Communications and VoIP

Ever since the Bell System was broken up in the 1980's Americans have been looking for quality phone service. Oh, I know monopolies are evil and sure it was a good thing that Ma Bell was broken up. But, face it since then we have not seen consistent quality in our phone service whether we're talking on our cell phones, a land line or an internet based phone.

The breakup of the Bell System also gave birth to the one company who has given me the most grief in all my life, the company that would eventually evolve into Verizon. I could fill multiple columns describing the conflicts that I have had with this company, but I will save you from that. I bring this up because my venture into VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) was prompted because the quality of my traditional land line Verizon phone has become so bad, that I could not make a phone call. This was around 2002, Cablevision had yet to introduce their telephone product and I signed up with AT&T CallVantage. I immediately experienced excellent phone service at a much cheaper price. That's how I operated until 2008 when AT&T decided to leave the stand alone VoIP market and I had to look for a new provider.

I began my search on the internet of course and found an excellent discussion board DSL Reports. I found out that the VoIP industry had grown in the six years since I first went to VoIP. There were a number of failures as well as a number of successes. I read through the reviews of the various VoIP providers and found PhonePower to be a great value and had an excellent reputation for service. 

I signed up for the two-year special which was a great deal. For $199 (plus applicable taxes about $235 total) I got unlimited calling nationwide and Canada, 1 hour international calling, a 2nd "cloned line." plus tons of other features. The cloned line is a second phone line with the same number that allows you to have two separate calls going on at the same time. You also get a free softphone application that allows you to take your phone with you as you travel by way of your laptop computer. If you use the shameless Amazon advertisement to the right, you would also get a nifty "zippy" USB attachment which allows you to use any computer to make and receive calls from your home phone. Don't worry, you get back the $79.99 as a scredit towards your phone service so, you're not paying a premium to use the link. How cool is that? We've used the softphone application from Mexico and the quality was equal to calling from our home in Long Island.

One of the other services that we've looked at was the Optimum Voice by Cablevision. I signed my Dad up for this service and I do recommend it for those looking for a basic service and not too much into the features. Not that Optimum Voice is short on features. It does offer a full service Voicemail system, an excellent web interface, features such as Call Forwarding, 3-Way Calling, and Caller ID. It will even display the caller ID on your Television while your watching the program! Actually, for me that's a deterrent since I usually watch my shows time delayed through Tivo so I can skip the commercials. But for my Dad this works great! The price is a good value as well especially if you get the Triple Play. For my Dad it only cost $1/month more once all the discounts were added in. Although, you have to remember to call them back each year to ask them to renew the special promotion.

Optimum Voice didn't meet my needs in two specific areas. First International Calling. While they will be very happy to sell you an International Plan at competitive rates, the calls have to be made through a special number, like a calling card. My wife and I are frequent international dialers. So, this was a deal breaker even though we will sometimes use Skype to make our calls, we didn't want our home service to be so cumbersome. The other area was features. PhonePower offers so many more features for the money including one feature that AT&T had that I really liked. That was a Call Block List. This way based on the Caller ID of the incoming call, I can send the caller straight to Voicemail or to a bug-off message. This works great on telemarketers and politicians around election time.

So depending on your needs, I think both PhonePower and Optimum both offer a great service at a great value. They are both dependable and have provided good, reliable service for us these past two years. One thing that many people worry about with VoIP is what happens in a power outage. Yes, the phone switching equipment is in your house and if the power goes down so does your equipment. For me this wasn't an issue since my Verizon landline didn't work on a nice day with the power on. But two things can help in a power outage.

1. PhonePower lets you designate a roll-over number. Should your network go down, the calls are automatically routed to this number which could be your cell phone or any other number.
2. Purchase and use a power backup similar to the one pictured in the advertisement to the right. (Yes, I know another shameless plug). I have my phone adapter, my cable modem, router and a cordless phone base plugged in to a power backup. This way, should power go down I have about five hours of power to keep me going. Yes, even when the power goes out in your area, in my experience over the past 8 years the Cablevision signal is still running on the Coax Cable. You just need power for the equipment.

So, I hope this helps some of you looking into VoIP as a home phone alternative. If you're still not sure, drop by the DSL Reports website and check out the reviews about all the companies. I still post there, especially in the PhonePower forum, you'll find a lot of good people there with good advice.

Next up on the blog: I'll look at some alternative communication programs like Skype and MagicJack.