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Getting Started with VoIP Devices
Kerbo writes "If you have been wondering what kind of devices you need to use a voice-over-ip (VoIP) provider or Asterisk PBX, the guys at Geek Gazette have been doing up some reviews of different devices. These allow you to use a standard phone with VOIP providers. The newest review is of the Sipura ATA-1001 ATA." Before you get too happy with the possibilities, though, note what an anonymous reader submitted: "Several VoIP providers have started adding 'regulatory recovery fees' to their users' bills, even though the entire industry is unregulated. The latest one to do this is Packet 8. The whole reason so many are moving to VoIP is to avoid these kinds of bogus fees; it's unfortunate these providers haven't figured this out yet."
We are all going to die anyway (see previous article)
but I can't keep my old phone number... I would love to lose the $50 plus a month fee.
I have a Cox phone number now.
... at least for us (a small business). Once you add in all of the per-line charges, the hardware, the setup fees, the broadband, and the fact that if you want to use DSL, you still have to buy at least one phone line from the phone company. Plus, of course, the reliability of broadband still isn't nearly at the level of hard telephone lines. After taking this into consideration, unfortunately, going through the local Ma Bell monopoly was still the cheapest and most reliable option for us (a business needing 3-5 phone lines).
I don't respond to AC's.
The reason packet8 and some are charging the USF fees is because they may be regulated in the future, in which case they want to be covered.. I can't blame them.. good grief it's what 50 cents or $1.00... it's still a TON cheaper then POTS...
Sound almost like the Spanish American War Tax that we've been paying for the last 100 years on our telephone bills.
How the hell do thes companies get away with these idiotic taxes?
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
Is there a way to tell how many phones one of these ATA's can power? If I have a house with a couple phones, can we chain them all into one ATA, assuming we only want a single line, no asterisk, and generally one phone being used at a time.
...the 'regulatory recovery fee' are really nothing more than a $5 phrase for 'screw the customer over fee'?
Hope be with ye,
Cyan
The Polycoms IP500 are decent phones, I love them.
re: Voip
VoIP's main draw isn't that it's cheaper, or at least, it shouldn't be. It may be, but that can change on a dime ( heh, hat trick pun! ). It's a matter of usability. My asterisk server is far more useful to me than the old partner ACS system we used to have.
I have my voicemail emailed to me. I can record conversations on the fly. I can move my phones and have my number follow me. I can make any changes I need on the fly ( within minutes, typically ). I can train others to do the same with little trouble.
And when people say VoIP ( and asterisk in particular ) is difficult to learn, they are really referring to the POTS aspects of it. Old phone lines are complex, no doubts, and the parts of asterisk that are carry overs from a traditional pbx are similarly complex. However, asterisk itself is incredibily easy to work with. Have you ever setup samba? Apache? Asterisk is easier.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I recently switched to Vonage from a standard phone, and I'm very happy. With regard to hardware, they ship you a Linksys router that is pre-configured with your details, so all you have to do is plug it in and it works. The router replaced my previous router for my home network, and seems to work great. The hardware hasn't caused me any problems.
The harder part was re-wiring my house so that all the phones would work using voip (instead of just having one phone plugged into the Linksys router). Even this is not too bad: just disconnect your internal wiring from the Telco, and then plug the voip router into a wall-jack, so that all wall-jacks are now connected to it. (Be sure to disconnect from Telco wiring properly, or you'll fry your voip hardware!!) Even getting my alarm system to work with voip was pretty easy (just had to invert its wiring...).
Serious geeks may want to shop around for the coolest hardware, but honestly the box that Vonage ships is good enough for most people. I think voip is fast becoming accessible to the "average consumer" and I'm now recommending it to everyone I know. For a low price you get every telephone service imaginable, free long-distance calling... The Vonage ads (phone bill going from 60$ to 20$) are not exagerations. So my hardware review is: you can use whatever the voip provider ships and you won't have any hassles!
If VoIP is really Voice over IP, why are there any fee's, why are there any regulations? Why can't someone make a device that records my voice in real time, sends it to a different computer, where it is played?
I am suprised there is not some DNS type scheme where people use their computers like a phone. Instead of calling a land line or cell phone, you use your computer to call some IP. What else would we need? Voice mail? Someone could make a program to watch a port for calls, and if not anwsered, then the stream is recorded into a mp3.
The only thing which worries me is abuse. People sniff networks. People try and gain access of computers using open ports. VoIP would require some trust.
