The Pros and Cons of Voip

You’ve surely heard of Voip. But perhaps you would like to know the difference between Voice over Internet Protocol (Voip) and Old Telephone Service (POTS). Here are some answers.

In fact, there are many positive reasons to switch from POTS to VoIP:

1. It is cheaper. Cheaper. From around $ 9.95 for the most basic service (still much better than POTS) to $ 39.95 for residential; business plans generally cost between $ 49.95 and $ 99.95 and include a separate fax number.

2. The free VoIP “modem” is shipped to you in 5-10 days; Buy it from a store for same day service and the VoIP company will refund or credit you against your bill.

3. Broadly standard “add-on” services: voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, 3-way conference, call forwarding, redial, call blocking, unlimited calls (local and LD); in short, practically all the options offered. additional fee – for any POTS company.

4. No charge for incoming calls from anywhere, unlike US cell phone providers the same for outgoing “local” calls (depending on plan; some use a cellular-type monthly minute package).

5. With VoIP, “local” in North America almost always includes both the US and Canada; some also include Western Europe, parts of Asia, and parts of Latin America. For those countries that are not included for free, international plans are available for much less than standard LD carriers. Or you can make occasional calls without a plan for much lower per minute charges than most LD plans. This generally applies, more or less the other way around, for VoIP services in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere as well.

6. No computer needed, just connect a standard phone cord from the VoIP box to your regular desk phone or portable base station.

7. Activate all phone jacks in the house – Simply plug the VoIP modem into any existing wall outlet, after first disconnecting your home’s internal phone wiring from the POTS world at the outside phone box, probably on the front wall. This option is generally not available to apartment dwellers. Sorry.

8. Virtual Phone Numbers – For a low price (usually around $ 5), you can have a phone number in almost any area code, so your friends or family can dial a local number that rings on your phone. You cannot use it for outgoing calls because it is not a “real” line.

9. Low-cost 800 numbers: Do you want it to be free for many callers without bankruptcy? Most VoIP providers offer cheap 800 numbers: free for the caller, flat monthly rate for you (varies, but about $ 5 for the first 100 minutes each month, then 4.5 cents or so per minute beyond that).

10. Find Me: Some include a system that, if you don’t answer, will call three or more numbers you designate, in sequence or simultaneously, and then go to voicemail if you still don’t answer.

11. And this is THE KICKER: Take your home or office “phone” with you when you travel. Just keep the VoIP modem in your suitcase; Upon arrival, plug it into any high-speed Internet connection (hotel room, friend’s or relative’s house, airport, whatever) and, bingo, you can make and most importantly receive calls made to your usual phone number. And that’s true anywhere in the world (with charges based on your home location). Go to Bora Bora and someone who calls your Des Moines home or office number will never know you are not in Iowa when you answer; call someone and your usual caller ID will be displayed.

For every ying, of course, there must be a yang, so now let’s look at the downside:

1. If you have a wired Internet connection, your downline is 2 to 10 times faster than your upline. As a result, you may hear the other person clearly like a bell and may not hear you at all. This will either make them hang up on you (they don’t know you’re there) or they’ll ask you to “hang up the speaker” or “hang up the cell phone and call me from a real phone.” And those are the educated ones.

VoIP companies insist that up to 256K should be more than enough for a clear signal; that doesn’t seem to be the case in actual use. There are ways to overcome this, if you get trained VoIP tech support.

2. High-speed connections vary in quality based on a number of factors, from how many other users share that cable line to how far it is from the closest DSL amplifier node. Which means that the quality of VoIP from day to day, even call to call, will also vary, sometimes to extreme extremes.

3. When no one is speaking, there is a “dead” silence that makes most people, used to the slight “buzz” of a POTS signal, think that the connection has been broken. If you don’t want to hear a constant “are you still there?” Explain it to everyone at the beginning of any conversation.

4. If you try to “activate” a new credit card by calling via VoIP, the computer at the other end may insist that you are not calling from your home phone. “Why?” It is an unanswered question from VoIP providers.

5. Never, never, allow anyone to put you on silent hold. If your VoIP service doesn’t hear something on that line for several minutes (how many seems to vary), you may just disconnect it, ostensibly on the theory that your phone is off the hook.

6. If your upline signal is not strong enough, your call will not go through, causing an annoying and frequent “Your call cannot be completed at this time” recording.

7. Occasionally your VoIP will just stop working. The solution varies slightly depending on the provider, but it basically involves a lot of disconnecting and reconnecting the VoIP modem, router, cable / DSL connection, in a specific sequence provided by the VoIP company.

8. Last, and by far the worst: If your Internet connection goes down for any reason, you don’t have phone service. Anyone who is completely reliant on VoIP is strongly advised to have a cell phone on hand (keeping in mind that you can set VoIP to automatically call your cell phone if you don’t answer the VoIP line).

Bottom line: commercial VoIP is a real phone service, unlike computer-based “messengers” or even Skype (which clearly states that it is not telephony); brands against, do not include video (yet) and many bugs have not been resolved yet. Still, with a savings of $ 30 to $ 100 a month, these problems are not so bad that you cannot learn to live with them. It’s a bigger problem for your office, but add a cell phone to the mix as a backup and you can soon join the growing number of consumers who have opted for VoIP, with no intention of using POTS again.