Howdy,
On 18/06/2005, at 5:04 AM, Shay in the wamug Digest 693t wrote:
With all this discussion of IP telephony, I thought I'd suggest that
if you're installing an IP phone (ie something that looks like a
normal phone handset) beware that some of the IP services do not
handle emergency call numbers such as 000 correctly, nor provide
location information to emergency services. This has already resulted
in lawsuits and deaths in the US.
You may think you'd never use the IP phone to try to call emergency,
but you may not be the person making the call.
Also, unless you've got a UPS, your IP phone won't work in a
blackout. In fact your ISP may not even have uninterruptable power at
the exchange or their office, in which case it won't matter if you've
got a UPS at home. :)
Have fun
Shay
Yes. I believe that legislation compelling VoIP providers to provide
terminations to the US 911 is now getting drafted. How that will
affect the cost of the service will be interesting to see. And how it
can be guaranteed in the light of power provision is more than
interesting. But I don't know how telephony is regulated in the US and
they may not have the same setup as here with Telstra.
Good thought experiment Onno.
And if you value the commons, you might want to factor in the cost of
bandwidth which peer-to-peer thangs like Skype commandeer for routing
calls.
The last time I looked at VoIP on Skype, there was a lot of evidence
that some users were being unwittingly co-opted as "supernodes" for
such routing traffic. What costs would be accounted for in this
situation?
Does Skype have a bundled bandwidth limiter now to ensure "member"
control of routing?
I've tried a few of the chat/VoIP utilities, such as faktortel and
firefly in Australia, and a few of the os ones who'd allow a cheap test
run. Also plugged into Skype for a test run.
The codecs are, aside from Skype's which is obviously the reason for
their huge popularity because it is outstanding, just adequate for
anything except a perfect network connection. And you can forget a
rational chat if your connection is to someone on a radio network.
In chat mode, you rely on your network connection much less than you do
for terminating at the POTS system you are calling to, but you are also
faced with Shay's problem of needing to put in constant fiddling. And
you always remain at the mercy of the network beyond the copper wire.
I got tired very quickly of trying to configure family and friends
remotely and returned to the wonderful voice quality of the POTS
provided by Telstar (sic); after all, I already pay a gouging rental
for connection to it, so I might as well take advantage of the superb
quality. The cost is of course relative, as they say. VoIP, for my
experience, takes me back 25 years to those infernal echo-chamber
overseas calls. And to all the manual mediation and tweaking you had to
do just to connect. Free sh*te. And another few years before that, it
was like that for interstate calls. Calls to mobile terminations are a
surrealistic experience, putting it nicely.
I hope it improves because I'm getting more calls via packet-loss echo
chamber on my Telstar phone every month and I've hung up a few times
out of pity for the caller. It seems that no amount of telling them
the quality is poor seems to get through to some enthusiastic adopters.
Disclaimer: I have less than perfect hearing.
Nancy M
