Switching from Phone to Voice-Over-IP?

An anonymous reader asks: "I am fed up with the telcos. My last phone bill for one line was over $100 _without_ the $45 for ADSL, so i'm looking to cut as many costs as I can. I've compared my current Voice + Internet solution to one consisting of Voice-over-IP and Cable Internet and it looks like I would save over $50 a month by throwing away my land-line phone and switching to Cable/VoIP. I'm new to the whole changing-from-POTS-to-VoIP process though, so what are some of the 'gotchas' involved with switching? Can I keep my existing number? Will calls suck my bandwidth dry? And most importantly, do any of these VoIP providers work with or support Linux?"

Skype has better sound quality...

[Futurepower(R)]

Skype has better sound quality than a regular telephone, and it is free, for now.

And is also Windows-only

[notsoclever]

and doesn't support incoming landline phonecalls

and doesn't let him keep his phone number

but other than that, yes, it totally fits the bill!

NAT nat nat..

[jaredmauch]

Your biggest concern with this will be what sort of device you're using for performing your NAT. (See here [sipphone.com] for some info about consumer routers that have NAT issues) Asking "do these services work with linux" is a very vague question, are you using linux as a router? desktop? You should also keep in mind the underlying issues involved with making this work. In order for your phone to be told to ring, your telecom provider needs to send you a message saying "hey, ring that phone". Depending on what kind of VoIP you're going to do you may also encounter problems if the other person is doing VoIP and is behind NAT as well.

Most of the commercial providers will solve these issues for you. I'm currently using vonage [www.vonage] at home for my second line. I still keep a traditional landline for E911 and other functionality. The whole "where is your service located" issue is quite interesting on this front when you call emergency services. Since I could take my Vonage hardware with me to a friends house if I were traveling, it makes it quite tricky. Plus you don't need to have a phone number that is within your local calling area.

I'm interested in hearing from vonage (and other) VoIP users that have called 911 and if there were any complications..

Link to Skype. OneSuite.

[Futurepower(R)]

Link: Skype [skype.com]

I've been using Skype to talk with a friend in France, from Oregon. The sound quality is excellent, much better than crackly old telephones. The link is computer to computer, and we both have high-speed internet connections.

Also, try OneSuite [onesuite.com]. 2.5 cents per minute to use a regular, scratchy traditional phone.

Both of these make me realize that the telephone companies are charging too much. When you talk, you are only transferring a few bits of digital information. Everyone's conversations are aggregated into a huge data stream that is very cheap to send by optical fiber.

Re:In theory, yes

[jaredmauch]

Vonage [vonage.com] will let you port your number to their service. You can even port your Cell number to vonage as well. Check here [vonage.com] for their LNP information.

Primus.ca for Canadians

[Dixie_Flatline]

I just got a flyer from Primus, a long distance and internet provider. They have something called 'Talking Broadband'. You order it, and they send you a little thing to plug into your network, and you connect the phone to that. Not only do they transfer your phone number over, but you can pick a new number, and you can pick the area code of any place that they service, no matter where you live. As well, you can attach up to two 'alternate' phone numbers with their own area codes. I live in Edmonton, and I'm thinking of signing up for the service and getting an alternate number with a Toronto area code. That way, phone calls that friends in Toronto make to that number are local calls. I get one-way unlimited long distance for $4 a month. I can't phone out on that line, but that's okay.

Check it out. Primus also does business in the States, though it doesn't look like they have this service in particular. You should mail and ask.

Voip Gotchas

[the eric conspiracy]

The problem with Cable + VOIP is QoS. When your cable goes out, no phone. This includes power outages - and even if YOU have UPS or whatever, the likelihood is that your cable headend doesn't have anything but a few minutes of battery. POTS is generally provisioned to run indefinitely independent of power outages etc.

Other things to watch out for are 911 service, Caller ID.

Operating system is generally not an issue - VOIP means installation of a Cisco or some other such box that sits on your LAN.

Personally I chose AT&T One Rate USA instead. I didn't want to deal with the VOIP teething pains.

Lots of VoIP info...

[Gravatite]

Playing with the various VoIP solutions is a bit of a hobby of mine, so allow me to share some of what I have learned:

Vonage is a great company, they have area codes in a lot of places, and they also support number portability. The downside is you're stuck using their equipment (cisco ata-186). It's a nice box, doesn't require a computer, provides a plug for normal phones, and works quite well behind a Linux firewall. If that's what you're looking for, then by all means, go with Vonage. I currently have a personal line, and a business line w/ fax line through them.

Packet8 is another company where you're stuck with their equipment. I've heard of problems with their service, but I have yet to experiance anything. The price is right, and the quality is good enough, and they also support lots of area codes. I currently have a personal line through them, but I've only had it for about 4 months.

iConnectHere is another one that supports lots of area codes. The quality is ok, but I had lots of lag issues with them. The price is pretty good, but you have to supply your own equipment. The good news is it works well with most sip devices (I've used an ata-186 with it, as well as a few soft phones). You'll hav problems using softphones behind a firewall though, but the good news is, it integrates pretty well with Asterisk, the open source pbx software. I used their service for a few months, but I no longer have it, the lag issues were too much for me.

VoicePulse is my current favorite solution. Aside from SIP, they also support IAX (via their VoicePulse Connect! service). With IAX, it integrates extremely well with Asterisk even behind firewalls. They have a pretty good pricing plan, and you get all your incoming minutes for free. You can add as many phone numbers as you would like, but the only problem with their service is their limited area code availability, which will hopefully get better over time. They support multiple inbound and outbound calls simultaniously, and several codecs, so you can balance your requirments of bandwidth vs. voice quality. VoicePulse also has a service that's more like what Vonage offers, but I haven't tried that. As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I'm currently using the VoicePulse Connect! service as my PSTN gateway for my Asterisk PBX, and so far it's been working remarkably well.

