[kwlug-disc] OT: Roger's phone services

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

On Saturday, July 17, 2010 08:30:22 am John Van Ostrand wrote:
> One thing I have to tell all customers who opt for VoIP. The fact is you an
> have it cheap with reduced quality or good quality for the same price as
> POTs. For small installs this is the case.

I have to disagree here.

Unless you're torrenting or using other high-bitrate UDP traffic, any of the 
Linksys/Dlink style voip routers will give you phone service comparable to a 
hardline. TCP is pretty straightforward to shape, and the p2p style stuff isn't 
so bad if you have some help from your upstream (which almost NOBODY will be 
able to get, thus my conditional statement). 

A decent VOIP provider (unlimitel, voip.ms, etc.) gives you more than 
acceptable service for far less than you'll get from Bell or their bretheren.

> People like VoIP for reduced cost and for the features.

Agreed, and as long as you're not flooding your link, using questionable 
equipment and/or not going with a fly-by-night VOIP provider you should almost 
never be able to tell you're on a VOIP line.

Decent ATAs are practically commodity items now (SPA2012 etc.) so unless your 
customer is REALLY trying to save a buck the hardware shouldn't be an issue. 
95% of the troubles I find are to do with poor internet link management, and 
the other 5 due to people going with jokers who'll save them fractions-of-a-
cent per minute.

For higher-end installs I usually recommend a separate internet connection, 
but I'm also usually talking 8+ lines so that the extra $50+/mo is easier to 
absorb. 

-A.