However, I still have my good old POTS service from Bell and I don’t intend to give it up for the foreseeable future. Here’s why:

QoS

Unless the service provider owns the network path end-to-end, they are unable to guarantee voice quality. The service is at the mercy of the conditions of the network between the end-device and their network. Despite this, in most cases it works great. But, if there are congestion or reliability issues anywhere along the path, you and the service provider may be completely powerless with respect to rectifying the issue. This happened to me a few years ago when my service provider began experiencing network congestion. My VoIP service became unusable due to excessive delay and jitter. Luckily I moved, and for the past two years the voice quality of my VoIP service has been great. But that could change at any time. Obviously the cable companies have an advantage here but that advantage is restricted to the subscribers that are on-net.

Trust

I am very confident that Bell Canada will still be in business a year from now. I’m also very comfortable with their ability to maintain consistent quality. In a year, my VoIP provider might be bankrupt. In fact, as I have stated previously, I’m convinced that a standalone best-effort VoIP service is not a sustainable business model. Vonage must change their business model or, I’m convinced, they will not survive. While the quality of my VoIP service has been, for the most part acceptable, I have experienced outages and messaging issues that are related to the VoIP provider’s core infrastructure. I lack confidence in their operations and their ability to scale; especially if financial pressures results in them sacrificing investment in operations in favour of marketing for example.

Emergencies

Yes, it’s true that most VoIP providers have E911 capabilities. However, in many instances, unlike your POTS service, your call does not terminate directly in the E911 PSAP. Instead, it is directed to a call centre first, which in my view, could potentially compromise the efficacy of the response. In addition, as others have pointed out, unless your ATA has, or is plugged into, a backup power supply, your VoIP service will be non-functional in a power outage. Even, with ATA backup power, a power interruption might bring down the network through which your VoIP service is delivered. Sure, most cable companies do have UPS to protect their trunk and distribution amplifiers but the capacity may be very limited which means that an extended and widespread outage will almost certainly result in your VoIP service going down. In addition, the reliability of the backup power is dependent on diligent maintenance, which is a non-trivial and expensive challenge. My Bell Canada phone service, I am confident, would continue to work even if a power outage lasted for weeks.

I am not bashing VoIP. I am passionate about the industry and the many advances that have been, and will continue to be enabled by VoIP. I use VoIP services because I get great features and services that are not available through any other source. For residential voice services, I am aware of the potential VoIP pitfalls and I accept the risk. So choosing VoIP or not, exclusively or not, should be based on knowledge of the facts and the risks.

1.Voip installs very easy to all jacks in the house, can mom do it? NO but mom did’nt install the phone in the first place did she a telephone guy did.

2.VOIP is very reliable, it is as reliable as your cable provider if you have a good provider you have good internet and digital phone service.

3.E911 is there and works great, all VOIP providers must carry it.

Well over 20,000 people a day take advantage of a VOIP service and I’m here to tell you all of them are not taking it just to save $10 bucks.

Tim

in australia if your not lucky enough to live in an area where you can get cable you have to have ADSL and with our ADSL you must have a POTS line with a pots phone number as our telco that owns the lines will not allow naked DSL because they know they would loose to much to voip

so i have my pots line connected to my ATA wich also supplies VOIP from a company called engin

my ATA then plugs into my router and the Ethernet Network that is already routed around my house upstairs and down either by ethernet with power over ethernet or by wireless wich reconects to wired ethernet with POE upstairs

I then have 2 desk IP phones upstairs and a cordless phone with an ATA on it Downstairs i have 1 IP deskphone and 1 cordless phone with ATA

all these phones are connected by a soft PBX system and each phone has a seperate extension each phone can recieve a phone call of the POTS phone number when people call in and it calls out onto the Voip network when we ring sum1

if the power goes out my engin ATA drops back to the POTS line automaticaly in wich case i can call using the pots line but since i have Power over ethernet with a UPS (wich i rigged up using a couple of old car batteries) it is conected to the network and all the phones that are on the network and the computer that runs the PBX system so that i can use any phone in the house on the Voip network for up to 6 hours with no power

and with your 911 calls wich in australia are 000 calls with the pbx system to get an outside line you have to dial “1″to get out on a voip line or you have to dial “0″ to get out on the Pots line so your just dial 0000 and you get our emergency 000 number dialed on the pots network so there is no need to worry about anything

i sugest you all take the time to set this system up

the other thing you can do is set up the voip box directly to the pstn box out side your house and that way all incoming calls on your pots number go to all phones in the house and it wires your voip so that it goes to any phone socket in the house a good link to see how to do this is

http://www.jakeludington.com/askjake/20050206voipoverphone_wiring.html

I hope that some of you find this post interesting

I am currently paying $22 or so for basic landline from Qwest and 49.99 for Tmobile 2-phone family service.

Basically then, I am moving the $22 into VoIP. I have used Vonage at several places at my friends and it works pretty good.

