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sdbear
@bellsouth.net
| reply to jerryp
Re: Outages for me
I have had a "POTS" line with AT&T / Bellsouth for around 25 years and have one major problem, due to lightning damage; it took out about five blocks in my area and was repaired within 36 hrs. (the local C/O had to be replaced)
I have tried the VoIP service and don't like it.
I hear all of these companies claiming "lower prices"
Compared to standard land line, VoIP isn't worth it.
When you consider that most people pay on average of $45 for DSL/Broadband service and then have pay $30 of more for VoIP service, 45+30 = $75.00 for a phone line = Get Real People. | |
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| reply to fiberguy
Couldn't agree more on the "phone service" claim. It gripes my ass to pay USF fees on my Vonage line just so the "non toy" companies, as you put it, can feed at the public trough.
I think consumer broadband is reliable. From my perspective, the plant isn't the typical problem. Sure there are fiber cuts and storm damage but it's rare to have an outage related to an actual plant issue. It's more likely that the outage is related to the "NOC staff spilled a cup of coffee" syndrome. This stems from either incompetence or a "best effort" attitude from the ISPs. They typically blow their own foot off with lack of redundant systems or careless maintenance.
Of course this attitude isn't just limited to ISPs. From my experience it's prevalent in most corporate environments (locally, MasterCard and some brokerage firms seem to get it.) Gone are the days when the mainframe never died and maintenance wasn't performed in the middle of the business day. (Where I work they actually had the UPS vendor performing maintenance over lunch on a Friday. The vendor did something wrong and the entire data center lost power. One would expect a $40B company to have the technical service talent to know you perform maintenance on the power systems during a quiet block time on Sunday morning. If there is no block time then the company should have an RDFed hot backup data center so that services can fail over if such maintenance goes wrong.)
One could use the excuse that today's services are much more complex and error prone than the mainframe of yesterday. However, somehow the car industry manages. Today's vehicles are far more reliable than ever even though complexity and customer demands always increase.
Considering even business class computing infrastructure, has anyone ever released v1.0 that works without the need to patch? And most problems requiring patch aren't minor issues. They usually lead to total failures. | |
fiberguy
My views are my own.
Premium
join:2005-05-20
| reply to rradina
Actually, while I agree that 3PV is is USUALLY not the MAIN issue for problems, 3PV is FAR from 5 9's. Vonage has had more problems, outage, etc that I know of than I ever have with POTS service in my entire life. And, to be honest, I've only had a POTS outage once ever...
I call it a toy, and will continue to, because of what it is. They DON'T have control of quality, reliability, etc. I also disagree that broadband today is a problem. Does it go down? yes.. is it perfect and running at peak efficiency all the time? HELL no... but, it's a residential service and was never intended to be a life line or a service with any kind of solid reliability to handle such apps as phone.
Many people on this site believe that the BB service they receive in their home for the price they do should run problem free and be as reliable, if not more, than business class services. The fact is, many business class services have problems as well. Now, put the two together. the expectation is that their residential broadband should never slow down and never go out - which is what business service SHOULD be, but isn't either.
Like you, I've had vonage from the beginning. I do like the service.. the price is OK for one line, expensive when you get into more than one line since they don't discount, but to be honest with you, since they can't stand by the service from stem to stern, I will still call it a toy of a service... Is the concept good? Sure... is it ready for prime time? Not in the least.
Another 'real' problem is that if companies like Vonage are going to market themselves as a "phone company" then they should have the same responsibility. I think that they should NOT be allowed to market themselves as such since they are not. Communications service? Sure.. Phone service? Phone company? no.. they aren't... not in the context in which people are expecting them to be. | |
rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| reply to fiberguy
Perhaps we should lay off calling third-party VOIP a toy and instead direct our efforts at the real problem -- consumer Internet access.
I would bet that five-nines percent of the time Vonage isn't the issue. I've had Vonage longer than most (Feb 2003) and I don't ever recall a problem that could not be traced back to poor ISP Internet performance, ISP outages, "Internet weather" events or a POS consumer-class router problem.
