* Readers share their thoughts on whether VoIP is ready for prime time
Readers have chimed in loud and clear about my recent piece questioning whether VoIP was ready for prime time. Some say I should dive right in and use VoIP for business, while others are wary of the quality they have experienced and would shy away from it for a professional line.
One VoIP proponent boasts about call quality and ancillary benefits. “I read your article…and could not disagree more,” he says. “I have been using Vonage for 18 months now and have been extremely satisfied with the results. Calls are never choppy. Clarity is better than a hard-wired phone. If I call another Vonage customer, there is no background noise at all. In fact, when they quit talking, I have to ask if they are still there because there is no sound.”
He is also a big fan of the Vonage VoIP features. “All are changeable from a Web-based interface. This means I can take off call waiting while on a call without interrupting the conversation. It also means I can check my e-mail from any computer with Internet access…I have a great, inexpensive telephone service that WORKS!”
Another Vonage user also lauds the readiness of VoIP. “I made the switch from a traditional landline to a VoIP line (Vonage over cable) about a year ago and have had virtually no problems with it,” he says. He says the sound quality is as good as his landline and it doesn’t have the problems with rain outages that he had with his traditional connection. “One benefit of Vonage is you can set up a backup number [such as a cell phone] that the VoIP number automatically forwards to if the network connection goes down, power goes out, or VoIP becomes unusable for any other reason. I will never go back to my old landline provider.”
An IT pro from a small gas transmission company says VoIP has helped address issues with “after-hours” work, including on-call rotation and technical assistance requests.
Previously, employees used dial-up lines for evening and weekend data tasks and company cell phones for calls. “Remote access was slow and cumbersome…and cell quality for many of us is unacceptable in our homes,” he says. They now have high-speed access – over cable or DSL – for data, and piggyback VoIP on top.
“The majority of VoIP calls are much better quality than cell coverage in our respective areas, long-distance charges are no longer a variable (included in access fee each month), and VPN access makes remote access and e-mail access nearly like being there,” he says.
Another positive is that VoIP-to-VoIP call minutes with the provider are free. Finally, he says that there is no minimum contract length so he could cancel at any time.
He does concede that DSL is lower speed than cable in his area and has more voice quality issues on those lines. “You do not want to be browsing, sending pipe-choking e-mails, etc. while you’re talking on your VoIP line,” he warns.
He adds that users should set up an uninterruptible power supply in case of power outages.
Another reader agrees the key to using VoIP for business is bandwidth. “First I had VoIP] on DSL with 768K downstream and 128K upstream. I kept playing with the quality settings, trying to get it better. My wife tried it once and wouldn’t try it again. I used it selectively for work,” he says.
“I was considering upgrading to cable for more bandwidth, when [my provider] introduced fiber to the home in my neighborhood. I now have 5M downstream and 1.5M upstream. VoIP quality is flawless. We turned off the long distance on our [landline] and the whole family now uses the VoIP for long distance,” he says.
A reader whose husband is currently out of state says she is relying heavily on VoIP to stay connected. She’s in California and he is in New York so she uses VoIP on one end to keep communications costs down. “The voice quality and reliability have been excellent,” she says.
However, she admits she’s not ready to fully commit. “I’m not ready to abandon my POTS line. My underlying broadband is kind of flaky – one outage for every 24 hours as well as some shorter ones. I dislike the idea of losing my phone when the power goes out and I also don’t believe e911 support is where I want it. It probably makes a big difference in quality depending on who your provider is.”
Finally, another reader says he thinks VoIP is ready for “some” users. “My experience has shown that it is not suitable for someone that is unfamiliar with at the least the basics of IT networking. In my case, I needed to do a substantial amount of tweaking on my Linksys router to get the service to work correctly. The tweaks were mostly concerned with configuring the QoS settings so a large enough chunk of my DSL bandwidth would be reserved for voice. Once the service is tuned properly, it works very well,” he says.
[Note: Users of other services such as SunRocket and AT&T CallVantage also wrote in about their positive experiences.]
