VoIP providers
 

Wow, this forum has a lot of members who sound really in the know about VoIP.
I'm considering switching from a conventional landline.

I've heard good things about a company called SunRocket. I saw a few mentions of them here, along with Vonage. I checked out a techie website and saw that SunRocket beat out Vonage on all around satisfaction and comes in cheaper per month.

http://www.dslreports.com/gbu


What do others think of these companies?

From the link you provided :confused: :


I have Skype, SkypeIn & SkypeOut and like it. However, I still keep my landline ... but my change this.

There're SO MANY VoIP companies out there. IMO find the best deal you can and search reviews on the service. They're pretty much fungible though, swap one for another at will.

AT&T Callvantage.

If you want to replace your landline, they know a bit about being a phone company in the traditional sense, and have some relatively impressive offers on the business side. It's not as feature rich as Vonage, Sunrocket, or Packet8, but the company will probably be around in 5 years.

They are also pretty good about not rolling into a service area until E-911 (the real 911) can be provisioned onto the VoIP line. The downside is that if your terminal equipment goes down (think power outage or the like), they make you dial like #1 or something while listening to a message--in essence to confirm that the phone is where you said it was (so that E-911 will present correct information).

I hadn't heard about E911 so I'm glad you mentioned it ClueByFour.

I didn't know that some VoIP carriers had issues with 911 dialing. Making sure calls can get through to 911 is a pretty high priority for me. So I did some research on it. Seems to be a regulation around it. Some articles I pulled up showed a really high compliance rate (in the 90% range) for SunRocket, esp. as compared to Vonage.

Completely forgot about E911, THANK you. That narrows the list considerably.

Completely replacing your home phone line with VOIP is probably not a good idea. The service is still flaky, the technology very unstable, etc.

As a second line, though, I like the comment that they're more or less fungible...IF you go standards based (SIP). Right now I use Voipstunt (free calls to Turkey, of all places, where my daughter's in school, as well as UK--wife's family, and Japan--good friends), Gizmoproject, Iconnecthere.com, and a couple of others. Try 'em all, see what works best for you.

But isn't that where the cell phone comes in? The last time I had a home phone (a.k.a land line) was almost 6 years ago, and cell/VOIP has filled in without a hiccup.

99% of the time the cell works great as a backup... during a real emergency , wireless service falls over faster than a house of cards in a hurricane. I found this out the hard way. Texting does still work but voice?? Fuggeddaboudit.

That's probably an overstatement. It's the reliance upon the local ISP (an unregulated local loop) where 99% of the problems are. 0.05% of the remaining problems are of a "local power" variety.

VoIP offerings from actual LECs (AT&T/SBC and the like) are fundamentally solid on the backend. The Vonages and Sunrockets of the world are looking to make a cheap buck.

This is a new service > http://www.jajah.at/

I'm US based, though I travel frequently (around the US and abroad - RSA, UK, SIN, HKG mostly). I have universally found Skype (direct Skype to Skype) better than Vonage. Vonage calls frequently drop, it is impossible to be on a Vonage call and use any other computer attached to the same internet connection. Skype out works all over - never a problem. Dropping Vonage in favor of Skype and Skype out (give out my worldwide cell for incoming calls, don't need Skype In). No landline in the US, I'll deal.

Less to carry between Vonage (box and phone) and Skye (headset only).

Well, I guess I'm confused. I need broadband to have VOIP phone, and I have DSL, not cable, which means...I need regular phone service.

It is correct, isn't it, that I can't get DSL from anyone without regular phone service?

(Why DSL instead of cable? Well, it's because I don't have cable TV.)

In most areas you need to have a regualr phone line for dsl, you can change it to a cheaper plan, we have Vonage and a measured rate ($10/month, plus taxes) Verizon line. We also have no problems using the Vonage line and being on the internet. I have noticed no quality issues on the phone or the internet.

Thanks for the suggestions about providers. Skype sounds like the way for me.

Suggestions about what kind of headset(s) work best would be appreciated.