VOIP service

I'm curious to know if anyone here uses VOIP service or knows much about it. I myself use SunRocket and love it.

Anyone out there got VOIP?

 

been using Vonage.com for over a year.. I have zero complaints .The only time the service went out is when the cable went out. Damn line is so clear, if there's a pause in the conversation the other side asks if I'm still there, lol

 

I've had Vonage for a few months now. It's occasionally a bit choppy but i'm pretty sure that's because of my cable company. Other than that it's great. I'm moving in as few weeks so if i remember i will post back how it is with my new ISP.


Mike

 

We've got VoIP phones here at home and they suck ass, major ass I might add.
half of the time you can't make a call because you don't get a dialing tone, other times you can call people, but people can't call you ór (since it uses the same cable as our cable internet) it makes my internet crawl like a snale or just completely die on me.
So, no, I'm not all that happy, but you Americans can sleep easy, it's not available in the US

 

Wow! Why bother??

Thankfully I've been quite happy with SunRocket and not had problems with their service at all. It's dirt cheap and their international rates are awesome as well (which is good since I have a lot of friends and family abroad).

To the Vonage guys--what do you pay/month?

 

Actually, it is here. Businesses use it, and yes I agree, it sucks ass. My last employer had Avaya VOIP phones and they sucked so bad...

 

I'm thinking about getting VOIP. Been looking into it for quite a few months now.

Anyway, I hear that this device:

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Reviews-210-ProdID-HBB1.php

supposedly makes VOIP function quite abit better. Who knows.

 

It was cheaper and now we're stuck with it since it's a 12-month contract

 

Yeah Tomshardware is trying to pimp it as something new. Its already been available for some time from Dlink in the form of a gaming router

http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=370

 

To be honest I haven't had any problems with my connection at all, don't really see a reason to buy another gadget to add to my setup. I have three computers at my house connected to the internet through the same wireless router, with the SunRocket gizmo before the router, and can be on the phone while two of the three computers are playing World of Warcraft (my girlfriend plays with me) and two of the three are running TeamSpeak, and still not hear a noticeable change in the sound quality. Pretty amazing--at any rate, with my luck adding another bit of equipment to the mess would just overly complicate everything.

 

Here are some problems I saw.

~1 second delay in voice.
Constant drops
Voice distortion
Problems with voices being too quiet

 

who was your service with?

 

These were the Avaya VOIP phones I mentioned above that Convergys uses. I don't think it ahs anything to do with the personal VOIP service. I mentioned it because we went from VOIP service to VOIP phones. I thought that they were different, maybe not

 

My company went to 100% VOIP about a month ago. A real kludge. Polycom telephones, Sphericall and TeleVantage on the software side. Some nice features, and took them forever to get it working semi-right. Call quality is very dependent on network traffic. Sometimes very clean, sometimes so botched that the canned system messages crackle and pop.

One thing I notice long term, is that whatever system type, audible quality seems to get worse every year. I spend all day on phones, and spend more time going "Huh?" "Please repeat that", etc. A lot of expensive feature-rich phones sound like crap, even hard-wired ones, and cordless are pathetic. The simple basic old-fashioned Bell Telephone sounded better than today's crap, and was much more durable.

 

For a large corporation, I hope you have at least OC3 or some other large pipe running to your network. Perhaps that would clear some of this VOIP issues up. Or run whatever pipe you have and get a 2nd one dedicated to VOIP.

 

what the cableguy told me was that our phones were so damn pathetic because of a lack of upstream... is there any truth in that or not?

 

(shrug) I'm not in IT, so don't have all the dirty details. Supposedly we have plenty of bandwidth. Probably 150 users. Mostly here, small offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Florida and North Carolina, 2 spots in Canada, and an office in the Philippines. Cost savings is dramatic. But sound quality is NOT up to par with old fashioned copper wire yet.

 

That's really disappointing to hear!

To be honest, I was skeptical when I signed up with SunRocket, but the reality turned out to be far better.

To be honest, in particular I've noticed the high quality of international calls. I have a lot of friends and family abroad, and have been making a lot of calls to Latin America, Australia, and Europe on my VOIP line, and the only thing I noticed out of the ordinary was when calling Australia there was a very slight (maybe half second) delay. Still, I've never called that far away and not had a delay on any phone system, so this isn't out of the ordinary from my experience.

The quality of local calls is also awesome. Better than my cell phone for sure, and I've used it while doing all sorts of things with my internet (playing video games, downloading files, being connected on multiple computers) and never noticed a dip in quality.

Maybe you're just having bad luck with the companies you're picking?

 

No, you are confusing home VOIP service with VOIP service corporations use. They need considerably more bandwidth, and often, they skimp on it, and it makes it work like poo.

In my exmaple, Avaya phones are not available to the home user.

Be thankful!

 

Ahhh. Maybe I should re-word my question then.

Anyone have any experience with home VOIP service?