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Review by djscal 
UPDATED: 87 days ago
member for 3.2 years, 43 visits, last login: 12 days ago
 Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
 $35 per month
 about 1 days
 "Better call quality and value than POTS"
 "Coax wiring to the digital phone unit must be pristine w/out splitters in the way"
 "Will save money over traditional phone service"
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(ratings match consensus)
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I was sick and tired of paying $67 a month to Verizon for my telephone line. This included unlimited local and long distance and taxes via the Verizon Freedom Value plan. Looking to save some money I started investigating VOIP options. I had used Vonage in the past for a business telephone line with poor results. Vonage often dropped calls, garbled voices and was not generally reliable over my Time Warner cable modem service. I also tried Vonage over a Verizon DSL line, which improved the quality and reliability of the service, however it still was not reliable enough to replace my home telephone line with.
After reading all of the reviews here, I decided to give Time Warner's digital phone service a try. While it does use VOIP technology, the calls are routed over Time Warner's private IP network versus going over the regular internet like with Vonage.
The installers came yesterday and did not speak English well which was a big worry for me. This is because I have a somewhat complicated telephone and network wiring situation at my house. After explaining how I wanted them to install the digital phone several times, they finally understood what I wanted. I wanted them to disconnect only one of the pairs from my unit to the wiring box outside. The other pair I wanted to remain connected so that I could maintain a naked dsl line from Verizon. I also wanted them to understand that one of my jacks was on that naked dsl pair and the other jacks in the house would be on the other pair which I wanted to be converted to digital phone service from a Verizon POTS line.
The intallers tried installing the digital phone line in my office which had a long coax run from the garage and was behind a couple of splitters. They got an ok (not great) signal with their testing equipment and began installing the digital phone at that location. After plugging in the line to the Arris voip modem that they brought they couldn't get a dial tone. After 45 minutes of troubleshooting I suggested that we try to install the modem in the garage where the coax lines come in from the street. I pointed to a single line coming in to the house (I have three coax lines coming in through the garage) with no splitter and suggested putting a splitter on that line and wiring the voip modem to that line. I thought they understood what I meant but instead began running a 4th new coax line from outside into my townhouse. Realizing what they were doing, I did not correct them as I thought having a dedicated line from outside to the digital voip modem would be the ideal situation. Long story short, after running the dedicated cable from outside to the modem, it fired up and immediately gave dial tone. They plugged the modem into one of the nearby jacks (after disconnecting voltage to my telephone line from outside) and I had digital phone service to all of the jacks in my house.
I have been using the digital phone service for only a day, however the call quality is actually better than my old Verizon POTS line. There is no delay or noise in the line and the voices are clear and loud. People can also hear me perfectly. The service should remain up even in a power outage because of the 6 hour battery that comes with the Arris voip modem that Time Warner delivered.
The nice thing about digital phone is that you get a whole bunch of features such as call waiting, caller id, three way calling, call forwarding included with the cost of the line. Of course you also get unlimited long distance calling as well.
Overall I'm very pleased with the digital phone so far. The features, the cost and the service has been excellent. The caveat is that your coax wiring in your residence must high quality and devoid of splitters before the Time Warner digital voip modem. If your call quality is not good, I would recommend running another coax line from outside directly to the voip modem such as what they did with my installation. You would have to have Time Warner come out and do that work of course. I will post updates if I have any problems with the service, or interruptions of service.
Update: Looking great after one week of service! No dropped calls. Perfect audio quality.
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Time Warner VOIP