One important feature that Vonage has that was’nt mentioned here – there is a feature called Network Availability # . Looks like vionage pings your end and if not able to connect reroutes calls to your other numbers.

http://vonage.com/features.php?feature=network_availability

————-text here————- Set Your Network Availability Number

And Never Miss a Call Don’t miss any calls even if your Internet connection goes down

Vonage protects you. Now you don’t have to be inconvenienced if your Internet connection fails. Your calls will be automatically forwarded to the phone number of your choice in the event your Internet connection is disrupted or your telephone adapter is disconnected. If Call Forwarding is enabled, all of your calls will be forwarded using your Call Forwarding settings. If you don’t have Call Forwarding enabled, we will forward all calls to the number you register as your Network Availability Number.

Your Network Availability Number is similar to Call Forwarding, except that it’s activated only when your Internet connection is disrupted or your telephone adapter is disconnected. Once activated, calls to your Vonage phone number will forward to the number you choose until your Internet connection is restored.

Setup Is Painless

1. Login to your Vonage Web Account 2.

   Click on the “Features” tab from your Dashboard

It doesn’t cost extra charges to use our handy Network Availability Number feature. For Unlimited Plan customers, calls are included as part of your monthly service. Rated plan customers are included as well unless if the forwarded call is not within their monthly allotted minutes.

This feature is included in your Vonage monthly calling plan as an added protection against missed calls.

so for power outage or internet outage, my calls will still come into my mobile phone either using call forwarding or the default network availability feature.

Will be getting the package about Friday and will know what the VoIP revolution” is first hand.

Raja

Register now to discuss voip related topics at http://www.voip-traffic.com/terms.asp with experts. Its free and easy.

http://www.sipura.com/

Mark

I think you are right to point out that I skipped your product. Sorry about that. but if you look at the piece, it was a straight up comparison of what is pstn and what is voip service from vonage etc.

Trying to make the Internet do everything the old POTS network does will take as long and cost as much as the POTS network, and is a poor use of a good thing. Making the POTS network do what the Internet does is equally silly.

PhoneGnome uses the POTS network for what it’s good for (and what is hard/expensive and pointless to do to the Internet) and uses the Internet for what it is good for (and what is expensive and pointless to do to the POTS network). — and it’s a solution HERE AND NOW , rather than in 15 years if people were actually to do to the Internet what the petition says to do.

Let’s not forget a few facts: 1. A number of “PSTN” customers are actually carried (24 — over HDSL) — the same local loop technology that is used for ADSL over which folks run voip. 2. That neither HDSL nor the PSTN — nor any xDSL is perfectly reliable. And 5 nines is complete nonsense. I can personally attest to 89 days of no telephone service in 2003 (nice work Verizon). 3. VoIP isn’t a network. Each piece has it’s own issues with reliability. More importantly a single network can carry multiple services. So if I have an issue with vonage, I can use Skype or other. Add vongage to skype in out and it’s still cheaper than pstn … 4. A favorite — who cares — uses a cell phone for backup. You’d have a cell phone for backup for pstn anyhow.

Just a few thoughts …

Keep in mind that this was prior to the E911 being put into affect, but what we found was that the emergency dispatch center in our area (and other areas as well) have a number to call from cell phones or VOIP services.

Here is San Francisco for example: http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/ecd/EmergencyCommunicationsDepartment/wireless.pdf

It isn’t quite as convenient as having a hardline connection to 911, but it does provide a solution in the event of an emergency.

Now these electronic phones have a way of usually working when the power is off, albeit on basically, you pick up the phone you hear dialtone and dial, no lights or ringers etc.

SUGGESTION FOR EMERGENCY VOIP DEVICE: I would posit an industry standard device for emergency backup. A solidstate low voltage router with built in ATA powered by a 9VDC battery in a cigarette box size case. All these pieces, opensource OS and software exist today. If you really wanted to be fancy it could include a rechargeable battery and a 110AV power brick. It only needs a commited service provider like Vonage to take the lead and just do it! It would be a great sales pitch and take away the demons of regulators and ILECS and stop the general whining for someone else to fix it for gazillions of dollars!

It jogs the memory of an early internet company, they were driven by some russians writing really tight, memory efficient code who were good at what they did because RAM memory was so expensive back then and not so freely available, and broadband was not even a dream yet.

I think the memory hog application laziness has raised it head in a different way now. Wastefull hardware and resource design practices.

Many people dont realize it, but POTS runs on “network power” – you could lose power in your house and neighborhood and not lose your telephone service.

It may be a good idea for home router vendors to routinely start bundling in basic UPS/battery backups with “power over ethernet” support that can be used by a few communication and home security devices that connect to that router.

If my telephone, internet, and television are all going to ride on one wire or wireless channel – I would want that channel to be very robust. Otherwise, things will get very quiet when it fails.