Granted, there's the famous Bible story about building your house upon the sand but I think it's unfair to cast such a low remark against third party VOIP when the problems rarely lie with them. They incur a lot of costs trying to support problems over which they have little control. They should be given a bit of praise for that. Even my cable company won't support me until I connect my computer directly to my cable modem! I know this doesn't comfort the consumer and they still experience something that doesn't work but I think your statements are extreme.
Your argument is similar to Unix folks that used to call x86 architecture a toy. Of course now that there are beefy X86 servers with lots of I/O throughput, MIPS, and they'll run Linux, the thumping of their chests isn't as prevalent. | |
fiberguy
My views are my own.
Premium
join:2005-05-20
| reply to jerryp
said by jerryp :
Maybe it's time to switch to another VoIP service, but to whom? Any suggestions? And do I really need to pay $30 a month (after fees, taxes and whatnot) for VoIP service? I could always get my VoIP service via Time Warner, but theirs costs a whopping $40 a month. Whoah!!
Two things wrong with that comment.
1) You're having problems with a VoIP provider and you're asking who to move to next? In your case, measure that by the least number of times they go down. While I've never had any outages (that I'm aware of) I still don't put full faith and credit in anything from a 3rd arty VoIP provider.
2) "Do I need to pay $30 a month".. wow! Unfortunately, around here you WILL get sympathy from people on the price of VoIP/Phone service here. Phone is a life line service and in my opinion nothing to shake the cheap stick at. The question to ask you is if you use long distance or not and how much? If you don't use long distance, then get a standard land line and call it a day. If you use long distance for more than 3 hours a month, then that "whopping $40" a month from Time Warner is ... *nothing* in the case of a phone bill.
The term VoIP phone service has become a slang term by many to define the 3rd party stand alone providers. Cable companies have never called their service "VoIP".. only SOME users do. I won't get into any debate that cable is VoIP.. it runs on that technology, I know. But, the two services are in NO comparison to each other as far as what you get for your money.
If you need a local dial tone, like a few calling features like call waiting, 3-way calling (does anyone use this any more? ) caller ID, voice mail or call forwarding along with a few hours (3 or more) a month of long distance including the intra lata long distance (the most expensive form) then $40 a month is nothing... A bill like that with Bell can/used to cost up wards to $70+ a month. And, the fact that companies like Vonage and Call Vantage came along with a toy telephone service starting around $24.95 - $29.95 does not mean that cable should drop their rate or that it sets the standard of phone bills. The two services do not compare.
The only thing that remains true about 3rd party voip is that many people get frustrated, sooner or later, with the service when ever they need service.. $15 more a month over a toy of a service (which I do subscribe to as well) is NOTHING when it compares to the issues you deal with on 3rd party.
But.. if you do find another, cheaper voip service (via talk for example) it will be interesting to see your future comments.
No matter what you pay for any voip service, and no matter how many reviews people post on any 3rd party voip product, one should NEVER need to "tinker" or "get working again" their phone service more than 1 time in a decade. | |
GoodDog
join:2000-07-03
Goshen, NY
 ·Vonage
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to jerryp
said by jerryp :
I could always get my VoIP service via Time Warner, but theirs costs a whopping $40 a month. Whoah!! When I spoke to TWC about phone service, they put me on a triple play package that worked out less then I was paying for Vonage and TWC TV and Internet service. | |
jerryp
| I've been having intermittent Vonage outages since Friday night. The light on the Vonage box randomly keeps turning yellow and there's nothing I can do when that happens.
It was out for hours and hours on Friday night, then all was fine until last night when it crapped out for hours on end again.
I haven't had any problems with it in the one year + that I've had Vonage, but I'm getting nervous now. Maybe it's time to switch to another VoIP service, but to whom? Any suggestions? And do I really need to pay $30 a month (after fees, taxes and whatnot) for VoIP service? I could always get my VoIP service via Time Warner, but theirs costs a whopping $40 a month. Whoah!! | |
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