If people wait for the telcom companies to take command of VoIP, we can expect another phone bill. Maybe comcast will offer a combined package that is difficult to opt out of, like the $10 off broadband if cable is purchased. Maybe they will add $10 more to your bill if you don't buy their VoIP.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
the linksys stuff is all doorstops if you chance from the provider that has branded it. There are thousands of linksys voip boxes on ebay that are worthless because they are vonnage or packet8 locked.
the spa-2000 is the best module I have ever used, and after you are done with the voip provider it can be resold or used with asterisk or FWD.
I also will not use a provider that will not let me control the hardware or use asterisk, but then I'm not a typical customer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Then and if regulation or taxation occurs, these lines get filled in with an actual amount that is the correct amount. Not only that, but users would know right away that the government has added fees as they shows up in the bill.
I'm betting all hell would bust loose when a $0.00 line suddenly clicks upward.
Yeah it's cheaper, but that doesn't mean they can't write an honest bill.
Letter To Iran
You're saying they're justified charging a fee because someday the government might charge them a fee?
Seriously?
In that case, the fee is too low! God bless them for only keeping it to $1.50! They're so freakin' generous!
You just know they're going to add a $4.00 surcharge for that new-fangled touch-tone service.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I want a PBX replacement with voicemail, call accounting "for hotel guest phone charges". The last item is where I don't see an Asterisk based solution is workable. I would like to be wrong, any suggestions?
Just looking for a reliable ATA adapter at a low cost.
Any recommendations?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
You seem to know asterix well. Is the on site documentation good enough or are there other resources you would recommend?
I tried out the asterix@home cd and it installed and set itself up flawlessly but I couldn't figure out a lot of tasks which I would consider simple and the asterix@home site didn't seem to have any useful docs.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
But you can't call 911 from some VOIP
hack a day
It might be what he describes, but I want a small box with a phone plugged into it on my desk running some sort of "skype" like software that is independent of my machine running.
Does such a box exist?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I'm sure other VoIP providers have as good or better number porting abilities.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
If VoIP is really Voice over IP, why are there any fee's, why are there any regulations? Why can't someone make a device that records my voice in real time, sends it to a different computer, where it is played?
Because we live in Soviet America.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In the intervening 30 years, I'd like to be able to call my mom, thanks.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
VoIP's main draw isn't that it's cheaper, or at least, it shouldn't be.
This statement is misleading. It depends on many factors, and usually it does break down to be cheaper, depending on how you look at it.
If you have dialup networking and you don't make a lot of phone calls, VoIP won't save you any money. That's assuming $35 for a basic phone line plus $20 for an ISP. $55 total. If it's good enough for you then good for you.
To use VoIP, you really need a high speed connection for the best quality and in order to use your internet connection while on the phone. If you already have that high speed connection, then you'd be saving loads of money by switching your phone service. The $35 for basic service is just that. Verizon has a phone service deal for $55 that you can get unlimited calling, voice mail, etc. Vonage gives you the same package for $25! That's $30 a month in savings. I'm going to have a cable internet connection anyway. Now, I had to buy the box from Radio Shack for $70, but I made my money back in 3 months.
What I've found is that after converting to cable internet (with cable, which I would have had to buy or my total internet connection would be more expensive without) and VoIP, I'm paying the same price as I would have had to pay With Verizon's full featured package, dialup internet, and NO cable TV. Had I stayed with verizon's phone service, I would have paid more money for all those calling features.
The only way it really isn't cheaper is if I stayed with basic dialup and had no cable TV. So it really is cheaper, you just have to shuffle the funds around.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The Sipura SPA-3000 ATA is more interesting because it also has one FXO POTS line.
Has anyone used it?
Sure, it's cheaper right now, and needs to happen, just as a lever to get the telecom companies to quit holding back society and actually charge a reasonable fee for small-bandwidth voice communications.
However, it's a trap, and a nasty trap for a lot of networking people. A lot of networking people are going to end up getting 'scapegoated' and losing their jobs before this is over.
Why? The whole QOS thing. All VOIP packets get top-level QOS scheduling on the network, meaning VOIP data packets all get priority over all the other 'normal' data packets. Not a problem when VOIP is less than 10% of your network traffic.
However, all the PHB types see is that VOIP is way cheaper than normal telco methods, and they are starting to want all the phone lines in the company switched over to VOIP to 'save money'.
