PC Magazine's In-Depth VoIP Review

Voipster writes "PC Magazine has completed their in-depth review of six VoIP providers. The Editor's Choice award goes to AT&T's CallVantage service. Unlike other reviews that consist of making a few phone calls, PC Magazine uses Minacom's PowerProbe 6000 VoIP testing equipment which provides hard numerical scores for a DTMF detection test, a fax transmission test, and two voice quality tests, PESQ (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality) and VQES (Voice Quality Evaluation System). However, after a very detailed analysis of each provider, the calculated scores don't carry much weight as they award AT&T's CallVantage the Editor's Choice and four other services strangely tie for second place."

Comments

Re:Interesting Idea

[LiquidCoooled]

The only worrying part about moving to VOIP is losing the emergency services.
Our broadband is quite stable, but quite often I have to reboot the STB, taking time away from my connection, I have had the box replaced numerous times, and am working from cleaned up installations (both win and linux).
Also, what happens in a power outage/problem, usually the last remaining "life-line" is the phone, and was invaluable when the main fuse box lit up in my old house.
So, all in all, no I won't be changing.

Early in the game

[rueger]

After reading through far too many one paragraph webpages, clicking every five seconds, I have to say that my overwhelming impression is that this is still pretty rough and ready technology.

The lack of a consistent way to connect with real world telephone systems, the sketchy support of 911 services, and the inability of the competing VoIP services to interact make it look as if it will be at least another year before it's viable for most people.

In particular I can't see abandoning a hardwired phone line yet. Internet is still too prone to outages and other problems. What happens when you lose your telephone service because some idiot has launched a DOS attack on Vonage or the Verizon VoIP center?

Or when you lose your main business phone service because a mistaken RIAA takedown notice causes your ISP to shut down your Internet connection?

Until the VoIP services can match the traditional phone companies for reliability and services they won't get my money.

(I admit that Verizon pretty much sets the standard below which no phone service could ever drop, but you get my point...)