The pros and cons of VoIP
Surely you have heard of Voip. But maybe you’d like to know the difference between Voice over Internet Protocol (Voip) phone services and Traditional Phone Service (POTS). Here are some answers.
In fact, there are many good reasons to switch from POTS to VoIP:
1. It is cheaper. Cheaper. From about $9.95 for the most basic service (much better than POTS) to $39.95 for residential service; business plans typically cost between $49.95 and $99.95 and include a separate fax number.
2. The free VoIP “modem” is shipped to you within 5-10 days; buy it at a store for same-day service and the VoIP firm will refund it or credit it against your bill.
3. Broadly standard “extra” services: voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, 3-way conferencing, call forwarding, redialing, call blocking, unlimited calls (local and LD) – pretty much all of them in short options that have been offered – for an additional fee – by any POTS company.
4. No charge for incoming calls from anywhere, unlike US cell phone providers; same for outgoing “local” calls (depending on plan; some use a cellular-style 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, 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 in reverse, also for VoIP services in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
6. No computer needed, just connect a standard phone cable 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 jack, after first disconnecting your house’s internal phone wiring from the POTS world at the outside phone booth, probably on your front wall. This option is generally not available to apartment dwellers. I’m 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 can’t use it for outgoing calls because it’s not a “real” line.
9. Low-Cost 800 Numbers: Want to make it free to lots of people without breaking the bank? Most VoIP providers offer cheap 800 numbers: free to the caller, flat monthly fee to you (varies, but about $5 for the first 100 minutes each month, then 4.5 cents or so per minute beyond that). 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 here’s THE HIT: Take your home or office “phone” with you when you travel. Just pack the VoIP modem in your suitcase; when you arrive, plug it into any high-speed internet connection (hotel room, friend or relative’s house, airport, whatever) and, bingo, you can make and, more importantly, receive calls made to your number regular phone. And that’s true anywhere in the world (with charges based on your home location). Go to Bora Bora and someone calling your home or office number in Des Moines will never know you’re not in Iowa when they answer; call someone and your usual caller ID will appear.
For every ying, of course, there must be a yang, so now let’s look at the downside:
1. If you have a cable internet connection, your downline is 2-10 times faster than your upline. As a result, you may hear the other person as clear as a bell and you may not hear them at all. This will result in them hanging up on you (they don’t know you’re there) or requiring you to “turn the speaker down” or “hang up and call me from a real phone.” And those are the educated.
VoIP companies insist that 256K above 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 a knowledgeable VoIP support technician.
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 you are from the nearest DSL booster node. Which means that from day to day, even from call to call, the quality of VoIP will also vary, sometimes to extreme extremes.
3. When no one speaks, there is a “dead” silence that makes most people used to the faint “buzz” of a POTS signal think the connection has been dropped. If you don’t want to hear a constant “are you still there?” explain it to everyone at the start of any conversation.
4. If you try to “activate” a new credit card by calling via VoIP, the computer on the other end may insist that you are not calling from your home phone. “Why?” is a still unanswered question from VoIP providers.
5. Never, ever let anyone put you on silent hold. If your VoIP service doesn’t hear anything on that line for several minutes (the amount seems to vary), it may simply disconnect you, apparently on the theory that your phone is really off the hook.
6. If your upline’s signal is not strong enough, your call will not go through, leading to an annoyingly frequent recording “Your call cannot be completed at this time”.
7. Occasionally your VoIP will stop working. The solution varies slightly by provider, but basically involves disconnecting and reconnecting the VoIP modem, router, cable/DSL connection, in a specific sequence provided by the VoIP company.
8. Last and worst: If your internet connection goes down for some reason, you don’t have phone service. Anyone who relies entirely on VoIP is strongly advised to keep a cell phone handy (remember you can set VoIP to automatically call your cell if you don’t answer the VoIP line).
Bottom line: Business VoIP is an actual phone service, as opposed to computer-based “messengers” or even Skype (which clearly states that it’s not telephony); brands against, no video included (yet) and many bugs still to be resolved. Still, with a savings of $30 to $100 a month, these issues aren’t so bad that you can’t learn to live with them. It’s a bigger deal for your office, but add a cell phone to the mix as a backup and you could soon join the growing number of consumers who have gone all VoIP, with no intention of going back to using POTS.