Problem is, once you get over a threshhold where there's a lot of VOIP traffic, the normal data packets take a huge backseat to the VOIP data. Suddenly you've got packet timeouts happening constantly with 'normal' data (Which the data networks were originally put in place to handle), and data transfer slows to a crawl. Packets are getting dropped all over the place. File transfers start taking 10 times longer than normal, if they don't just fail due to timeouts.
Now the network guys are in all kinds of trouble because critical business functions, which rely on the 'normal' data packets, are not working, or are insanely slow.
So, the network people get bitched out, and turn around with huge cost increases due to needing to massively increase the pipes between locations, and that still doesn't solve the problem in all cases. So you throw in extremely expensive high-performance routers to handle all the packet shuffling and scheduling. Pretty soon, you're back to costs HIGHER than it was to start out with with normal data networks and normal voice/telco connections.
To avoid being burnt, either demand completely separate networks for VOIP and normal data. Or just stay away from VOIP. In the long run, you'll be better off. But in the short term, enjoy explaining this to PHB types who only see the short-term cost savings that they are being force-fed by the VOIP vendors.
It's a scam, nothing is free.
No offense, but it does.
Somebody just needs to sniff the network downstream from those things, and process the packets to clean them up and forward to a less proprietary system. Or maybe it is a chip that needs to be flashed in the set itself. Then voila, those locked Linksys units become useful devices again.
At least with Vonage, these fees are miniscule -- only a couple bucks a month, and I wouldn't consider them to be bogus. I would expect that the money taken in by these fees to ultimately pay for the necessary infrastructure for E911 service. But at any rate, these fees are definitely not why I switched to Vonage. Some of the other fees (like the per-minute federal taxes) had something to do with it, but the most prominent reason for me was the fact that Verizon is trying to get every last cent out of its customers. Forgetting the regulatory fees for a moment, consider that until Vonage (and other VoIP services) began to provide some serious competition, Verizon didn't even offer a flat-rate package that included unlimited long distance. Consider also that the unlimited long distance package for Verizon is something in the neighborhood of $55 (before the regulatory fees), and that Vonage charges only about $25 for essentially the same thing. This is all about a monopoly, and VoIP services are the first real competition that the well-entrenched Baby Bells have had.
The break-up of AT&T did a lot to reduce the costs of long distance, but it seems that absolutely _NO_ progress has been made on the cost of local access. That's primarily because there is no competition. Even though you see advertisements for other local phone carriers, they are still enslaved to the Bells because the Bells own the last mile connection to your house. Years of trying has not eliminated this problem, and it has taken VoIP to finally put on the cost pressure. As much as I don't want to see archaic regulatory fees imposed on VoIP providers, the related costs pale in comparison to the extra overhead that the local carriers are charging.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
BroadVoice Unlimited World Plus is better than Teleo, recommended in the article.
BroadVoice is not completely reliable, but fine for informal situations.
The DNS type scheme you are asking for is called ENUM aka E164, it exists today, it's an open standard and Asterisk supports it already. Roughly speaking, ENUM uses DNS to translate phone numbers into IP addresses.
;-)
http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/enum/
You could sign up for a free account on e164.org and enter your existing telephone number. The system will call you back and an automated message tell give you a verification code which you type into a form on the web site to verify that you are in fact at that phone number. Then you enter the DNS name or IP of your Asterisk server or IP phone and anybody dialing your phone number from a VoIP device which supports ENUM lookup, like for example Asterisk, will then be connected directly peer to peer to you, without any phone company or VoIP service provider involved.
http:www.e164.org/
So if everybody was to get a VOIP device with ENUM support, we get rid of phone companies and VoIP service providers altogether
Asterisk also supports another similar but decentralised scheme called DUNDi, short for Distributed Universal Number Discovery.
http://www.dundi.info/
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
Yee merry Hax0rs. Use the plethora of tools available on the web for hacking the cheap DVD players. Same CPU.
Begin Hacking.
According to Gartner Group, VoIP is so much of a momentary fad that the last circuit switched telephone call on the planet will be made in the year 2020, a mere 15 years from now.
Besides, how do you think the large carriers are shuffling telephone traffic around the planet today? Much of that is VoIP based already, just that you don't know about it. Sure there is managed (private IP networks) and unmanaged bandwidth (public Internet) but the technology is steadily heading towards VoIP everywhere.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
Also, if you're getting incoming phone calls from phone companies, there are costs attached to those phone lines. It's cheaper than traditional phone lines, because they're not only buying big pipes instead of many little pipes, but they're oversubscribing because typical phone use is about 15-20% on business lines, less on residential, and that can cost them money (exactly how much depends on their regulatory status - they can register as a CLEC, or they can do this as a standard business line, with different kinds of mandatory costs for telcos and taxes, and whether it pays off depends a lot on their calling patterns.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Hopefully once the VoIP business becomes more "standard" then they can remove the fee."
