Ditch the landline?

[craigb]

I've had a bit of a hunt around in the archives and can't find any direct hits so apologies if this has been asked before.

I have a cable internet connection with Optus and I'm considering ditching my land line rental (also with Optus) to run the home phones through VoIP.

Have any of you done this?

If so, would you do it again? What VoIP provider do you use?

A mate has VoIP with his wireless internet connection but is not really that satisfied with it. That's down to his wireless connection though I think.

I'm hoping it would be better over cable.

So, what's the story?

[Wood Butcher]

I had a VOIP phone and didn't think it was too bad except it was bad when someones was surfing the net while I was on the phone. I did only have a 512k dsl connection so that may not be a problem if you have the speed of cable. I must admit if I could get cable here I wouldn't hesitate to ditch the landline and go with Voip with my mobile as a backup in case of power failure or cable malfunction.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

For various reasons, I disable my cable modem when it's not actively in use.

Not a problem normally, but every now'n'again (rare, but annoying when it happens) it can take up to 20 minutes or so for Optus to allocate me an address so I can go online. At least with a land-line, you know the exchange is there every time you pick up the handpiece.

[Cliff Rogers]

..... At least with a land-line, you know the exchange is there every time you pick up the handpiece....

Unless you live in the hills like we do.

[craigb]

At least with a land-line, you know the exchange is there every time you pick up the handpiece.

Well yeah I see your point but living in an urban area, if it was an emergency you'd just go to the mobile.

One really important consideration here is that we must be able to keep our landline number. Can this be done with VoIP?. A friend was telling me tonight that you can't, you have to accept a number from the VoIP's provider's pool of numbers. Is that true?

[echnidna]

As soon as I get sattelite or wireless bye bye bigpuddle & cohorts

[joe greiner]

It depends. I'd verify keeping or losing the landline number with the provider, not just a friend. It seems to me there'd be a conflict if you had both services.

Upover here, landline emergency calls (911) automatically map the calling location. I don't think they have it worked out for wireless yet.

Joe

[Eli]

I currently use both Skype and Vonage (a yank VOip service). Skype is fantastic for the price, and you should give it a try first. There are many different configurations in terms of handsets and headsets (even a wifi hotspot phone), and you can choose many numbers in many different countries, which makes it cheap for whoever's calling you a lot, as you can buy a number that is local to them. I have an LA number, and our friends can call and leave a voicemail. Downside would be sometimes conn'n isn't perfect, but you can call computer-computer for free, and all the other calls are about $.02/min or less. You can also use video with it, although ichat (mac) is better. It's entirely computer based, which means your phone is with you all the time if you have a laptop. Really saved us a huge hassle and literally hundreds of dollars in international calls during our move. There is a cost of $38/year for the phone number, which includes voicemail, but no monthly charge. You buy $10 at a time's worth of credit to call 'out' to landlines. So that's the cheapest solution I know of, and in the two months since we started using it, it's kept getting better. In the last month, my entire family (stateside) has gone Skype, and it's common to now have hour long video calls for nothing.
Vonage is a bit of a different story, but likely closer to what you'll find in a 'conventional' VOip service. You get a dedicated modem, which has a telephone out jack and is downstream from your router. Our service was pretty good, but it started at $25/ month and has kept climbing while Vonage defends itself in court against Verizon (conv'l telephone Co.), who has claimed patent infringement and been awarded damages. Since I started using it, the network provider has also been given the right to tax the company for usage of it's networks, again the reverse 'savings' is passed on to the consumer. It's currently $34/mo, nowhere near as cheap as Skype, not as good, and right now, my modem is in our shipment, so I have the number forwarding to our skype number anyway. I can check voicemails online with this service as well, and they do provide emergency forwarding (In LA). I would expect Telstra to eventually squeeze whoever the leaders are in this industry american style so as not to lose their stranglehold on the network. Having said all that, we got an Optus home number anyway. Skype has no local emergency service, I guess you wouldn't miss it until you need it.

[Eli]

All services mentioned above were over broadband cable, both over there and over here. I've been using a G4 powerbook for the Skype connection, usually any processing your PC is doing while you're 'on the phone' does introduce glitches into the conversation. We have had feedback loop problems, but usually everybody on both ends wears a headset now. Minimum you'd need one person (you most likely) to wear one to make it work really well. So take "fantastic" with a grain of salt......

and one last note, with Vonage we were able to keep our number, but this was because of US legislation in the mobile industry that allowed you to keep a number between mobile providers. This spread to be all providers, cellular or landline. I really doubt, given my experience so far with Australian telephony market, that anyone will do this for you, but I could be wrong, I haven't looked into it at all.

[rrich]

Interesting thoughts...

I have Verizon local telco service and recently I just changed from TV cable (Time Warner) to Verizon "cable TV" a.k.a. FiOS and internet service at 5.5 MB down and more than I'll ever use up. Time Warner offered telco service but I declined. Total cost of Verizon is about $10 less per month HOWEVER the service is over fiber optics to the house.

When considering the switch, one of the stupid things that I noticed was that the phone just hangs on the wall and just works. We've been in this house for over 30 years and we have only had two problems with the phone. Both times it was in the Verizon part of things. This was a concept that that Time Warner didn't understand. Since installation, FiOS just works.

There is a trend here of people dropping their land lines and going with the cell phone as their only phone service. Many of the cell phone services offer many minutes bundled into their contracts. (SWMBO and I have 400 minutes bundled with our two phones.) Here, on a cell phone there are no additional fees for calls made to any number in the 50 states. SWMBO has a friend in Alaska and they regularly burn a couple of hours of minutes each month. I don't know if cell only is as a viable option in OZ as it is here.

[dzcook]

but what would you do in a power cut ie here if power is out no moblie no computor so no phone with out landline so emergency calls etc cant get thru ? just a thought maybe different in a city

[craigb]

Well if there's a power cut the mobile will still work (so long as the battery is charged )

[Wood Butcher]

I don't know if this is true or not but I was once told that so long as a phone line has not been physically disconnected at the exchange you can still use it to call 000 even if the line is not active.

May be a crock but you never know.

[Vernonv]

From what I understand, if you want to keep your "normal phone number" (as opposed to your voip phone number) you need to still be paying for a phone connection.

So you may not be paying for calls over your landline, but you will need to pay for the connection, so that you can keep the number.

Incoming calls (to your normal phone number) will work as normal (i.e. not over voip), whereas outgoing calls can either be normal or voip.

I would assume this to be the case for both Telstra or Optus infrastructure.

[craigb]

From what I understand, if you want to keep your "normal phone number" (as opposed to your voip phone number) you need to still be paying for a phone connection.

Ah well, that kind of defeats my purpose then as it was primarily the line rental cost that I wanted to do away with.