm going to bank on them not f'ing to much with the Vonage packets. anyway, It can only be better than my verizon service.