dkp Posted August 20, 2004 Share Posted August 20, 2004 I recently heard about broadband telephone service from a friend of mine. I actually picked up the Vonage system from BB, but couldn't use my home telephone number so I'm taking it back. However, this idea is very attractive to me for home and especially at my office where our telephone bill is upwards of $200 per month. From what I've seen on the internet, most companies offering this will charge around $20-30 per month for unlimited local and national long distance. Business lines are a bit more, nearing $50-100 or so. If anyone uses this, or knows much about it, I would be interested in learning more. Thanks, David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itsmyforte Posted August 20, 2004 Share Posted August 20, 2004 the only broadband service on regular POTS line is DSL. assuming thats not in your area like me, you can more than likely get ISDN. EDIT: are we even talking about the same thing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dkp Posted August 20, 2004 Author Share Posted August 20, 2004 I'm not sure as I do not recognize the acronymns in your post. Basically, broadband internet service is simply your telephone running through your broadband connection. You would drop your local and long distance carriers and run it through broadband. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougdrake Posted August 20, 2004 Share Posted August 20, 2004 You need to be aware of call quality. To the best of my knowledge, most providers of Voice over IP do not provide any Quality of Service, which means that your phone calls are subject to the same variations in quality as your Internet web site browsing - meaning that your calls may not have the quality you would expect/demand/require for your home or business. That may be acceptable, but maybe not for you in your situation. Voice calls are intolerant of jitter, delay, packet resequencing, latency, etc...the stuff that most broadband connections are rife with. Where are you located? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted August 20, 2004 Share Posted August 20, 2004 POTS is plain old telephone service. DSL is digital subsriber line? The common form of high speed digital service. Now you know what I know. Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
formica Posted August 21, 2004 Share Posted August 21, 2004 Doug is right... call quality is the biggest problem. Voice over IP has been around for quite a while as I remember reading about it back in the late 90's and IP traffic has always been a factor. I don't know if it's still available, but the telco here used to offer a hybrid corporate service here which would switch between VOIP and POT depending on network traffic. I recently tried long distance VOIP service when traveling in Africa this last Christmas... and I must say it made me miss the standard analog calls. Perhaps not a true reference given the lack lustre performance of their high speed internet services... but I expected better. For more info on VOIP take a read at FCC VoIP FAQs Later... Rob PS: i used to believe VoIP was the future... but i guess the future hasn't yet arrived... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted August 21, 2004 Share Posted August 21, 2004 the recent PC mag issue says VoIP is ready now, the friend that has Vonage swears by it, his voice quality (at night) seems normal to me... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
White01L Posted August 21, 2004 Share Posted August 21, 2004 dkp may have a cable internet conection. I think then he could get the "Broadband telephone service" without maintaining a Local Bell land line, or other source (wireless) of number. Though he was concerned about keeping his number, I am not familiar with local issues that would inhibit the resolution of this matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dkp Posted August 21, 2004 Author Share Posted August 21, 2004 ---------------- On 8/20/2004 10:10:16 PM dougdrake wrote: You need to be aware of call quality. To the best of my knowledge, most providers of Voice over IP do not provide any Quality of Service, which means that your phone calls are subject to the same variations in quality as your Internet web site browsing - meaning that your calls may not have the quality you would expect/demand/require for your home or business. That may be acceptable, but maybe not for you in your situation. Voice calls are intolerant of jitter, delay, packet resequencing, latency, etc...the stuff that most broadband connections are rife with. Where are you located? ---------------- I found out about this service from an associate of mine in another office. They currently use the "internet telephone service" and have not noticed any difference from their former "land line" connection. I also spoke to someone at BB who purchased the Vonage system and loves it. He did not mention any quality issues, but that does not equate to the fact that there are none. I live in Michigan, about an hour north of Detroit. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dkp Posted August 21, 2004 Author Share Posted August 21, 2004 ---------------- On 8/20/2004 10:30:36 PM William F. Gil McDermott wrote: POTS is plain old telephone service. DSL is digital subsriber line? The common form of high speed digital service. Now you know what I know. Gil ---------------- LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dkp Posted August 21, 2004 Author Share Posted August 21, 2004 ---------------- On 8/21/2004 10:32:16 AM White01L wrote: dkp may have a cable internet conection. I think then he could get the "Broadband telephone service" without maintaining a Local Bell land line, or other source (wireless) of number. Though he was concerned about keeping his number, I am not familiar with local issues that would inhibit the resolution of this matter. ---------------- Yes, I do have a cable internet service offered through Charter Communications. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Shmoe Posted January 5, 2005 Share Posted January 5, 2005 A friend called me up tonight inquiring about the Vonage Broadband Phone Company. I thought I had read about this here on the forum before, so I did a search and... voila! Did you ever change over to this David? Has anyone else tried this? I had told my friend that I thought there were quality issues? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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