I Hope this isn't too off-topic, but I am investigating broadband telephone service and thought I might get some advice from the list.
Me too! :)
We currently have two POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines. I'm thinking it might be nice to be able to dump one. That would save us $20/mo plus LD charges.
I have done some investigating and the cost factor is a sure winner, especially for someone like me who plans on logging up to 2,000 minutes a month of long distance calls. Anyone using it, and how do you rate it? And to keep it somewhat on topic, are there any problems using with a Mac? Some plans ask for OSX, some for OS9x as long as you use I.E. 5x. I am using 9.2.2 on a G3 with I.E. 5.1.7 right now, and will upgrade my hardware if I have to.
Are you looking for a telephony application that runs on your Mac? Or standalone handsets that just do VoIP (voice over IP) thru your LAN?
One downside to all this is reliability:
1) Coax-based connectivity is nowhere near the basic reliability of POTS. In the biz, we talk about POTS often being 5-nines - uptime of 99.999% (a bit over 5 minutes of downtime per year). The cables have yet to even approach 98% uptime (174 hours of downtime per year).
2) It all goes away when your power is out. So you still need a POTS line, or maybe an cellular, for emergency calls, etc.
3) Few ISPs support the prioritization protocols currently. So your voice "conversation" can be interrupted - gaps etc - now and then.
- Dan.
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