Firing the phone company

I amd very happy to report that I have been hung up on by the local phone company for the last time. I have fired Qwest as my local phone carrier. Get lost and take your damn dial tone with you!

Although the DSL service still runs over their lines, they're not my ISP (Blarg Online rocks, work and home none better in my area). However, I do still need a home phone.

I have done enough homework to give me enough confidence that VoIP can work given my circumstances. I have (will have at the end of the week) a solid broadband connection, router with QoS capability, a phone, a shipping address...

Which leads me to my questions:

Any VoIP vendor preferences out there? for home, not work. I have initially focused on Vonage.

What about phone adapters? The current leader is Linksys's PAP2.

And of course, the parts I'm ignorant of or forgetting. Any war stories out there? Victories? I'd love to benefit from your (plural) experience.

Thanks in advance.

One recommendation I have heard is to get both the VoIP phone and ISP from a same integrated package. VoIP is still too new to be purchasing components from separate sources. Many of the new VoIP phones are sold having been optiimized to work with certain ISPs. Better, I was told, to get an integrated package - just like in the early days of cell phone technology.

why not just get a good cell phone package? i didn't have a home phone for quite awhile, and it worked out very well.

cell phones we got

this is for "home phone" for kids

Vonage rocks!

$25 per month, all phone line goodies, call waiting, caller id, 911, voicemail, etc etc etc, no longdistance charges in us/canada. What's not to like? Like the ad on the bus said, all you need is a broadband connection and a strong desire to stick it to the phone company.

I bought the Linksys PAP2 phone adapter in person at best buy, $60 minus $50 rebate, and ordered the Vonage service online. I picked the wrong signup link and they charged my credit card for the whole shebang, new adapter and all. I got on the phone to their customer service people, and they fixed it on about ten minutes. Refunded the wrong charge, led me to the right link for signup. Really smooth and easy.

Well, I got the and plugged in the phone adapter thing to the router, and then the phone to the phone to the phone port on the PAP2. I thought something was wrong because the power light kept flashing for a long time. This is usually not a good sign. After about five minutes, all the lights came on solid. I picked up the phone, got a dial tone and called. Piece of cake.

This is really slick and I would recommend it for anyone who meets the requirements above. In fact, when my boss returns from vacation, I'll suggest it for our jobsites.

Update:

We have had Vonage for several months now. I give it my highest recommendation. It works, it's better than the old technology, it's cheaper by far, what's not to like.

Oh. Yeah. It's voice only. Crap.

Our eldest son will be departing for college in a couple of hours, and since he's deaf, the cool phone service will be useless. Enter videoconferenceing.

We're the proud (and frustrated) owners of a videophone system now. It's from Sorenson, the VP-100 (don't those low model numbers just give the early-adopter-chills?) This unit is really nice. It's especially nice to be able to make a call away from the computer, unlike the standard webcam. The latency is minimal, there's very little jerking in the image. The image is large, full sound, muting (privacy) for audio and video.

I only have connected it just in the last hour, and my boy is chatting up some cute girl. I bet he can't wait to get his own unit in his dorm room. :wink: Actually, I don't want to know :rolleyes: .

I am having one important technical difficulty still. This device requires a different router, a D-Link DL-604, than the one I already have (Linksys wrt54Gs). The VP-100 needs *something* it can't deliver, according to the technician. Oh well. I couldn't make it work either. So at this point, I have inserted the D-Link into my network in place if the Linksys. That means the Vonage is offline, and all the house wiring is dark, the wireless is off the air.

The crux of the problem is that I am unable to get a public IP address for both routers through my DSL modem, Cisco 678. I have a small block of public addresses reserved through my ISP (Yay Blarg! Online Services One plug, seriously--I chose them because they only charged me *ONCE* to provision the block of IP addresses, instead of a monthly charge. I find this very honest, since the addresses are not the property of a given isp, to charge me a monthly rental, like it's their property! Don't get me started.)

Any-damn-way. I can't get both routers to co-exist. I'm open to suggestions. I expect I'll get some in the daytime. (the corollary to a small local isp is that they don't have 24*7 phone support. boo hoo.)

Videoconferencing rocks!

About the only thing left to get via broadband is entertainment (cable, etc). I hate the cable company too!

I just think it is totally cool that technology is able to provide such a great thing for someone who really needs it. Videoconferencing for the hearing-impaired is really awesome!

BigV wrote:

I can't get both routers to co-exist.

I'd check out how the Cisco is supposed to be configured to allow 2 devices with 2 public IP addresses. (I'm assuming it supports this since your ISP sold you the IP addresses.) If everything is happy with it then you should be OK with the others.

BigV wrote:

Get lost and take your damn dial tone with you!

When I rule your country, all those that have worked for or retired from the wired phone companies will be quickly rounded up and placed in "justice camps".

The short term organ doner shortage will be satisfied.

BigV wrote:

The crux of the problem is that I am unable to get a public IP address for both routers through my DSL modem, Cisco 678. I have a small block of public addresses reserved through my ISP (Yay Blarg! Online Services One plug, seriously--I chose them because they only charged me *ONCE* to provision the block of IP addresses, instead of a monthly charge. I find this very honest, since the addresses are not the property of a given isp, to charge me a monthly rental, like it's their property! Don't get me started.)

Any-damn-way. I can't get both routers to co-exist. I'm open to suggestions. I expect I'll get some in the daytime. (the corollary to a small local isp is that they don't have 24*7 phone support. boo hoo.)

Problem solved. Well, identified. I was able to contact tech support, a live human, not a phone tree hell. Joe, senior technician, and slayer of numerous technical monsters, observed that my account was configured for a block of static IP addresses, but when it was provisioned in mid 2000, the block of addresses I got was not the 8 address block that is offered today. Instead, I got a block of 2 addresses (subnet mask 255.255.255.252). Which explains why when I setup the network thus: Cisco 678, switch, DLink and Linksys, then devices, that only the linksys would work, since I was using my *whole* block of addresses (all two of them) already, one for the Cisco and one for the Linksys. I confirmed this when I substituted the DLink in the place of the Linksys, and it worked fine. The gear was solid, but I just didn't have the addresses I thought I had.

Joe said he'd enter a trouble ticket for me to have my account re-provisioned with the current offering of a block of 8 IP addresses (subnet mask 255.255.255.248) and email me with the new addresses, since the chances that they'll be adjacent to my existing addresses are vanishingly small.

I'll have to reconfigure the public side of both routers with their new IP addresses and subnet masks and gateway address, then it *should* fire right up!

Next challenge will be to reach his videophone via webcam on my laptop. Someday.

It works!!!

No new ip addresses were required, only a new netmask. Turns out that I did have a block of 8, but the notice to change the subnet mask was never recorded in the log. I don't remember ever seeing an email from them to that effect. Oh well. A minor problem, and profuse apologies to me by the lead tech. Bits into the bucket...