Why would they ever remove it? YOu don't have a problem paying now; I'd argue the fee is too low. The fee should be 1 penny below the level that you'd consider dropping.
Anything else is wasted money, right?
I perfer the Vonage service. I am using the LinkSys VoIP equipment; I have the wireless router with two phone ports and the stand-alone VoIP device from LinkSys. Both work very well and work with normal phones. You can even connect it to the main phone input box at your house and light up all the phone ports in the house.
Jamey Kirby
...video over IP is just around the corner.
For some, it's already here. NexTV (http://www.rtctv.com/index.php) is just one of a few telcos offering cable-like programming over DSL.
Both cable and telco companies are seeing one big IP connection to the customer to provide voice, video and data. And that's just for starters. They'll need to provide differentiating services and features. Hosted PVR? Video chats? No one knows what will lure the customer yet, but that big IP pipe is the basis.
As for your concern about congestion, that's a (big) detail that must be ironed out (what about all that dark fiber?), but it's no showstopper.
Regards,
-Dave
Sorry, I get local and long distance to 21 countries for under $25/mo including all taxes and fees. Point being, even with these supposedly bogus fees, these services are still a *lot* cheaper than the ILECs. That's why I switched, so please stop putting your opinionated words into the mouths of the consumers.
According to WHO?? Oh, Gartner Group. And I wonder which VOIP vendor paid them to 'research' those findings? *snork*
Also, the large carriers are using VOIP, no doubt about it. But the big difference is they are using dedicated networks for the VOIP traffic.
My point was that the mixing of VOIP and normal data traffic is horribly abusive towards the normal data packets. You get 50 'normal' data packets, and 50 VOIP packets, the 50 'normal' packets sit at the back of the bus until the 50 VOIP packets are done. Then only if there were no more VOIP packets received while transmitting the first 50 packets will the 'normal' data packets get sent. VOIP is too selfish. If a VOIP packet is received while the normal data packets are being sent, then (bang!) - back to the back of the bus again.
Maybe some kind of shuffling algorythm could save the day (Say 5 out of 100 normal packets get equal QOS as a VOIP packet), but currently it's all or nothing. The VOIP packets always go to the front of the line.
When I read this I got a little worried, though. I don't mind paying for stuff, but I like to know what it is first. This fee's name is ridiculous at best...
So I called them. The first agent said yes, there will be a fee, but she didn't know what it was for. She tried to find a "supervisor" to help me, but ended up transferring me to some other agent. He had never heard of it, so he went to look for it as well. Fifteen minutes later....
The fee is to "offset costs incurred by 8x8 in complying with regulatory inquiries..."
So after explaining to the second guy how I found the fee distasteful and said I'd rather pay $1.50 more in the basic service plan than pay this nebulously-named fee, he agreed with me -- even stating that he didn't understand it whatsoever -- and then gave me a month of service free. That effectively removes the $1.50 fee for a year! Woot!!!!
Anyways, I totally disagree with the approach of charging this fee. For now, it's still cheaper, but the future is cloudier.
They better update their website, too -- from Packet 8's website FAQ:
Smokers
Ok, let's put Gartner aside. I bet 10.000 USD that by 2020 there will be not a single POTS line left in any OECD country -- I am not so confident about third world countries although they might well be the first ones to switch off POTS because they haven't got much of a POTS infrastructure to begin with.
But of course we are talking real IP telephones here, not some softphone running on your PC. Yet, the transport will not be circuit switched. Even TV will be IP based by then. It's rather silly to assume that phone transport won't be IP based.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
Yes! That's what I'm looking for!
From what I can tell that box gets an Ip address and if I have a handset hooked up to it people could call me on it from their box.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Oh Jolly, by 2020 we will have so much bandwidth that VoIP packets will not even be the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Packets are only going to pile up if the amount of packets you feed into the pipe is higher than what the pipe can carry. If you have a pipe so outrageously oversized that you can't fill it up with all the packets you could possibly generate, then there will be no piling up and the scenario you describe is just a storm in a teacup.
