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bmize13
join:2006-04-17
Dallas, GA
 ·ViaTalk
edit:
October 3rd, @11:54AM
| Finally... My Take on VT
I've been reading here forever about the ups and downs of VT, and usually just enjoy the back-and-forth between uberfans and uberNOTfans. I've written that I enjoy the features of VT, and really don't want to trade in the Call Block feature for anything in the world. I LOVE sending callers to voicemail, and even found some humor in the bug that caused my Sis-in-law to be blacklisted. As we all learned on "The Facts Of Life," "you take the good, you take the bad, you take them all, and then you have" ViaTalk.
This morning, as I was meandering through my email, I noticed I had a voicemail from "TOLL FREE CALLER." All of these get sent straight to VM. MY wife insists on getting the email with the attachment, so I have to actually go to the site to listen. That's when I noticed it. On my Links bar in FireFox, I have several folders, including "Utilities," "Banking," "Bills," "Boards" (where this site is stored), and one other called, "Hobbies and Fun". It occurs to me that my phone service should probably go under the "Utilities" category, but I've stored it under "Hobbies and Fun." Freudian? Probably.
You see, while I *love* the feature set of VT, I simply don't rely on it as my end-all of phone service. I have a special needs child, and will not trust my 911 service to a company that has *lots* of problems with the ever-elusive, "Upstream Provider." I also have a wife with sisters who live in other states... They can deal with the occasional disconnect if it saves us all money in the long run.
I guess where I'm going is here; I have come to view VoIP (Not just VT, but ALL VoIP) much like Saturday Night Live in the older days... Not Ready For Prime Time. Maybe it'll never get there, I don't know. Loads of variables to wade through, infinite personal network configs, zero standards once the ISP pipes into the home, etc... All are enormous hurdles to wide acceptance of VoIP by the average person. I'll keep it, but I'll also keep my landline until my son is well enough to not need it.
I had a professor in College who used to ask us one question of the programs he had us write; "Would you trust your work to run your heart and lung machine?" Wonder how much of a headache others could save themselves if they didn't put all their communication needs in a basket that has so many different pain points?
I'll stick with VT at least for a while longer, until something better and more fun comes along. Who knows? Maybe I'll try my hand at setting up my own Asterisk box one day... Could be fun. Certainly could be a hobby. Would *NEVER* run my Heart and Lung machine... | |
stevech0
join:2006-09-17
San Diego, CA | Hobby - ever notice that the VT logo, at a glance, looks like Mickey Mouse (ears and all)? | |
GVG
join:2006-09-19
Charlotte, NC | As a Disney employee I take offense at that comparison  | |
voipdabbler
join:2006-04-27
Kalispell, MT
| reply to bmize13
bmize13,
If you really like to tinker with VOIP and like call-routing/blocking, you might want to sign up for mysipswitch. Mysipswitch uses Iron Ruby scripts and you can create powerful scripts to route calls-- I've got telemarketers who call my grandcentral number or IPKALL number routed to a "number not in service" message. (You can't get a free grandcentral DID anymore, but you can still sign up for a free IPKALL DID to play with this service.). | |
N9MD
Premium
join:2005-10-08
Wayne, NJ
·VOIPo
·ViaTalk
·Callcentric
| reply to bmize13
said by bmize13  :... As we all learned on "The Facts Of Life," "you take the good, you take the bad, you take them all, and then you have" ViaTalk ... What a superb post ... and a great philosophy! It puts into perspective my own rationale and reasoning for subscribing to thousands (well maybe scores) of different providers ... for fun and curiosity ... over the last several years.
In reality, I still have one PSTN line in my NJ home ... as the absolute backup for E911 or other imperative outbound calls ... and for those friends and family who have dialed the PSTN# over the last 36 years. Moreover, my wife and I each have "always on" cellphones which we carry everywhere we go, including use in our FL home. We could lose all of our VoIP services at one point in time and still survive.
That said, it's still nice to be able to have full featured VoIP providers that, when working successfully, offer us considerable financial savings and many more sophisticated, useful and free features over PSTN. | |
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