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Cable VoIP Sounds Better Than Some Landlines
A. G. Bell writes "A recent study that looked at the quality of phone calls came up with some surprising results. Ars Technica reports that while 'traditional' VoIP call quality lagged behind landlines, service from cable ISPs was much better because of their use of PacketCable: 'VoIP from the cable companies actually surpassed the traditional phone network in reliability, meaning that the service was more often available and connected calls without dropping them. Cable providers also led the way in audio quality; the top firm in Keynote's study actually turned in an MOS of 4.24, above most real phone networks.'"
I forgot where I saw it (it might've been here), but not too long ago I read a minirant where the person was comparing the phone service of yesterday to the service expectations of today. Admittedly it's two different types of service (landline vs. cell), but we've gone from advertising phone service so clear where you can supposedly hear a pin drop to making a big deal out of being able to hear the person at all. Just a little food for thought...
This matches my experience. We have Vonage via cable modem. Our neighbors who have POTS have had a number of lengthy service outages within the last yeur or two, whereas we've never had any. As far as audio quality, it just sounds normal to me.
The only problems we've had have been with integration among the various parts of the system, and I guess that's not surprising, since it is multiple systems working together, rather than a monolithic system like Ma Bell used to be. The big problem we had was that every time someone would leave a voice mail on Vonage's system, our internet connection would die, and we'd have to power cycle to get it back up. The solution was simply to stop using Vonage's voice mail (which was klutzy anyway), and switch to using the answering machine that was already built into our phone anyway.
A lot of people express concern about the 911 issue. Vonage now has automatic address recognition (if you set it up with them, which they try very aggressively to make sure you do), and from what I understand, there's no real data on reliability of Vonage's 911 versus reliability of POTS's 911. It's apparently quite common for POTS's automatic address recognition to fail, and for that reason, the first thing they always do when you call 911 is ask for your address anyway. The thing that does bother me a little about the 911 issue, regardless of the service provider, is that you can't test it without making a false 911 call. I don't like the idea of an important safety system that you can't test.
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I should probably give the obligatory "I work for Comcast, but just as a dispatcher" warning, so I know a bit more about this than most people. :-)
Yes, but until any one cable company has coverage to every home in America, a call from NY to CA will most likly traverse another provider's network
Right, unless both sides have (for example) Comcast's VOIP, there will be a hand off between providers. But all phone companies pay when a call transfers to another provider's systems. The amount per call is next to nothing, but considering the number of phone calls made at any one time, it adds up to enough that I know Comcast has laid cable through areas they don't service just to carry their own VOIP calls. Same for cell phones(ever wonder why your phone always homes in on your provider's towers even if another one is closer?). So if Comcast hands off the last bit of a call to say AT&T's network, Comcast would pay AT&T as they would if the call went to Comcast's network.
As for the lawsuit, isn't that the whole debate about the net neutrality issue? What is different from SBC trying to extort more money from Google for data passing over its lines than AT&T trying to extort more money from Comcast or RoadRunner for the same reason?
Different issue. Over Comcast's packetcable thing, the data of the call only goes over Comcast's backbone(and no other part of the net), then it is handed off as a normal phone call.
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Just a matter of clarification on some of your points:
DOCSIS is an ackronym for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, this has nothing specifically to do with voice or set-top boxes. There are two standards that deal with those
PacketCable is the cablelabs standard for voice.
OpenCable is the cablelabs standard for settop boxes.
There is no synchronized clock with regards to DOCSIS. PacketCable uses VoIP technology and, as the name implies, uses ip data packets for call transmission.