 |  | | | jester121
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | I'm lucky enough to have a cell phone to use as a backup.
 | |
| | nasadude
join:2001-10-05
Rockville, MD | yep, cell phone.
it also helps to have broadband that doesn't go down. | |
| | | | | 
KoolAidAnyone
@rr.com
| Re: When your cable goes down how do you call for service said by DownTheShore  :IF my broadband goes down for any extended period of time - which it's only done once while I was home in the past 3 years - the VOIP calls get routed to my cell phone. Which I then use to to call the broadband provider to tell them about the outage.  And before anyone complains about the cost of cell phone service, I have one of those pay-as-you-go plans, so my cell phone service costs me $100/yr.  $100/year is a pretty high price to pay to insure your dysfunctional Voip service. And of course, you assume that the Voip provider actually does route the calls to the cell phone. In my experience, this is not the case. Most of the vendors I've evaluated are hit-and-miss, and there is no consistency to their performance. | |
| | | | kieranmullen
Premium
join:2005-12-12
Portland, OR
 ·VoicePulse
·magicjack.com
·ViaTalk
·BroadVoice
| Re: When your cable goes down how do you call for service Virgin Mobile $15 every 3 months ($60 a year) at .20 a minute (other plans are out there) unused funds roll over to the next month. best deal out there I think. .
Buy a refurbished phone with airtime.
»virginmobileusa.com/
said by KoolAidAnyone :said by DownTheShore :IF my broadband goes down for any extended period of time - which it's only done once while I was home in the past 3 years - the VOIP calls get routed to my cell phone. Which I then use to to call the broadband provider to tell them about the outage. And before anyone complains about the cost of cell phone service, I have one of those pay-as-you-go plans, so my cell phone service costs me $100/yr. $100/year is a pretty high price to pay to insure your dysfunctional Voip service. And of course, you assume that the Voip provider actually does route the calls to the cell phone. In my experience, this is not the case. Most of the vendors I've evaluated are hit-and-miss, and there is no consistency to their performance.
--
KieranMullen
»360oregon.com
IP/Website Tools
»ip.drlinky.com
Please place your review on viatalks service here
»Company entry - ViaTalk | |
| | | | 
DownTheShore
Obama '08
Premium
join:2003-12-02
Edison, NJ
clubs:
| said by KoolAidAnyone :
$100/year is a pretty high price to pay to insure your dysfunctional Voip service. And of course, you assume that the Voip provider actually does route the calls to the cell phone. In my experience, this is not the case. Most of the vendors I've evaluated are hit-and-miss, and there is no consistency to their performance.
But I'm not paying it to insure VOIP service. I need a cell phone for certain things, so the fact that the VOIP will shift over to it is a bonus for me. I haven't had any problem with Vonage doing that. I don't need a full-fledged monthly cell phone plan, so the one I have suits both my needs and my budget. 
Kieranmullen - Thanks for that info about Virgin Mobile, but AT&T's coverage is better for my purposes and I've got free mobile-to-mobile minutes with other family members who're also on AT&T.
--
Life is simply one damned thing after another. | |
| Millenniumle
join:2007-11-11
Erie, PA
| ... I wonder if VoIP will face troubled times if ISP's implement some of the low caps we've seen headlines about. I suppose the caps may be high enough that a user wont need to be concerned about VoIP or VoIP subscription might be limited to service provided by and given a bandwidth freepass by the ISP.
I fortunately don't face any caps yet, but I'm still left wondering about the long term viability of my Vonage service. Even though VoIP alone wouldn't hit any reasonable cap, with a family all using the internet, we'll have to be careful how the pipe gets used. | |
| | benc
Premium
join:2007-06-17
Glen Carbon, IL
 ·Charter Pipeline
·Future Nine Corpor..
·Callcentric
 ·AT&T Midwest
| Re: ... said by Millenniumle :I wonder if VoIP will face troubled times if ISP's implement some of the low caps we've seen headlines about. I suppose the caps may be high enough that a user wont need to be concerned about VoIP or VoIP subscription might be limited to service provided by and given a bandwidth freepass by the ISP. I fortunately don't face any caps yet, but I'm still left wondering about the long term viability of my Vonage service. Even though VoIP alone wouldn't hit any reasonable cap, with a family all using the internet, we'll have to be careful how the pipe gets used. I doubt caps will be a concern regarding VOIP. Why? Let's do some math:
G711 ulaw codec: 87.2KBit/s (the bulkiest codec)
87.2KBit/s = 10.9KByte/Sec
1GB VOIP Data = 1,024MB VOIP Data = 1,048,576KByte
1,048,576KByte / 10.9KByte/s = just over 96,199 seconds
96,199 seconds = just over 1,603 minutes
So, just over 1,603 minutes per Gigabyte.
1,603 minutes = 53 minutes, 26 seconds per DAY, assuming the same use every DAY.
Or, let's assume a family of four, and each person talks 3 hours every single day. That's 360 hours of talk each month. That's also about 13.5GB.
So, no real concerns. The data usage is minimal, even with obscene amounts of talking. | |
| jester121
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL
·ViaTalk
| Here we go again... Well it's been about 10 years, I guess it's time for another dot-com scam. Come up with an idiotic name, suck up a bunch of venture capital, rush to an IPO so the VCs get all their money back 3x over, then hope you can sell the whole mess before anyone figures out you're not doing anything special and don't really know how to run a business.
The companies that actually provide and sell a decent service will survive, some lucky investors will make money, and in 5 years no one will remember any of these companies ever existed. | |
| 
HEDP
join:2008-04-27
Miami, FL
| !_! VOIP is a market that will have the lifespan of a sand flea. The reason I say this is because once landline is no longer available as it's a dying technology cellular will be there to replace it.
VOIP is really just a free service, there is no cost to call another computer across the internet and cellphones which are becoming small computers themselves will sooner or later simply be modems themselves. In the end the only thing you will need to pay is your internet connection in regards to VOIP. | |
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VoIP Firms Aim for Multi-Billion Dollar Business
When your cable goes down how do you call for service
