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Verizon frustration
I'm working on my gadget addiction
- and this year I've come leaps and bounds in my therapy.
Well as long as you don't count the iMate, the iPOD mini
and well you get the picture - I'm terminal. Two perspectives
have added some depth to my experience as an early adopter;
one never believe the hype and two it's all about
the interface. A classic example of the former is the
infrared keyboard - a classic idea but almost entirely unusable.
Which brings me to number two and the crux of this vignette.
I have been having some major problems with my business
line recently. Several times over the last few years the
static has gotten unbearable - said phenomenon being followed
up by an unhelpful visit from the telco repairmen. Recently
I had a few occasions when I'd pick up my phone and have
no dial tone! So after several more visits from Verizon
and still having intermittent trouble I decided that just
perhaps I should try this new fangled VOIP technology. Like
I needed an excuse. (BTW Verizon does deserve props for
their request
repair web site for logging new support tickets. You
can request a new repair and part of the process involves
an online line test while you wait. The scheduling of the
repair visit is also very slick.)
The VOIP glimmer of hope
Now I knew absolutely zip about VOIP
until out of desperation I decided I needed to do something
about the quality of my line. However I've also lost all
patience with new tech solutions that are cumbersome. I
want something that is easy to use - that I don't need to
spend a connection mangler amount of time fiddling with
it to make it work as advertised. This perspective is exactly
why I got an iPOD earlier this year. I've been one of the
faithful few using my Pocket PC to listen to audio books
- the user interface just sucks. Spend half an hour with
an iPOD and iTunes and you will be converted. Anyway I digress.
The VOIP option dawned on me watching a G4TechTV segment
where Leo picks up a Vonage adapter at Best Buy. I also
recall Bill Ryan mentioning a VOIP service that he was impressed
with. So without further ado I bounded off to my local Best
Buy and $79.99 later (before the $50 mail in rebate) I was
VOIP equipped. What the heck does this mean you ask? Well
I now have a digital phone adapter (made by Motorola) which
plugs into the ethernet cable exiting from my cable modem.
I plug a phone line into the back of that and viola - dial
tone.
Signup
Once
you've got the VOIP kit you need to sign up on the web with
Vonage.
The Best Buy receipt actually has a brief 5 step instruction
reference - it basically consists of signing up at the Vonage
web site and entering your MAC address. I'm not a Best Buy
fan - I struggled to find the Vonage kits in their store
since no-one knew what I was talking about - but this information
is a neat touch. At sign up time on the Vonage site you
need to choose the plan you want. At this stage I still
knew next to nothing about VOIP other than it was a phone
service that ran over my broadband connection. You may want
to do some more homework than I did - check out the product
tour on the Vonage
site. In essence I get unlimited calling in the US and Canada
and some really attractive international rates. Apparently
these international rates do change every now and then -
just be aware of this. In addition it bears mentioning that
since your phone service is dependent on your cable or DSL
access - when that's down you're SOL. No phone service (but
you've probably got a cell for backup).
Number Portability - move your current
number
Another big draw for me was number
portability. The Vonage
web site allows you to type in your current number to
see whether it "qualifies" - if it does you can
then transfer this to Vonage. You will need to download
a Letter Of Authority (LOA) and fax this and your most current
phone bill to Vonage to kick-start the transfer. It can
take up to 20 business days and some people have had issues
making this a reality.
Note on 911 Dialing
911 calls do not work by default on
Vonage. This is lifted straight from the Vonage web site
but it is important so take heed:
How is this different from dialing 911
on a regular land line?
Vonage routes your call to the Public
Service Answering Point (PSAP) providing emergency services
in your area. The appropriate PSAP is determined by the
physical address you supplied. Therefore, if we do not have
the correct address your call cannot be routed to the corresponding
PSAP for your area. Another difference between Vonage's
Dialing 911 service and traditional 911 services is that
the Vonage call will be routed to PSAP's general access
line, which is different from the 911 Emergency Response
Center. You will need to state the nature of your emergency
promptly and clearly, including your location and telephone
number, as PSAP personnel will not have this information
at hand
If you have kids and are using this
as your primary home line then it is essential to understand
this - your baby-sitter could be the one dialing 911. Equally
important if you're married and your wife beats you. Set
up 911 Dialing.
Setup
So
at this point I've signed up for service and have yet to
install the adapter yet. The included instructions are straight
forward. Essentially they tell you to put the adapter in
front of your router and behind the cable modem. This configuration
means that the router sits behind the phone adapter which
has a built in DHCP server and hands out an IP address for
your router to use. This works well, especially since the
phone adapter can prioritize traffic through the cable modem
and enforce what is known as QOS (Quality of Service) of
the voice traffic. In essence voice traffic can be prioritized
over any other internet traffic that may interfere with
your call quality. So if you're on your broadband phone
and you start a large file transfer your call quality will
not suffer. But - here's the rub - you lose most if not
all of your router's capabilities. For example if you use
dynamic DNS (like TZO) or some of the more advanced port
forwarding features. Granted you could almost use the phone
adapter instead of your trusty old router since it supports
DHCP and NAT. However I don't want to give up my router
with built in wireless and comfort blanket. So I installed
the phone adapter behind the router. With the latest routers
you should be fine doing this without having to add any
custom port forwarding. The adapter should just pick up
an IP address and fire up. In practice that didn't happen
for me and I had to access the phone adapter's config via
a web browser and set up a static address. The downside
of having the phone adapter on the internal network is that
it can no longer enforce the same QOS as when it was the
main routing conduit. You may find then that heavy usage
of your internet connection will affect call quality - I
haven't experienced that yet but it is still early days.
If you do have this problem and you have a Linksys
WRT54G router look for the sveasoft
third party firmware update. This is supposed to allow
you to enforce QOS depending upon the physical ethernet
connection. Luckily the WRT54G
router I bought at the beginning of the year seems to be
one of the preferred routers to use with VOIP.
The pic below shows the 5 connections
on the back of the adapter. Two phone line jacks, a power
input and then a WAN and PC connection. With the phone adapter
in front of the router you plug the cable modem ethernet
cable into the WAN port and then the PC port is plugged
into your router. The PC port supports DHCP. As you can
see here I just have the WAN port plugged into the Linksys
under the phone adapter. Luckily this mess is in my wife's
office downstairs so I don't need to look at it each day.
The most amazing thing about this whole
arrangement is that I could theoretically travel to anywhere
in the world - plug my phone adapter into a broadband connection
and have my same US number! That is really something. Please
drop me an
if you have done this.
Call Quality
Call quality is surprisingly good, admittedly
I was a little on the wary side so perhaps this skewed my
perspective. It's not absolutely 100% clear and every now
and then I hear a few clicks but on the whole I'm very happy
with it - it just works. I have been dropped a few times
on international calls - but for less than 10c/min international
I can live with that. It's a lot better than cheap international
calling cards.
Conclusion
If you make a lot of US calls, move
around a lot and want to keep the same business line or
the international rates appeal to you I would say go for
it. Spend some time looking at what people have to say -
I looked at the VOIP
forum at DSL reports -after I bought the adapter ;)
- as well as the Vonage
Forum and the Vonage
web site. There are also a bunch of other features that
I haven't mentioned that really distinguish VOIP from the
plain old telephone system; things like virtual numbers
and toll free 800 numbers, additional fax lines etc. You
can also join an affiliate program which allows you to offer
one free month to people that sign up through you - if you
are interested drop me an
with the email address you want me to send the invite to.
