New Study Finds VOIP is Getting Better

Proudrooster writes "Keynote Systems Inc. made 154,000 VOIP calls during the months of May and June. In total they tested six VOIP providers and seven ISPs. Their conclusion was that VOIP isn't quite as robust as the public phone network due to dropped calls, lower audio quality, and latency (audio delay), but it is still pretty good. The worst VOIP provider had an availability of 94.8% (which isn't bad) and overall the reviewers were pleasantly surprised with the VOIP test results. Vonage ranked best for "most reliable" with 99.4% uptime, AT&T CallVantage ranked best for "audio clarity"." Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.

Comments

It's good enough for me

[timeOday]

I made the switch to Vonage and disconnected my land line several months ago. Overall, the service is fine by me (actually I've had more trouble getting support than with the phone service itself).

I have noticed an outage or 2, even when my Internet service was up. So don't take the plunge if you can't tolerate a missing dialtone. Personally, I don't think it's a big deal, anymore than when I'm out of the house away from the phone (no I do not have a cellphone).

Re:directivo

[doughrama]

No It's not that stupid.

HD Tivo's are the unit's produced to work with DirecTV's HD. These boxes have their USB Ports disabled. So you suggestion will not work. AFAIK.

If I'm wrong somebody please enlighten me because I would like to put my HD Tivo on the network like I do with my regular series 2 Tivo's.

Not the complete picture.

[raehl]

911 is a free product - so get your free 911 landline, then get VOIP phone service.

Also, 99.4% reliability is perfectly fine for many users - like me. I have a cell phone (actually, two, with different providers) and VOIP. If for some reason my VOIP phone isn't working, I've got my cell phone.

Also, I'd be curious as to how they determined 99.4% reliability. Was that .6% of outage due ONLY to times when vonage was out, or did that also include ANY time the end user was unable to make a call - be it power outage, cable outage, etc.

I've had vonage for months, and the only times it hasn't worked for me were when the power was out or when the cable was out. My cell phone worked fine in either case.