I know almost nothing about VOIP as well, but I do know that you do not have to have cable specifically. You can do voip over DSL as well.
A friend of mine had VOIP early on, and I told him to stop calling me because the sound quality was so bad. Eventually, after several new cable modems, visits from the cable guy, and a new line run from the pole to the house, his sound quality now sounds as good as regular phone. Also, consider if your cable goes out on a regular basis. One location I lived in, the cable would go out pretty regularly so if I had voip over cable there, I would have been without a phone a lot of the time. Where I currently live, cable has been pretty stable. As an aside, for those who have ditched there land lines completely for cell, there are systems you can get that patch your cell into your home phone so that you can come home, put your cell in a docking station, and then use any phone in your house through the cell phone. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081
