said by rileyjam514 :

Well, what I mean is that VoIP has been advertised and presented as a full and valid replacement for existing telephone service that American customers have come to expect over the years. People don't expect that when they switch providers, they'll need to mess around with networking equipment or play with their demarcation point. Even that, the demarcation point, is something that most people look at and are just dumbstruck as to what the heck it does.

THAT seamless replacement of phone service is what I'm talking about.... the expectation that things will "just work" 99.9999% of the time.

said by TKJunkMail :

POTS isn't POTS either. If you are making a long distance call in the US, your call is being converted from analog into digital between cities anyway. The Earthlink svc isn't any different in that regard.

said by achuchma :

Do keep in mind when you use the POTS network in the US, voice data is usually transmitted on private, dedicated fiber trunks with no other traffic other than voice traffic. If mixed with data, voice will get the highest QoS.

VoIP runs on the "best effort" Internet, which is with a pot luck of other data...

said by TKJunkMail :

POTS isn't POTS either. If you are making a long distance call in the US, your call is being converted from analog into digital between cities anyway. The Earthlink svc isn't any different in that regard.

said by Jim Gurd :

That having been said, what Earthlink is offering sounds interesting, especially the bit about being line powered. That's a big plus in my opinion. I wonder exactly what type of backup systems they have in place.

said by lumpy9138 :

That statement is not true. Comcast digital voice comes with a battery back up in the MTA, and has battery back up on the main lines, and will also work with alarms, fax, dial up modems, etc....