Thank for getting back to me, I finally got the REAL price for Comcast
service, forget it! I'm looking into other options, probably DSL, who
knows I may crawl under the Dial-up rock :-o
On 5/20/08, Ben Barrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My VoIP keeps working when the local power goes out, so long as my UPS holds
> up my networking equipment.
> I am registered with E911 as well, and they called me back since my street
> address does not map well and they confirmed my physical home's location
> beyond my satisfaction (although thankfully I've never had to use the
> service yet, knock wood).
> So what else was missing or less-than-optimal with "normal" VoIP? I have a
> strong distaste for comcast's sideband implementation -- obviously it is a
> good engineering choice for them, and also serves the vast majority of the
> userland market... but I wanted a VoIP service I could use flexibly,
> re-route and reconfigure as I saw fit.... as a geek. I *also* wanted
> something I could use out of the box, something reliable and not subject to
> the mere whims of my late-night software reconfigurations.
>
> I have only had two or three minor instances of call quality degradation
> over the two years of service I've gotten, and my provider [ViaTalk] is also
> asterisk-friendly and will allow flexible end-user options like ring-through
> to a soft-phone while traveling, and so forth. I'd love to get a referral
> if anyone is going to sign up with ViaTalk, please contact me off-list.
> They have a free year deal for new customers which is quite a bargain. They
> ship a LinkSys Phone adaptor pre-configured, so you only need plug it into
> your LAN and your POTS phone when it arrives :)
> There are a lot of other providers out there, and most of my info is about 2
> years old since dropped my qworst line then, and have beenb happily humming
> along ever since.
> I do remember seeing a fairly volatile VoIP market then, and suspect that a
> big risk with any of many smaller providers is *still* whether they'll be
> staying in business... so, points for Comcast and Skype there...
>
> Skype makes all the people I've suggested it to very happy, although it
> seems a bit inter-webby to me; however I've read a few interesting bits
> about plugins and re-routing of calls -- looks much easier than even the
> bootable gui'ed pbx/telephony distros, although 'doze-centric on the
> extensibility end when I had looked (~2 yrs ago?).
> For a lot of ("most") computer desktop users, the type of folks who have a
> cellphone and either miss their home phone or want to ditch it, I think
> Skype with the $25/yr SkypeOut service is a good fit for the low-end... they
> can call out to save their cell-plan minutes and/or for discounted
> international, and if they can learn to travel with a thumb drive and
> headset (I also plug portable firefox a lot).
>
> ~ben
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 2:38 PM, marbux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 10:47 AM, wes morgan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > I have had the phone/internet/cable bundle for about 2 1/2 years and no
>> > problems.
>> >
>>
>> Ditto for approximately the same amount of time, although I recall
>> some minor glitches when their Eugene area phone service was new. It
>> seems to be pretty stable now.
>>
>> The big advantages of Comcast telephony or a traditional POTS over
>> VOIP telephony are that that service (hopefully) doesn't go down when
>> the local electrical power system goes out and the 911 service is way
>> better, e.g., an open line can be quickly traced to a street address.
>>
>> As I understand the situation, VOIP can still leave you in the lurch
>> when you need it most, a deciding factor for one who has reached the
>> stage of his life when the ability to rapidly summon ambulance service
>> at any time is an important consideration.
>>
>> I've tried Skype, but found it frustrating because of fluctuating
>> volume and rapid decay of audio when a friend in Germany I frequently
>> need to work with is patched into a 3-way or larger number of
>> participating nodes. I have no idea whether such problems are common
>> to VOIP in general, but I decided that email or chat were far less
>> frustrating to me for such purposes. .
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Marbux
>> _______________________________________________
>> EUGLUG mailing list
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>> http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
>>
>
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