Digital Telephone

[justleesa]

Hi there!

I heard about digital telephone, oceanic cable is offering something - did a search and found a lot more, and I'm thinking of getting it. So I was wondering if anybody already has it (from any company) and if they are happy with it? Is it the great deal that it looks like it is and was the change worth it? or would you have rather stayed with your old provider?

[Bill51]

Are you talking about Voice over IP telephone where you use your cable Internet connection for your phone service?

[justleesa]

Are you talking about Voice over IP telephone where you use your cable Internet connection for your phone service?

Yes. Either cable or, from what I understand, some offer it over the DSL line too.

[BabyDuck]

i thought about it but didn't do it. i'm leary of not having phone if i don't have electricity. electrical outs don't happen as often now as when i was a child, but still happen. i even still have a corded phone in case i can't use the cordless ones. others have said i could just use my cell if there wasn't electricity, but if there was a hurricaine or whatever, i would hate to run my gas out of my car just to charge my phone since mine doesn't charge unless the engine is going. of course, phones could also be out separately, but i decided to worry about that tomorrow. my experience & .02...

[Grajan]

We have our phone service from Time Warner Cable, bundled with our Internet and digital cable. It is VoiP although not touted as such.

It is much cheaper, unlimited US & Canada for $34 p/m and insanely low rates for overseas. Sound quality is very good. The modem has a backup battery so you keep some phone service in a power out - we have two cellphones as well.

Only downside is that, if you do have problems, TWC customer service absolutely SUCKS - hours of listening to them market the product that does not work to you followed by intensly frustrating conversations with undertrained and probably underpaid CSA's. I guess SWBell was not mch better in that regard.....

i thought about it but didn't do it. i'm leary of not having phone if i don't have electricity. electrical outs don't happen as often now as when i was a child, but still happen. i even still have a corded phone in case i can't use the cordless ones. others have said i could just use my cell if there wasn't electricity, but if there was a hurricaine or whatever, i would hate to run my gas out of my car just to charge my phone since mine doesn't charge unless the engine is going. of course, phones could also be out separately, but i decided to worry about that tomorrow. my experience & .02...

[redrover]

Justleesa,
A friend is using Skype from Oahu and thinks it’s great. My brother just got the Vonage IPphone and it’s working great – long talks from CA to me here in HI, very clear transmission with no lag. (Our Verizon cell to cell is good too with a slight lag.) He’s in some odd location where with only one internet cable provider (adelphia.net) and no other options like wireless or DSL. He got the Vonage at Circuit City. He did have a lot of hassle getting it configured right, said he finally got a CS person that knew what they were doing and it was a snap.

I’m on Time Warner Earthlink Cable and been looking for Vonage to be available in HI for several years now. Had mixed results with customer service, no advertising but initial ineffective help, the more recent was fine, CS has usually been from the Philippines. (re: wireless router connection for second computer, major resolution was a Netgear WGT624 router from CostCo.)

As for the emergency aspect, there is Cell and I have a UPS (power in this Island is very surge prone, we nave no storage facility so brownouts are common as well as outage.) I didn’t know about a backup battery for VOIp, that sounds great.

Have you checked for area code availability? It was looking like if I chose an available area code, say my brother’s in CA, I could use Vonage, didn’t really explore it though. I think there is actually one connection; Roadrunner and any other provider is run on Roadrunner ‘lines’.
I’d live to hear any HI options.

[Bill51]

Yes. Either cable or, from what I understand, some offer it over the DSL line too.

I would stay away from VoIP on DSL unless you have very good stable service. I’ve seen too many DSL providers that throttle the upload speeds to the point voice quality and reliability suffers.

A few things to look for and keep in mind is you should probably put a UPS on your cable router and all the VoIP equipment so you can at least have stable service during power fluctuations and most cable providers keep the signal up during 15-30 minute outages. For longer outages you need a backup such as a cell phone. Find out if the provider offers 911 service because you never know when you or a guest at your house may need to make an emergency call and they might not be aware that 911 doesn’t work at your house. Look for a company that offers phone number portability so you can keep your existing phone number, and keep it again if you decide the service isn’t what you want and prefer to switch back.

[redrover]

Justleesa,
I just looked at some of this a bit more. Earthlink does have free internet calls to other Earthlink ‘free internet’ subscribers, and with Skype basic (free) you can only call other Skype installed computers. There are other options with charges. Then I looked in TWC ‘hawaii’ ( http://www.timewarnercable.com/corpo...millilani.html ) and looked a bit at Digital Telephone. Looking like available but no fax yet, says coming soon. Option availability could be by location, a closer looksee was by zipcode (vs Vonage was by area code and prefix.)

[hnladue]

I have Time Warner Road Runner and Vonage. So far no trouble. We have a generator so no issues with the phone going out. Even during the ice storms we get, I've never lost time warner. I have however lost the phone lines. Also if TW is down, the phone will automatically forward to my cell phone. I'll be nice during vacation too to be able to forward the phone to our cottage and not miss any calls!

[MikeC]

One issue with this type of service is outages that the provider has. Where I live Comcast routinely has data outages around 2am. My cable modem just stops working, I can still watch TV. Yep, how many people get calls at 2am, but family emergencies aren't planned.

Another possible problem is that usually cable companies, at least where I worked, were third in line after the electric utility and the telephone company for access to poles after a storm. Takes longer to get service restored. Many communities consider electricity and telephone service essential services, CATV is not. Until the percentage of CATV subscribers who use VoIP gets much higher then cable will still be considered a "luxury".

Finally, can you even get DSL without subscribing to phone service from your local provider?? DSL is on the phone line, if the line is not active, how do you send data on it???