Checking into those sites now, thinking about going with it for our office phones.

I hate our local TELCO soooooooooooooooooooooooo much
that I REFUSE to get a land line in the office. We all have cell's anyway. But lack of FAX and Answering Machine is a bit of a downer, this might be just the solution I'm looking for!


Oh yea...50!

:thumbsup hey thanks guys, ive been looking for something like this for along time, but never really knew a place to get it, and puremeds you should have a signup cause i used your link when i signed up just now :winkwink:

There are many VoIP type services out there, and they are animals you can't put them all in the same cage.

Some are good, and a whole lot ae bad.

I have a service called Vonage. With vonage the call quality has been crystal clear. Vonage is dif from many so called VoIP solutions. Vonage uses Cisco hardware that they send you when you sign up.
I also play Flight Sim online and there has been no problem with
high ping.

I looked into VoIP but it is not feasible for DSL if you have mutliple lines that you might use simultaneously.

The service I looked at requires 196k upload speed for a quality connection. My business DSL is 385k upload, so 2 lines used at the same time would max out my connection.

The other sucky thing, is that you need seperate VoIP hardware for each line. So I would need 3.

Anybody hear of better solutions?

No, the vonage people will not ship the Cisco ATA outside of USA, However the service will work anywhere around the world, there is a dsl or cable modem internet connection to tap into.

They only offer phone numbers for USA area codes and cities. This means you will have a US phone number ringing at your house in canada.

Being in Canada, and/or any other country, what you will need to do is use a USA shipping address, and have someone at the usa address forward it to you.

I know of several people in europe, asia, and australia who have gotten their vonage equipment (CISCO ATA & self install kit) this way.


NOTE: Hey Maz, hit me on ICQ.

Ok, I misspoke before, both of my friends had Vonage and they boy dropped it because the service was dropping calls for no reason and the quality of the connection was inconsistent. Sounds like you're having a good experience though and that's all that matters.

Brad

Dear Brad,

Thank you very much for the update. it's always good to hear others experience with this stuff.
Do you remember vox chat or fire talk?

I have been using vonage for about 2 months at home and here are my thoughts:

I think think that the quality of the service realies heavily on the quality of the network setup at your broadband provider, if your packets take a million hops bouncing around inside their network before they are sent out, your service quality will probably suck. I guess that latency is the big vaiable in the system, if latency is high, you probably won't be happy.
I get my broadband via a wireless system, there is a tower a few miles from my house, and I have an antenna on my roof. When I signed up for vonage I was getting about 512 down and 384 up broadband speeds. I wasn't really happy with vonage at all, it was a lot like talking on a cell phone, that sort of echo-y static-y shit that you get from yoru cell when you are in a fringe area. So I talked with vonage and I talked with my broadband provider and tried to work it out. During the process of trying to figure out the problem my broadband provider gave me a deal on a 1mbit per sec connection. Then my vonage problems went away. I was inclined to belive that throwing bandwidth at the problem is what fixed it, but I think that they may have also changed the route that my packets take through their network as well. But now I am very happy with the quality of the calls. The system still isn't perfect, I have some voice mail problems, and occasionally need to power cycle the ATA. But there are a lot of really cool features as well that I think make up for it.

My advice is this; if you are looking for a perfect, cheap, never have a problem replacement for your telco phone, you might want to wait just a little while longer.

If you are a gadget freak and get off on using cool new toys and don't mind that you have to take the time to get the system tuned properly you will probably like vonage a lot, I do.

There ya go, my 2 cents.

LOL Hey revbuddylove... You described me.
BTW, Thanks for the review of the vonage service. I am always curious about how others are doing with their service.

Do you reccomend power cycle the ATA? If Yes, How often? I have never done it, although some have mentioned it before on another forum.

My ISP capps me at 15K upload, will that be good enough to keep a good quaility? if I check it out more, it would be when they get a 514 number or offer 800 numbers, or toll free

Please see http://www.pulverinnovations.com. It is called the Internet Phone Patch. Retail price is: $199.95.

As I understand it calls can be passed back and forth between remote locations, and calls are handled as if everybody is in same building.

Example, business owner is in phoenix, he has tech guys in peoria, and toronto...and maybe a sales guy in detroit. he might even have graphic guys in los angeles and cleveland.

callers would call one number, and be able to select from a audio menu, or enter a virtual extension to reach the "department" they want. To me this sound like a service that would be useful to some in this industry. if anybody has any more specific info, please post.

I a also making some inquiries about one of those virtual call director type systems. I hear there is one that goes for about $25 monthly.