Considering VoIP

Consumers Take A Liking To VoIP; At-Home Use Growing; Four million Broadband Users Considering VoIP, A Pew Survey Has Found

July 13, 2004

By Mike Angell

Houston computer programmer John White makes calls all over to business colleagues, family and friends. He used to use his cell phone since night and weekend calling was cheap.

Now he uses a voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, service from Vonage to make the calls. He can talk as long as he likes and any time for a flat monthly fee.

"My concern was what quality would be like," White said. "The quality is excellent."

White is one of 300,000 customers who use some type of Voip service for their home phones. As AT&T and other firms push Voip service, those numbers should grow. A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 4 million broadband users were considering Voip service.

If you have a home broadband connection such as a cable modem or digital subscriber line, Voip may be the way to go. It's easy, cheap and rich with features. The only drawbacks are the possibility of losing connections in power outages and the lack of full 911 support.

Vonage's unlimited local and long-distance call plan costs $25 a month. AT&T's CallVantage service has a six-month introductory rate of $20 a month. After that, it rises to $35 a month.

The price is similar to local and long-distance packages being offered over regular phones. But extras such as caller ID and call waiting and voice mail can cost more on those plans. Voip plans include those features.

Of course, you need to have home broadband for the service. So the monthly cost of broadband should be part of the equation.

Simple Process

Home Voip is just like regular phone calling. There's no personal computer microphone to deal with. You get adapters that allow you to plug in up to two phones. Homes with more than two phones or more than one number require some wiring or additional gear.

Setting up the adapters is very simple. Just plug in the ethernet cable from your broadband modem into the adapter. Your computer or home routers then get plugged into the adapter.

The adapters pretty much configure themselves once they connect to the Internet. Firewalls and other security devices may need to be tweaked in order to allow Voip to work.

The adapters can be taken anywhere there's a broadband connection. So you can be reached at the same number regardless of the adapter's location.

The only downside is unknown glitches. That can happen with the broadband service, the modem or the adapter. Regular phones work even in power outages, but that's not the case with VoIP. White still keeps a regular phone and cell phone for blackouts.

As for 911 service, you can of course call 911. But the 911 center won't be able to trace your address automatically. So you will have to give them an address.

At one point, my broadband connection went dead, shutting down the phone. Once the connection was up again, I had to go into the Vonage configuration screen to reboot the adapter. After a couple of minutes, the service was ready again.

Besides the low price, Voip offers more features than most people would ever need. Using a Web browser, you can see every call made and received, keep phone books, listen to your voice mail as a PC sound file and send that sound file when you reply to someone.

The sound quality on both Vonage and AT&T was good. Most people can't distinguish between a regular call and a Voip call. Sometimes there might be some echo. But it was nothing major.

The two services are very similar, except in a few areas. AT&T has a conferencing feature where nine people can be on the same call.

Vonage offers three-way calling similar to what's offered on regular phones.

Both Vonage and CallVantage also have call forwarding features. With CallVantage, you can set up five other phone numbers where a call will be forwarded. Vonage offers forwarding to just one other number, but Vonage business customers can get more call forwards.

Vonage does offer virtual phone numbers for an extra $5 a month. This feature allows you to set up a whole other phone number in a different area code.

So a distant relative or anyone else can call you via a number in their area code. That way, the caller just gets charged for a local call, not a long distance call. Similarly, Vonage offers you an 800 number with 100 minutes of calling for the same monthly price. CallVantage doesn't have these features yet.