Consumer level Voice over IP (VoIP) hasn’t taken off as much as it probably should in the United States. The most telling reason is that so many people don’t have a reliable high speed Internet connection. The other reason is that the technology is just not understood. A brief review of services that I have used is included below. For the techie we also worry about net neutrality. I’ll write about that later.
I recommend that anyone setting up home based VoIP invest in a good UPS as well so that the phone works during power outages.
This is the company that everyone knows about. The advertisements on TV and plastered across the Internet have found their way into almost everyone’s home. Their service is solid and feature filled, however their financial situation is shaky. All that advertising has to come from somewhere, and right now it is the stockholders who paid for it. Many customers were given the opportunity to buy in when the company had their Initial Public Offering (IPO), however they were also disappointed when the stock price started falling. Those who invested purchased stock at $17 which is now worth less than $2. Most probably no longer hold it, however there may be a few die hards out there who do. In any case, Vonage has a lack of good will by its stockholders and by its customers. I recommend staying away. The Vonage device that I tested had a noticeable hiss in the background that never could be completely eliminated. What was suggested by the Vonage support people were using a DSL filter, a wireless signal transfer system, and/or placing a resistor on the 2nd phone line from the Vonage box. The resistor did end up mostly doing the trick, however how they could expect their customers to do this to make the product useful was beyond me.
The second most popular VoIP company. This company has not been doing so well on Wall Street, however their array of patents, solid service, and practical policies on advertising make this a much better buy than Vonage. Of all the companies tested, Packet8 sounds the most like a regular land line telephone. They also cost the most like them. Packet8 charges fees above and beyond their set rates for things like E911 service and number portability. These are usually combined into the bill by other VoIP companies. Expect to pay over $30/month for their $24.95 plan. My bill is $31/month even. This is still my top pick in spite of the cost, and in fact because of the cost I believe that this will be the company with the most staying power of any other standalone provider.
Lingo has a decent service comparable to Vonage, however their customer support is foreign and non responsive. My first experience with Lingo was pretty awful. I received their device and installed it and later that night, somewhere around 2am, I got a phone call from Lingo support demanding to know where I was located. There was no “hello” or anything, just “What country do you live in,” “Where do you live,” etc. I called the next day to complain about it and they said it is standard practice because some people were buying them for use in the USA and then shipping them overseas. Well, I can understand they want to check that, but do a reverse lookup on my IP and call me at a decent time for my EASTERN USA timezone. Not 2am! Lingo has a bad habit of having their service fail on a regular basis. Support tickets will go unanswered until they resolve the problem then they will claim that they couldn’t find a problem and close the ticket. This is the reason I finally moved on.
Bundled
The largest advantage with a bundled service is that many of them offer a quality of service guarantee that is nonexistent with other providers. When the same company owns the last mile as well as your telephone service, they can prefer your voice traffic over all else. If contention arises with any of the other providers, the Internet provider can easily drop you packets, or treat them exactly the same as any other traffic, and delay them. The net neutrality issue is not an issue with a bundled service.
The biggest disadvantage to bundled service is that you can’t take it with you. One of the nicest advantages with other VoIP is that you don’t have to change your phone number when you move or even when you go on vacation. When your VoIP service is tied with a local provider, then you have to find a new local provider when you get to your destination. Any of the other services can move around, be taken on vacation, etc and still work just fine. You should be able to port your number still, but not having to re-buy phone service is a plus.
I recommend staying away from this company. Their customer service is always backlogged, and their website makes promises they don’t intend to keep. For example, if you select overnight shipping it tells you that orders by a certain time will arrive the next day. This is not true as I confirmed personally with their support staff – they never ship the same day they receive an order. In spite of the customer service issues, it is still a good service according to many reviews. They have more features than any other provider, and once you get it installed you have a good chance of never needing to talk to their service department again. The price is roughly half that of anyone else if you get the 2-years for one deal and can afford the $200 up front. I can’t tell you how many times I have been tempted to try them again.
SunRocket
This provider went out of business almost a year ago. I list them here as a warning to consumers who are looking to get into VoIP. Many users who had this service when the company went out of business had pre-payed as much as a year in advance. Some users had their service instantly dropped the day the company went out of business. Some users were able to keep their service for a short while, allowing them to find another provider. I suspect that most of these customers ran back to traditional phone companies, however many of them found their way to other providers. As much as possible, research the company you intend to transfer your phone number to – you don’t want this to happen to you as a consumer or as a business. Publicly held companies are better because of their more open financial information and their duty to shareholders. Vonage and Packet8 are the two I know about and it shouldn’t be hard to figure out which one is likely to last the longest.
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