New Study Finds VOIP is Getting Better 376
Proudrooster writes "Keynote Systems Inc. made 154,000 VOIP calls during the months of May and June. In total they tested six VOIP providers and seven ISPs. Their
conclusion was that VOIP isn't quite as robust as the public phone network due to dropped calls, lower audio quality, and latency (audio delay), but it is still pretty good. The worst VOIP provider had an availability of 94.8% (which isn't bad) and overall the reviewers were pleasantly surprised with the VOIP test results. Vonage ranked best for "most reliable" with 99.4% uptime,
AT&T CallVantage ranked best for "audio clarity"." Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.
Loving VOIP here (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, although not rated (and maybe that's because it's just a re-branded service from one of those that was--I don't know), my Speakeasy VOIP works pretty well. Voice quality is far superior to my old telco service, but there are indeed occasional minor dropouts or fizzle-outs. Since I also have a mobile phone, that gives me adequate redundancy in the event my service goes down, so I've been pleased overall.
With broadband and VOIP now coming from from Speakeasy, I can't tell you how nice it is NOT to be doing any business whatsoever with my old nemesis, SBC (formerly Pac Bell here in CA). Of course, in time, I may come to view Speakeasy the same way, but not yet. Perhaps I'm in the "rebound" phase after my divorce with SBC, but there's a spring in my telecommunications once step again.
My vonage expereince has been great.... (Score:2, Interesting)
But the best thing has been cost. I am paying $14.95 a month for better service than the $60+ a month I was paying to my local telco and MCI. And my local bell "wants me back". Uh, keep dreaming guys...
Re:Take heed (Score:3, Interesting)
That's nice and all, but meanwhile people/companies are pushing ditching traditional phone service for this. And for that, they absolutely deserve that blame.
Why can't Tivo use voip? (Score:1, Interesting)
The phone jack of a consumer voip router emulates a plain ordinary phone jack, with dial tone. You plug a regular analog phone into the jack and it just works. Pretty much everything that works with a real dial tone will work with the fake dial tone.
Why would the Tivo not work?
Re:Take heed (Score:3, Interesting)
So during a critical emergency, how many people have time to go digging through their basement to find an old telephone?
Why even a regular line for Tivo? (Score:1, Interesting)
Five nines. (Score:1, Interesting)
99.4%, the best VoIP providers availability is 3,154 minutes of down time or unavailability. Thats 52.6 HOURS per year where the phone doesn't work!!! What's worse is that you have no control over when that down time is! I hope for your sake that you don't need to call 911 during those 52.6 hours per year.
Then there is the whole 911 problem. The FCC in their omnipotent magnificence has deemed that all providers will offer E911 service by... There's about 60 days left for compliance I don't know how many exactly. But, there's no way to provide real E911 service without sending GPS coordinates with the call. None of the present VoIP protocols are designed with this capability so there is no way that VoIP as it presently exists can provide E911 capability. No way!!
Then after you work out all of the other problems, there are the problems with VoIP over the internet. Details like DDoS attacks, spam, and the total lack of end-to-end QoS. Until all of these issues are resolved, VoIP cannot be expected to replace the land line. I'm as big a techno geek as the next guy. I use VoIP via Nortel BCM's and Asterisk PBX's. But, I will not let go of the traditional POTS land line. I will probably maintain a POTS line for as long as I live because no amount of IP or virtual this-and-that will ever be as good as solid copper to the handset!
Can you tolerate the loss of your phone for 52.6 hours?
99.4% uptime == 52.6 hours of downtime per year.
Choices, Choices (Score:5, Interesting)
Telco:
3-4 weeks a year of tech-support hell. (older urban phone systems)
$60 a month price tag.
Voip:
1-2 dropped phone calls a month--with calls routed to my cell when it's down.
$25.00
My installer even set me up with my DSL on it's own NID, after which I plugged the voip adapter back into the wall socket. Now all my wall phone adapters work just fine.
As to power outages, it can be hard to find the non-wireless phone in the dark. Go ahead, tell me you have a cheap ten dollar phone hooked up. Where is it if the power goes out? Of course, since all my computer equipment is plugged into UPS's, I only worry about prolonged power outages.
Why the Whining? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just fine.
I see a lot of people whining about how your phone would be down 4 hours out of the month if you have 99.4 or whatever. My answer is: So?
