Bubblegum Bandit May 5, 2006 Share Bubblegum Bandit Member May 5, 2006 Getting ready to move, and up to now my wife and I have just carried cell phones and not had a home phone. With an 18 month old daughter and hopefully another child on the way before too long, we feel the need to have a phone in the home in the instance of baby sitters among other things. VoIP seems very compelling to me as I will definately have cable internet. How is the service these days? Are there still lots of problems with dropped calls, bad connections etc? Would like to get a feel, I know I've seen several posts about people who use VoIP. What have your experiences with the service been like lately? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allanon May 5, 2006 Share Allanon Member May 5, 2006 Getting ready to move, and up to now my wife and I have just carried cell phones and not had a home phone. With an 18 month old daughter and hopefully another child on the way before too long, we feel the need to have a phone in the home in the instance of baby sitters among other things. VoIP seems very compelling to me as I will definately have cable internet. How is the service these days? Are there still lots of problems with dropped calls, bad connections etc? Would like to get a feel, I know I've seen several posts about people who use VoIP. What have your experiences with the service been like lately? by VoIP software you could be talkinga bout anything. However I assume you are talking about programs such as Skype, which work well or have worked well at least for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubblegum Bandit May 5, 2006 Author Share Bubblegum Bandit Member May 5, 2006 sorry, should have made it more clear....services like Vonage that offer "telephone" service over internet connections. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akaM2 May 5, 2006 Share akaM2 Member May 5, 2006 well i should be your point of contact for this I work for Time Warner Cable in the tier 3 department which deals with Digital Phone and Road Runner issues. I have had Digital Phone for 6-7 months, its gone out on me 3 times but all I have had to do to fix it is just unplug the modem for 30 seconds and its back up. Your DP will only go out if your electricty is out or there is a cable outage. As far as reliability just look at how strong your cable internet connection has been, it will be as steady as that. Of course there will be hiccups to it as it is not a perfect service yet, otherwise they could charge more. Problems that I have encountered working for TWC. The modem they install services both your phone and hsd, it has a phone jack on the back which feeds into another jack in the wall which is turned into a "back feed" which basically services the rest of the jacks in your house. I have had peoples backfeeds malfunction which we just send a tech out and it is fixed within a day. When they malfunction you cannot use all your phones in your house however you can just plug a phone directly into the back of the modem. Dropped calls and noise or echo on the phone line is really only caused by the cable signal to your house, if it is installed incorrectly and you dont have a good enough signals, these problems can plauge you until it is fixed by the cable company. I cant say anything for other companies but TWC will send a tech out the same day if you dont have a dialtone for no charge whatsoever. Vonage is less expensive but your not going to have the free tech visits and such, just phone support. I have never used vonage so i cant comment on it. Vonage does use your upload/download bandwith however, where as digital phone does not because we can seperate the bandwitch from your hsd. I dont know i basically just ranted alot here, throw out some questions and I can answer them easily. I have family all over so its nice to know im getting unlimited local and long distance (even though its free) If I didnt work for TWC I would still have the service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stutters May 5, 2006 Share stutters GC Alumni May 5, 2006 if i had the need to have home telephone service, i'd defintely consider VoIP phones...as long as they don't require a yearly commitment (google: voip fcc). but, like m2 said, it relies on your electricity. if you're having it for the sole purpose of babysitter in-case-of-emergency type situations, i'd probably opt for a landline, or make sure somehow there's a cell phone up for use. the reliability of a cell or landline in worst case scneraios wins over voip...especially if the babysitter doesn't understand the whole "batteries not included" concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bubblegum Bandit May 5, 2006 Author Share Bubblegum Bandit Member May 5, 2006 like m2 said, it relies on your electricity. if you're having it for the sole purpose of babysitter in-case-of-emergency type situations, i'd probably opt for a landline, or make sure somehow there's a cell phone up for use. the reliability of a cell or landline in worst case scneraios wins over voip...especially if the babysitter doesn't understand the whole "batteries not included" concept. Hmmm....I was/am aware that if the power is out the phone is out. But I hadn't thought about an emergency situation like that. Just trying to get around the price of the landline vs the VoIP line. We will stilll have two cells. That's a given, we are just too spoiled with them. Another thought, which is years down teh road, but eventually, as every young kid does, she will want to yammer on the phone for endless hours. So I'd be looking at an unlimited plan. So, am I going to be able to use my current Modem that I own, or am I going to end up having to rent a modem from them? I guess that's another question that I assume will end up piling on fees for modem rental. I understand what you're saying about the backfeed situation. Makes sense. However I was thinking along the lines of one of those cordless that has a couple of extra handsets....which, again, need batteries/electricity to work. My s-i-l has vonage and I guess my wife has had trouble talking to her several times. Usually they just hang up and call right back and its fine. But its an annoying inconvience in her mind. Those are the kinds of things I was asking about how well they work and the progression of technology wise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zerodamage May 5, 2006 Share Guest zerodamage Guests May 5, 2006 I've had Vonage for a year now. Only outage was when a drunk driver took out a telephone pole and the cable line. Other than that, no outages. Twice had to reset the free linksys router/phone device that they sent to me. Wouldn't ever go back to a LAN line after having Vonage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ConGregation May 6, 2006 Share ConGregation Member May 6, 2006 I have used Vonage for a couple of years. It is my only phone. My cable is pretty solid so not much internet downtime. And my neighbors are close... Something you might want to consider is sunrocket. $199/year and right now they have a special so you get the second year free. They have all the features of Vonage and I think the setup fee is small (not sure but I think it was 35.00). I could not tell you about quality or service but don't seem to hear much barking about it on message boards. I heartily recommend Vonage. Great service and great price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acid-Flux May 7, 2006 Share Acid-Flux Member May 7, 2006 Ive been using Vonage for about a year and a half, and I would HIGHLY recommend it. Either that or any other VoIP service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfsblood May 7, 2006 Share Wolfsblood Member May 7, 2006 (edited) My wife and I also use the TIme Warner Digital phone service, and have never had any porbs with it. Any old phone will work fine with it. But like you know, if you have no power, you have no phone. We also use skype from time to time, but not to call other people's phones, that costs money. I used skype to talk to an old college friend in Finland a few months ago (I live in Ohio) for over 3 hours, and it was free because he had it on his computer too. Sound quality: perfect. Better than our old phone service supplied by sbc (hate them). If you have the option to go with something like TWC Digital phone, I say jump on it. Edited May 7, 2006 by Wolfsblood Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AIMbot 2.0 BETA Tester May 8, 2006 Share AIMbot 2.0 BETA Tester Member May 8, 2006 well i should be your point of contact for this I work for Time Warner Cable in the tier 3 department which deals with Digital Phone and Road Runner issues. Can i have admin long enough to ban this drain on society!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunk May 8, 2006 Share Lunk Member May 8, 2006 Or you can do this. Call your local phone provider. And tell them you want just plain ol' dialtone with unlimited local calling. No call waiting, no caller id, no voicemail, nada, zip, nothing. Just some dialtone. Should be less than $25 a month. And another thing, if they ask you if you want the line maintenance fee (like 2 or 3 bucks a month) tell them no. 1- how often does the wiring in your house go bad? 2- I believe you're quite capable of fixing it yourself. Do this and make all your LD(long distance) calls with the cell phone. Just my 2 cents from a man who has been in the Telecommunications Business for 19+ years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Dunlavy May 10, 2006 Share J. Dunlavy Member May 10, 2006 VoIP is awesome, but I fear network neutrality may be lost... thus harming this infant technology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.