Sick of paying $75 a month for phone service?

[Jeep Biscuit]

I've always paid at least 50 and usually $75/month for phone service for my home. Literally for years now.

My last plan was MCI neighborhood for $45/month After taxes, this fee, that fee, 3 different tarriffs my $45 phone bill ended up being 65-$70.

So anyways.... it just so happened that cable modems came available so I got a broadband connection at $40/month.

I had heard about Voice over IP and looked into it and bought the service but kept my local ma bell service just in case.

Well lemme tell ya, the VoIP voice quality is BETTER than mabell. And its $20 a month FLAT. NO FEES, NO TAXES NO BS. And I call anywhere with NO restrictions. All the extras are FREE. NO CHARGE. I am utterly enamoured with this after getting ripped off by MaBell for so long.

Add it up

Cable modem 40
IP phone service 20

I was paying $22 for dialup and $75 for phone. Now I have broadband and putting cash in my pocket at the same time. The service I'm using is www.packet8.com ...... If you're sick of getting it stuck in your ass every month, check it out.

 

[GSequoia]

Does that work over your regular phones? Too lazy to look it up...

Although not much of an issue with me, I use my cell for everything, and my work pays 80% of it

 

[GI-John]

I've thought about it before, and actually looked into it..... but was afraid of it being so new (vonage)

I'm in a small market (Ft Knox KY area....owned by Brandenburg Telephone Co) and they know they have a monopoly. I have to pay extra for ATT long distance and even with MINIMAL usage I still pay 55.00 a month.

My cable company offers digital phone service for 14/month but of course, not in my area.


Thanks for reminding me.

John

 

[Jeep Biscuit]

Does that work over your regular phones? Too lazy to look it up...

absofawkinlutely..... NOTHING changes other than your bill. It drops like a rock.

 

[Jeep Biscuit]

I've thought about it before, and actually looked into it..... but was afraid of it being so new (vonage)

I'm in a small market (Ft Knox KY area....owned by Brandenburg Telephone Co) and they know they have a monopoly. I have to pay extra for ATT long distance and even with MINIMAL usage I still pay 55.00 a month.

My cable company offers digital phone service for 14/month but of course, not in my area.


Thanks for reminding me.

John

Well I was EXTREMELY skeptical but they had a 30 day money back so I said what the hell.... I'm as serious as the sun is bright, you WON"T be disappointed if you're getting screwed by local telco. I'm completely disconnected from copper/ma bell and I will NEVER go back.

 

[GSequoia]

That's odd, my reply didn't post...

Anyway, it's cool that it works over the phones...I remember old Dialpad and other such Internet phone gigs, had to go though a computer, was quite fussy...god I guess that was about four or five years ago?!

Damn...I've been a geek for a long time

 

[Jeep Biscuit]

That's odd, my reply didn't post...

Anyway, it's cool that it works over the phones...I remember old Dialpad and other such Internet phone gigs, had to go though a computer, was quite fussy...god I guess that was about four or five years ago?!

Damn...I've been a geek for a long time

And thats exactly what I thought it was gonna be like. To the contrary; I've never had such excellent service.

 

[Mark WNC]

I would assume that if your IP goes down so would your
phone service.Correct me if I'm wrong.
Looks like a great deal though.

 

[FitchVA]

yeah, we use voice over ip at work for our roanoke -> atlanta office calls. pretty snazzy. it's letting us git rid of our pos microwave lines.

 

[Jeep Biscuit]

I would assume that if your IP goes down so would your
phone service.Correct me if I'm wrong.
Looks like a great deal though.

My cable hasn't gone down not ONCE since april. It IS a great deal. I wouldn't be acting so seriously about it if I didn't think it was worthy. Shameless plug? Call it what you want but Im so friggin thrilled with getting MaBell out of my ass I have to tell everyone.

 

[Glenn B]

I may be doing that very soon myself. I still must keep one landline, as I need aDSL; and they have no local numbers for folks to reach me on. But I could save a bunch over the three numbers I currently have.
Glenn

 

[Matthew Currie]

That's great for you city slickers. Out here the only cable is what keeps the ferry from drifting down the lake.

I suppose that the math here assumes that you had cable already anyway, but if you don't, you'd have to count the cost of that too. Theoretically, at least. If you lived where there's cable service....

 

[ChiXJeff]

That's odd, my reply didn't post...

Anyway, it's cool that it works over the phones...I remember old Dialpad and other such Internet phone gigs, had to go though a computer, was quite fussy...god I guess that was about four or five years ago?!

Damn...I've been a geek for a long time

Sure, ya are, kid..... I've been a geek longer than you've been around.

The Packet8 website has answered most of my questions.....

Me, I'm leaning more towards dropping my landlines completely. I've been using my cellphone more and more. Haven't made a long distance phone call from a home landline in over a year. Now that I've gotten a cable modem, I rarely use my landline at all.

WAIT!
If you have kids and/or babysitters, 911 service is NOT supported under Packet8! Nore is 411, 311, etc.

Packet8 also doesn't accept collect calls either.

Still, looks like a useful service.

ChiXJeff

[Edit] Vonage does have their own 411 service, and does have a provision for 911 service. This may be a better option for some folks.

 

[ChiXJeff]

My cable hasn't gone down not ONCE since april. It IS a great deal. I wouldn't be acting so seriously about it if I didn't think it was worthy. Shameless plug? Call it what you want but Im so friggin thrilled with getting MaBell out of my ass I have to tell everyone.