I hope that helps!

Re:Former Vonage Customer...

[Bill Wong]

By ATA, I assume you mean a Cisco ATA 186 (which are no longer sold/made by Cisco anymore, and because of that, they are in fairly high demand now!).

Vonage stopped giving out Cisco ATA 186's sometime after November 2003, and now give out Motorola vt1000's instead.

Guess what? Quality is even worse with the newer Motorola hardware. :(

At least you got out fairly cheap. We had a few dozen lines we had to kill, because quality kept getting worse... You don't want to know the cancellation fee we had to pay :\

Vonage

[mpechner]

four of my friends have it and it works great. they now have 911 service in most areas. This is important to check on. Some services do not let you connect to 911 or 411.

If you get a business accounts, you even get a fax line as part of the service.

You can transfer your current pstn phone number.

Voice quality is at least a good as PSTN. See QOS notes below.

They used to send cisco-186 adapters for analog phone. I believe they not send you a motorola box that acts as a DSL/cable router and have a port specifically for your phone. this allows voip traffic to take priority over other data traffic.

The one real gotcha is that if your internet connection get flakey, the sound quality can suffer. If the connection goes away, so does your phone service.

If you do not go with vonage, get the linksys router that has QOS. This way you can point at a specific port for the phone so VOIP traffic get priority. this QOS is one of the bigger issues.

Other wise being on the phone while a big upload or download is happening and you'll think your on a bad cell connection.

Same Problem, Solution = Vonage

[jatsrt]

I had the same problem, I live in one state, my family and my wifes family all lived in another state. So my Veri$on bill was outrageous. Solutions, almost 2 years ago now, I switched to Vonage, using my local cable provider for broadband access. The end result is rock solid service that has only gone down in price and up in features, service and quality, not to say it was bad to begin with. I have no land line service and I enabled the 911 service that is part ov vonage, that is that it calls geographically closet location and you need to tell them your address. As for soft phones , vonage offers a soft phone with a seperate number and seperate services with 500 minutes for an additional 9.99 a month. My recomendation is this solution, good luck.

Re:There is already too much fiber.

[samjam]

He means "not used" period.
Do a google search on "dark fibre" (avoid the textiles links)

Lessig in is "The Future of Ideas" refers to this, the fiscal value of the communication commons depends on managing the scarcity.

Try this story [theregister.co.uk] where we learn about the lack of scarcity on London.

Re:Same Problem, Solution = Vonage

[smishra]

The problem with VOIP and phone service is usage in real emergency situations.
In my area power goes out for a few days at least once a year. Once this happens

• the VOIP service no longer works
• cell phone battery dies after some time

  The only thing that really works is land line phones. These are backed by batteries and gensets at the CO.

  So I would still go with at least one land line.

  The other option would be to use my car to keep the cell phone charged. However I do not trust the cell phone company to keep the towers working in an extended power outage. So I keep at least one land line working

  _____________________________________
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Re:UK?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Telappliant (www.telappliant.com) in conjunction with SNOM sip phones (www.snom.de) and digium FXS cards (www.digium.com) behind a NAT enabled asterisk server (www.asteriskpbx.org). I bought the snoms from the UK distributor, provu (www.provu.co.uk). Telappliant offer inbound PSTN to SIP bridging based on 0870 (nat rates) or 0845 (local rate) number, and outbound calls at calling card rates. Apparently 0207 numbers are coming soon. Excellent service so far, once asterisk config was sorted (which was a complete bitch). Usual disclaimers apply.

ProfP

Current Vonage Customer

[DukeyToo]

I am a current Vonage customer. Here are the pros and cons as they apply to me:

Pros:
* Cheap - especially international calls, I cannot get a better rate except with a phone card.
* Features - lots of features that I normally would not take (because they usually cost extra) are free, such as call forwarding, caller id.
* Easy, detailed online account access.
* Its cool
* Voice quality actually improved over my previous service

Cons:
* 56K dialup does not work. This can be a gotcha in unexpected ways, for example my DirectTV Tivo cannot dialup to DirectTv, which means that I could not have multiple recievers, or use their sport channels.
* Reliability of Internet connection is not as good as phone lines.
* If the power goes down, then so does my phone (have not tried using UPS yet)
* 911 service is available according to Vonage, but how will I really know until I try?
* The hardware is a bit iffy. I have the motorola unit, which I originally setup as they suggested, directly to my cable modem, with the rest of my network behind it. This was extremely unreliable, and I get much better results by putting it behind a NAT router (I had to forward some ports).
* Broadband options are cut down - I cannot use DSL because I no longer have a land line, but I do not want to use cable (because I have satellite). So, I end up paying the cable company a "tax" of sorts because I am not interested in the cable, only the internet.

Re:Lots of VoIP info...

[kriston]

Vonage now exclusively uses the Motorola vt1000 device which is very nice for three important reasons:

1) Has built-in firewall and NAT so you can get QoS on the cable-modem side.

2) Directly supports two telephone lines.

3) Reboots and gets on the network quickly.

The only two real drawbacks of the Motorola is that you can't run all your house phones off it without encountering ring-volume problems, and if the box is offline it only gives you silence (an error tone would have been a nice plus).

Kris

FYI:

[Anonymous Coward]

Just an FYI guys, if your phone is disconected you DO NOT have 911 service. I work for one of the big ones, and while people are pushing for this to happen, none of the major compaines do it.

Just google it:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF -8&oe =UTF-8&q=911+%22disconnected+phone%22