How many times do you need to make that phone call right-the-hell-now? Out of the phone calls in the past year, I'd say maybe...20. Max. The rest were more relaxed calls to friends/family that weren't time-dependent. Out of that 20, I can think of one time when I wanted to use the VoIP to call my wife's home country (Australia) and couldn't because it was down, so instead I paid Sprint a few dollars to do it through my landline. Whoop-dee-doo.
Sure, 911 is a concern. But keep a cell phone or cheap landline around and you have that. My landline costs me $17/month. Potatoes. My VoIP [binfone.com] is worth it because it has brought my costs down from over $75/month to less than $20. Couple that with neat features of running my own Asterisk server and I have a really fun, useful service.
I guess if you're using your VoIP as your home office phone or as a telemarketing device, 99.4% would hurt. For the average home user, the small inconvenience vs. price shouldn't bother anyone that much. I pay about $35/month for my entire phone service and my wife can call home as much as she wants. What a deal.
Re:QOS, 911, regulation (Score:3, Interesting)
Every single "feature" that the baby bells charge extra for. Verizon was charging me $6.50/month for CallerID (w/names would cost $7.50).
I can check voicemail online. I can take my "home" phone with me on travel (including overseas).
I was paying Verizon $30/month for a phone with nothing but Caller ID. I also had to pay Verizon extra every month to keep my number unlisted. Apparently, it costs a few bucks every month to not print my phone number.
They *had* long-distance/regional calling at a flat rate with no monthly fees, but then they started charging me every month for that as well. I have a cell phone with enough minutes that I never needed the landline for long-distance. They wanted to charge me (one-time) $20 to change from their long-distance to "no" long-distance ($10 for no long-distance plus $10 for no "regional").
I was slammed twice by MCI and spent a great deal of time calling Verizon to have my long-distance switched back (which they would then charge me for, and I'd have to call back again and fix that).
After the first time this happened, they said they could put a lock on my account. I thought that meant that it couldn't happen again, but it did. They time they said they could put a password on the lock. They never explained what the purpose of the passwordless lock was, but I agreed and chose the password "Verizon Sucks". They said it could only be 10 letters. I told the V-E-R-I-Z-O-N-S-U-X. After consulting a supervisor, they agreed. (I'm only giving out my password now that I've ditched them completely).
This was the only enjoyment I ever had with Verizon. Whenever they would screw up my bill (which happened at least once a year), I could call them and they'd ask me my password and I'd tell them they sucked.
For $15/month, Vonage gives me 500 minutes a month anywhere in the US (I never use half that much). QoS is fine. The power here does go out from time to time, but I have my cell (and my wife has hers).
They're working on true E911 service and not just forwarding to a call center. But I also have a cell. True, they're not tightly regulated, but that regulation costs a lot of money and doesn't get me what the free market does. I see "under regulated" as another VoIP selling point.
CT complaining about uptimes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.
Hey Taco, why don't you post Slashdot's availability?
Thought so.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Or Put Another Way... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree, I was under that same impression. And in my book, that really isn't too bad. That means only 1 out of every 16 calls will have a problem. I wish my cell phone had that kind of reliability! I also believe, unlike other posters, that reliability figure probably includes not only the VOIP failure but the ISP being down too.
To the poster who was complaining about needing 911 to be 100% reliable I say, "have you ever tried calling 911 in a major metropolitan area?" You'll get a busy signal or be on hold longer than it would take you to redial on your VOIP phone.
Just for the sake of argument, let's say that most people only make ONE life threatening 911 call in their lifetime. Now let's say they have an 80 year lifespan, and the call lasts 15 minutes. That's 0.000035% of your life where you really need to be worried about your VOIP not working. Given a 5.2% max failure rate, that mean there's only a 0.00000182% chance of that failure occurring during the 0.000035% of your life where you really need it to work. So, in effect, the "critical" failure rate would be only 99.99999818%. Now, tell me, is that so bad? P.S. Since I'm not mathematician, I probably botched the math, in which case mod me funny... But If I happened to get the math right, mod me insightful!
Bell in Ontario (Score:2, Interesting)
If you moved (like me) and there is a problem with the phone line then you're totally stuck. After several calls to "Emily" and talking to fustrated outsourced call takers and finding my repair date slipping from mid July to early August to late September, I got sick of the lies and decided to try Vonage.
After some initial call quality problems, and disconnects, I can honestly say that the call quality is equal to or better than was being provided by bell. The secret? I actually read the manual and made sure the needed ports were forwarded to the vonage box. Once I felt I was sure that the call quality was consistent and reliable, I told Bell to stuff it and cancelled the service.