We have got FTTH here, 100Mbit fibre full duplex. When I got this, I spent two months trying to do every imaginable and unimaginable thing in an attempt to saturate the link and trying to cause audio artifacts on my VoIP connections. Crazy stuff such as running multiple round-robin backups on cross mounted NFS disks (A backs up to B, B to C, D to E and E to A), inviting friends with notebooks to visit and use the ISP's video on demand service with as many multiple streams as possible, running oodles of VNC sessions with bandwidth wasting highest quality settings, hosting VoIP phone conferences with over 100 participants, downloading oodles of ISO CD images etc etc etc.
Believe me, no matter what I tried, I couldn't saturate the FTTH link and while this was going on, I had the clearest audio on my VoIP connections, no drop outs, no jitter. The mega conference was a big sea of chatter though. You couldn't understand a word. But that had nothing to do with packets piling up.
Quite frankly, your talk reminds me of stories I heard about doctors advising against the newly invented steam engines on railways because passengers couldn't possibly survive the incredible speed of more than 18 mph or whatever the limit was believed to be back then. Yet here we are two centuries later with millions of people reoutinely travelling on airplanes at over 600 mph. Naysayers are seldomly right.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
Do you honestly believe Skype is going to remain free of charge if there was nothing else left but Skype?
...
With Skype being closed and proprietary, not even allowing interconnects, there are only two possible scenarios
1) Skype will become the 800 pound gorilla of the telephony future cause everybody is using it but a few freedom of choice spirited 2% or 3%. In this scenario, quality will start to suck very badly because there will be zero incentive and of course Skype peer to peer calls will not stay free of charge. Monopolists always find a way to charge, and very much so.
2) Open standards will prevail and Skype will be just one of many alternative ways to carry out a VoIP call. In this scenario, Skype users will be charged for the privilege to communicate with other people using solutions other than Skype.
Skype is not the answer. Skype is the question and the answer is No.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
Generally speaking, I've been pleased with LinkSys products. That is, until I got the callvantage WRT54GP2A-AT wireless router.
First, the wireless side of this has practically no signal. Replacing a WRT54G (stock, no custom firmwares or hacks) with the VoIP version resulted in a fraction of the coverage area. I would sit less than 10 feet away from the router and have "Very Low" signal strength in XP (vs. Excellent or Very Good with the other).
The biggest problem is that it would frequently lock up the network connection, requiring a reboot to restore connectivity. I confirmed the problem by replacing everything (cable modem and voip router, as well as moving to another location to use a different cable modem connection). I now have a stable connection again, since I removed the TA from my network. It went back to the store tonight. I'm going to order a wired TA from AT&T and see if that works better than the wireless one. We'll see.
I didn't want the wireless adapter, but if you decide to use CallVantage, and want the LinkSys adapter instead of the DLink one, the wireless is about the only thing you will find on the shelf. Supposedly Fry's has the wired version, but I haven't been able to get to a Fry's to confirm this.
Other than that, I've been pleased with the CallVantage service. While I'm having problems with my TA, I just configured my phone to ring our cell phones simultaneously. Whoever answers their phone first gets the call. Pretty handy.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
It's not VoIP koolaid. It's telcoligopolist koolaid if anything. You think being charged a buck or two for hot air is bad? You may want to consider Japan's NTT, the Japanese version of AT&T so to speak.
After WWII then Japanese government owned NTT introduced a kind of "membership fee" of about 700 USD per POTS line in order to aid the funding of infrastructure. At the time this made sense because most of Japan's telecommunications infrastructure was pretty much destroyed and the country was short both on natural resources and cash. However, this measure was meant to be _temporarily_ only.
Yet to this day, NTT still sells this strange concept of a phone line license. The price has come down a bit recently, though. I hear it's only about 400 or 500 USD now. It's not an installation fee cause you will pay for installation on top of it. It's not a deposit as you can't get your money back. But it's transferable so you can sell your phone line on the second hand market when you leave Japan or decide you can do without a PSTN line. There are phone line brokerage businesses doing nothing else but buying and selling phone line certificates.
Now imagine that Japan has some 40 or 50 million POTS lines for each of which somebody has at some point shelled out 700 bucks to NTT. How is that for legalised grand daylight robbery, eh?
This is what telcos have been doing for over 100 years. VoIP is kicking their butts and finally the revolution will kill its own children and the VoIP providers will be dead as well. We don't really need either of them.
And just in case you wondered how NTT is doing in the light of VoIP services. Not surprisingly they had one of their worst years ever losing some 20 or 30% of revenue. I hear that the telephone line selling scheme will soon be abandoned. At first, the yound Japanese decided they can do without POTS and use only cellphones instead and now the rest of the population is going VoIP. Nobody wants to pay for those silly phone line certificates anymore. About time!