I'm sure the cable company will tell me that my cable service never gone out. In the last couple of months, DNS resolution has failed for up to 30 minutes a couple of times.

I suspect the DTA box has hardcoded IP addresses in it for it's authorization services. The above noted failure shouldn't affect that, then.

 

[KY Chris]

Hey John Boy, I just switched to that Insight Cable Local ATT phone. Sounds just like regular Ma Bell..kept my number, caller ID, etc...but, that 13 bucks a month charge is a load of $hit. After the subscriber line charge @ 6.50, wire maintenance @3.95, and caller ID and call waiting @9.00, it's still 32.45. Not much cheaper that what I was paying before the switch.
You be the judge.

 

[Glenn B]

That's great for you city slickers. Out here the only cable is what keeps the ferry from drifting down the lake.

I suppose that the math here assumes that you had cable already anyway, but if you don't, you'd have to count the cost of that too. Theoretically, at least. If you lived where there's cable service....

LOL. Too funny. Absolutely no where near a city here. A trrip to McDonalds is a 12 hour deal.

However, we are just lucky enough to have aDSL. It is not all about city slickers. I have done the dial-up thing, and have done the Two-Way Sat thing too. There are alternatives.... just depends on your area.
Glenn

 

[Kejtar]

Not all that shines is gold

VoiP is all new and great and ...... so not ready for consumers

First thing to keep in mind.... is security It's easier to "tap" a voip phone then a land line as with voip all I have to be is anywhere on the network... and at this moment most of the VOIP vendors do not support encryption and even if they do, it's ussually not implemented due to inconsistencies (that's what differnt switch vendors call them while I call them bugs )... how I know it? I work for a telecom software company and we're in business of setting up recorders for telephone solutions (VOIP included) and without even working on that part of the project: actually just from talking to a cooworker who has developed the software to do so, I have learned enough (ok, so you have to be a programmer to do so, but there is plenty of them around) to be dangerous and to create my own "recorder" which will indiscriminantely (sp?) capture all the VOIP packet traffic and reassemble it into calls. Now the only thing that hinders this is the fact that the process is somewhat hardware intensive and the amount of resources one has (CPU/mem and so on) is the limiting factor as to how many silmultanous conversation can one record at the same time (but the number is from dozens upwards, so it's pretty big.....).

Some may say security is not a big deal... what will it matter if someone overhears my conversation.... well it might be kind of dangerous if you ever are overheard while talking to your bank or someone else who will be requiring you to provide quite a bit of personal info. This makes me think of the first cordless telephone craze where a kid witha $80 scanner from Radio SHack could sit down in an apartment complex and listen to any cordless phone conversation and it wasn't till the digital phones that came out that it became more "complicated" to do so......
Also imagine also if someone spoofs your phone? Well..... they can make phonecalls on YOUR account and you can get charged for them. I cannot give any specifics as it's work related, but I know of one company (rather big) which has VoiP infrastracture setup not only within, but also between their sites as well as some setup for outgoing connections and well..... they got hacked to the point that FBI got involved as calls were being placed to restricted (as in questionable) destinations outside of US and that fell under the category of National Security. Now I doubt that someone would want to take over a little ol' me (or rather my phone) for that purpose, but it is very possible..... and it is very hard to TRACK DOWN!

Also, lastly there is the issue of quality. Those who have experienced it at work environment can't really compare it to the consumer solution as quite a bit of equipment in use on the consumer side of application does not support QoS which gives the VoiP packets priority thus resulting in a better quality of a phone conversation. Look at your browser and internet experience: I will be first to say that the performance is inconsistent. Ussually I experience very high speeds, but there are days when it is slowing down to a crawl for various reasons. Those with home DSL services are especially prone to that as when their speed cap gets neared in either direction, the other direction will throttle down as well. Now if that affects things such as email and web browsing imagine what it will do to your phone conversation! Do you really want to care about who is doing what on the net while you're talking on the phone?? "Now kids, you cannot play EverQuest till your father finishes talking with Grandma!"......

Kejtar

 

[Kejtar]

btw

In no way do I want to discourage anyone from using this service... all I'm doing is mentioning all the potential problems with it And the traffic and QoS will start becoming a bigger issue as more and more people in a given area end up getting the service

 

[Jeep Biscuit]

Sure, ya are, kid..... I've been a geek longer than you've been around.

The Packet8 website has answered most of my questions.....

Me, I'm leaning more towards dropping my landlines completely. I've been using my cellphone more and more. Haven't made a long distance phone call from a home landline in over a year. Now that I've gotten a cable modem, I rarely use my landline at all.

WAIT!
If you have kids and/or babysitters, 911 service is NOT supported under Packet8! Nore is 411, 311, etc.

Packet8 also doesn't accept collect calls either.

Still, looks like a useful service.

ChiXJeff

[Edit] Vonage does have their own 411 service, and does have a provision for 911 service. This may be a better option for some folks.

They announced they would be implementing 911 service in february.

 

[Matthew Currie]

LOL. Too funny. Absolutely no where near a city here. A trrip to McDonalds is a 12 hour deal.

However, we are just lucky enough to have aDSL. It is not all about city slickers. I have done the dial-up thing, and have done the Two-Way Sat thing too. There are alternatives.... just depends on your area.
Glenn

I was sort of kidding of course, about 'city slickers," because I know you're pretty far out there. I have DSL, over the phone line, but have never lived within the range of a cable or CATV system. I just have a big ol' antenna on the roof, so any non-phone system would have to include installing something else (satellite, "wireless cable," etc.).