VOIP Tech Chat → [General] Cable Company Phone service

Does anybody here have any experience with cable company phone service? I need to know how reliable it is. This service would be for my parents. My dad is 86 and my mom is 82.

I got them cellphones and added them on my family plan with cricket wireless they each have unlimited talk text and data but they just won’t use the cellphones at all. They are very stubborn and they use their landline all the time. It is like they are still living in the 1970s and I can not get them to change. They still have a wall phone in the kitchen. My dad retired in 1991 and is on a fixed income. The problem is Centurylink is charging them an obscene amount for their phone service. Their monthly phone bill is $107.00 a month that is a bundle price that includes phone + internet (crappy slow dsl) the phone service is:

Home Phone Unlimited $45.00
DSL Internet $29.99
Taxes $32.00

I contacted the local cable company (Wave Broadband) and they said they could give them 100mbs internet plus phone bundle for $49.99 + aprox $7.00 in taxes price for 1 year promo. The salesman said the phone would work in the event of a power outage if you you purchase a battery and install it on the provided embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter (eMTA) I am trying to convince my dad but I am wondering how reliable cable voip is. The centurylink landline is very reliable in the 70s they buried all the cables underground so they are not effected by storms.

They could use the cell phone as a hotspot to run the network. Use a router set up as a client bridge to wirelessly receive internet from the hotspot. Then, whatever VoIP setup you choose.

I need something simple they are in their 80s and not tech savvy at all. I have had a VOIP line for 7 years (Phone Power) and it has worked very well but (rarely) thier are glitches. Some times the obi 100 loses registration and must be rebooted. Once the settings changed in my Obi 100 and I swear I didn't change them. I just need some thing plug and play for them. I am also considering wireless home phone.

Suggestion: Unless you are willing to switch providers every year, find out what the regular price is before you go for that.

Yeah, I saw your post on the Ooma wireless.
I ran the setup I proposed for 3 years using a T-Mobile hotspot. It was quite reliable and low maintenance. You would have to show them how to switch the cell into hotspot mode but that's about it. Or, maybe they could leave one cell in hotspot mode and share the other cell.

I have wave for my internet and the price has been consistent for the last 10 years. The only problem is every year when the promo runs out you have to renegotiate the price.Every year they tell me they can't give me the promo price again but then make me wait and transfer me to a supervisor who then gives it to me. This year I got an even better deal than before. It is a hassle playing this game every year but my dad is a good talker and I know he will do well this game.

To answer your question --> I can't speak for Wave Broadband, but my Comcast/Xfinity home phone service was rock solid. They use dedicated IP channels for the phone communications between the house and their servers, so nothing is going over the less reliable internet. I rarely have any outage on my Comcast line, but I recall seeing the internet down one time yet the phone service was still working! The eMTA had a built-in battery to power the phones during a power outage too. It was rock solid. But it was too expensive and didn't have enough features for me so I switched to a voip.

Since you mentioned cell phones, here is another idea: AT&T used to have a "wireless home phone service" for only $20 a month. They supply a box that you set in the house and connect an old school telephone to. This box communicates using the cellular network. I assume it would be as reliable as a cell phone and you could put the box on a cheap UPS to support power outages. You could even connect this to your in-home wiring and allow all the current phones in the house to function as they do today, yet they would be going over cellular instead of copper pair (this is also typically how the cable companies configure it for people). Here is a very old article describing the AT&T service, which I don't think they offer anymore. Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile may offer the same type of service, so check with them.

And finally, one more idea if you wanted to stick with copper POTS would be to see if there were another provider in the area that could provide basic phone service for less money.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info on the cable phone service I think I will try to talk my dad into it. The wireless home phone that you talk about I have experience with as many of my parent's elderly friends have that. My dad does not like it because it doesn't have caller id name. The verizon version does offer a cid name add on for $2.00 but their service is $20 +$2 plus $10 + in taxes. The new ooma wireless home phone (genie) does have cid name only with premier service at $19.99 plus taxes but I contacted ooma and they said they are using sprint 4g which has very poor coverage out here.

Sounds like you have done your research. With older family members reliability and simplicity are both important. Seems like you're making the right decisions.

Cable company phone service as a rule is very solid, after all it is the one favored by the local cable company (as opposed to independent VoIP providers which are phone service competitors to the cable company).

And it's in a more protected environment than 3rd party VoIP.

Of course, it depends on the specific company (eg Comcast, Cox, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, etc).

But if the cable/ISP company is solid, their phone service should be solid (even if not having fancy options).Wave in Texas was probably "Grande" until a couple of years ago.

Wave/Grande/RCN merged about 2 years ago, I think RCN runs the show and they have a good reputation.

Sure as hell must be better than anything involved with CenturyLink.

I have had cable phone service for about six years. It has been flawless, except for outages during power failures. This is because it's in a high-rise condo building and the idiot designers didn't provide protected power for the in-building nodes and amplifiers. In a house, your parents won't have that issue.

It is very unlikely that cable phone service would be knocked out while other cable services (TV and internet) continue to function. So, if they have cable TV, they have a good idea of their system's reliability. If not, ask their immediate neighbors whether they have experienced many cable outages.

If your folks have cordless phones, also make sure that the base has battery backup.

They should keep at least one cell phone charger on the nightstand and connect a phone religiously every night, so they will have a backup at hand in case of emergency.

We still have a wall phone in the kitchen with a 15-foot coiled cord. However, the speakerphone is decent so you can talk hands free while cooking. It's a 2-line IP phone, so which line is flashing tells us who is being called. The ringtone is "Yakety Yak".

I ran a cable voip for a few years and it ran well with a built in battery good for about 4 hrs. AS the price crept up I learned about voipms. Well I bought 2 OBI's have 3 phones numbers, 2 sub unaccounts , My mom has one OBI200 that I can check on and make sure she it register and has no issues. WE both run IVr's so no junk or spam calls. Costs about $ 4 / month Both OBI's have a UPS for backup. Works well!

If price is what you are after, then you have your answer.

$45 must include long distance and calling features aka the "unlimited" plan. You are also getting a resilient network with a full team dedicated just to pots lines. If quality and reliability are more important than saving money, stick with this. To save some coin, look at their other options such as not the "unlimited" plan. $29 for DSL is cheap. It seems to be ok for them. Do they need more bandwidth? Then Wave is the answer.

How much is Wave Broadband AFTER the promo expires? And $7 in taxes seems to be a bit on the low side. You can try Wave and always switch back. Heck, they could do Wave 1 year, then CenturyLink the next year and keep switching back and forth to take advantage of the promo deals!

Getting phone service from either ISP should prove to be ideal since it uses the ISP's private network and is not routed over the public internet, especially for seniors who may not wish to become network admins or deal with some shitty foreign tech support when their 3rd party voip is acting up.