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
VoIP is subject to regulation. Others have already mentioned E911. But there is also the issue of FBI wiretap access to VoIP phone calls. The VoIP Cos are gonna pass the costs of these "services" on to consumers just like Ma Bell and its kiddies have done since day one.
FreeSpeech.org
The cell phone companies in Canada are currently facing a massive class-action lawsuit over their "system access fees" which they've mislead the public into believing are governmental fees. I can't believe any US telephony company would be so stupid to try the same thing until this case is settled.
w s/1099060839961_12/?hub=TopStories
Check it out:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNe
In general, I agree. However, there are times when BroadVoice spontaneously disconnects. There are other times when you cannot dial to some regions, maybe because the equipment is busy. Sometimes a few seconds of sound is lost.
If he issues you claim are a problem then you need to fire your network administrator, or give him enough budget to do his job.
When you roll out VOIP he should figure out how much more traffic will be generators and modify the network as required so this issue doesn't exist. The additional routers and switches required should be charged to the VOIP upgrade - though in fact you were close to needing it anyway.
As the company grows the administrator should be planning so that there is never a shortage of bandwidth. As you get closer to the limits you buy more.
When you have an incompetent administrator he will not be running the reports required to notice bandwidth growth, nor will he notice the company is hiring more people (even though he has to activate all the new ports) which is a sign that more network bandwidth will be required. A good administrator will be on top of the companies plans and take action so that this isn't a problem.
Hardware: Getting Started with VoIP Devices
Now don't get me started with VoIP Devices...
*sighs*(This is going to be a shit day for telling jokes)
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
http://www.bjornerback.com/tomas/mattgrand/
ps. I bet you can't Slashdot that web server off line
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home
We're going to be in Toronto during the VON Canada conference starting tomorrow and so will many VOIP thought leaders, including Asterisk/Digium founder & president Mark Spencer, who is delivering a keynote on DUNDi.
If you have any questions for them, we'll try to get interviews with as many as possible and pose the questions you ask.
Other speakers include:
Full speakers/session list.
Just post the question and who it's for below and we'll do out best to interview the people you want hear from.
I'll take that bet. Post a reply and I'll email you (the sunrise tel address?) to work out the particulars and an escrow arrangement. We'll each put US$10,000 in an interest-bearing account, and on January 1, 2020, if I can't provide a single example of a POTS line in an OECD member nation (we'll need to agree whether to use current membership or 2020 membership, but as things are I'm already pretty happy with Turkey and Mexico up my sleeve) you get both accounts, otherwise I do.
There are still party lines and pulse-dial-only lines and all sorts of ancient crud out there in the rich, developed world. The old biddies (who vote!) scream if someone wants to make any changes to how their phones work, so the government steps in and forces the providers to accommodate old equipment and services. Remember, 2020 is today what today is to 1990 - that is, not really all that far away
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
What is the Regulatory Recovery Fee?
The Regulatory Recovery Fee is $1.50 per phone number. This is a fee that Vonage charges its customers to recover regulatory-related costs it incurs. These costs may include, but are not limited to, Federal and State Universal Service Funds (USF), 9-1-1 fees, E 9-1-1 fees, CALEA compliance costs and other regulatory-related fees and costs. In addition, the Regulatory Recovery Fee covers similar regulatory costs incurred in foreign countries. Your total Regulatory Recovery Fee reflects a $1.50 surcharge for every phone number you have, including primary voice lines, second lines, fax lines, Toll Free PlusSM numbers, SoftPhones and Virtual Phone NumbersSM.
From a google search,
on USF
on CALEA
The thing i don't understand is how far an average user would ever get to use these services.
I suppose they are probably the second biggest wireless provider in the world... and i concur that they'll probably try to buy cingular at some point - if the monopolies people will let them.
We're very happy since we get excellent reception at our home and workplaces.
Nope, I'm talking from experience with a world-wide company with data lines into third world countries that are getting the shit beat out of the data packets because of this VOIP shit.
Sure, on a local network, not a problem. But you go ahead and try to get high-bandwidth connections to places like Panama, the Phillipines, etc. Then tell me which is cheaper in the long run...
You've got fiber, and you're only running 100MB? Also, are you using QOS with your VOIP or just normal prioritization?
PS: The pileups are generally at the router level with packet prioritization, not the pipe level.