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Comcast Begins Rollout of VoIP 229

Posted by CmdrTaco from the voip-is-a-funny-word dept.
rufey writes "Comcast is beginning their rollout of their Internet phone service, according to a press release released today. It seems that the increased competition has gotten the attention of the baby bells, who "have realigned their attention to target cable's success and plan to invest billions of dollars of their own to upgrade their decaying copper network with speedier fiber-optic lines". With Comcast owning the network that the voice calls will traverse (until it gets to POTS, if needed), will Comcast's VoIP quality be better than their competitors such as Vonage, which relies on third party Internet connections to carry their VoIP?"
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Comcast Begins Rollout of VoIP More

Comcast Begins Rollout of VoIP

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  • um... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zxflash ( 773348 )
    "will Comcast's VoIP quality be better than their competitors such as Vonage, which relies on third party Internet connections to carry their VoIP?" how about "will a human be able to notice???"

    • Doubtful (Score:3, Interesting)

      by grahamsz ( 150076 )
      I'd be pretty surprised if comcast can do anything better than their competitors

      That's the glory of having a virtual monopoly and charging me a hundred bucks a month for internet and basic digital cable.

    • Re:um... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by baudilus ( 665036 )
      As a Vonage user, I doubt Comcast's first offering will be on-par with existing services, much in the way a new DVR service doesn't quite compare to Tivo (for ease of use and features, anyway). I was considering several VOIP services before I finally went with Vonage (over my cable provider's offering) for two reasons: features (such as Call Forwarding with Simultaneous ring, so the phone rings at your house and say, your cell phone), and the ability to take your existing phone number from your POTS line to

      • Re:um... (Score:3, Informative)

        by purplebear ( 229854 )
        As a user experienced with a cable companies(Time Warner) VoIP offering and with Vonage, I can clearly(pun) state that Vonage wins hands down. Odd since it is still carried over Time Warners cable network.
        I really put the blame on the cruddy Scientific Atlanta equipment they chose to use. I went through three "modems" in the course of a month. I quit after the third died, went with Vonage that same night, and I haven't looked back. The calls are ten times clearer on Vonage.

      • and the ability to take your existing phone number from your POTS line to Vonage.

        Local Number Portability (LNP) is pretty standard these days, I'd expect Comcast would offer it right from the start. Ditto for basic features.

    • Re:um... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by WushuJim ( 595318 )
      A human will notice dropped packets or dropped connections. A human will notice greater end to end delays. Vonage uses the internet as the network medium. Vonage has no control of the routers on the internet and cannot provide quality of service (QoS). If Comcast did it right, they could potentially have a superior service compared to Vonage. They can provide QoS via packet prioritization on their routers, resource reservation (RSVP), or other means of QoS. Vonage cannot do this, but Vonage does off

  • Disadvantages of owning the network (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bookemdano63 ( 261600 ) <bookemdano@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:33PM (#11314393)
    Comcast has a major disadvantage that the other VOIP providers don't have, that you can't move your box and phone to any IP connection, you have to be on the Comcast network. And since VOIP only requires about 90kbps any broadband connection should be able to handle it.
    • Speakeasy also offers VoIP and does claim that using their own network gives them better Quality of Service (QOS).

      And yes, you can only use your Speakeasy VoIP connection with the DSL line it was installed on and you cannot move to any old IP address.

      I have Speakeasy, but I still use Vonage for VoIP (without QOS complaints).
      • Supposedly the advantage (according to Speakeasy) is that they can QoS your inbound traffic as well, so both directions of the voice call get priority handling. Whereas with Vonage you can QoS your egress but your ingress is a crap shoot.
        • "Whereas with Vonage you can QoS your egress but your ingress is a crap shoot."

          Which would be fine because when you talk its using your upload bandwidth which is usually really low. But when voice is incoming you are basically downloading which is a lot larger of a pipe.
    • Why is that a major disadvantage? People who want a phone for their home want a phone they can plug in and not worry about. If they want a mobile solution, they'll get a cell. The ability to answer your home phone from your laptop is cool, but not something many people actually need.
    • Comcast has a major disadvantage that the other VOIP providers don't have, that you can't move your box and phone to any IP connection, you have to be on the Comcast network. And since VOIP only requires about 90kbps any broadband connection should be able to handle it.

      This might be true for the early adopters of VOIP, but the VAST majority of this potential market only travels to two places, home and work.

      I work for one of the major phone companies, they understand (whether their service record show

  • Competition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xThinkx ( 680615 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:34PM (#11314401) Homepage

    Hi, I'm the phone company, I've decided that you have no choice but to use me for phone service, so I'm going to screw you. Oh wait, you suddenly have a choice... I TAKE THAT BACK, I'm your best friend, look here's some free stuff, here's a discount, just don't leave, PLEASE!!!

    I love competition

    • Re:Competition (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bookemdano63 ( 261600 )
      Now is it- "Hi, I am your cable/internet/phone connection. Only want 1 of the 3, sorry."
      I think it is just a matter of time before Comcast decides to block all traffic to and from their VOIP competitors. How is that for competition?
      • I *highly* doubt anyone here at Comcast is that stupid. If we knowingly and deliberatly disrupt a lifeline service, we can get the living bejesus fined/sued out of us.
    • I'm not sure whether you should be moderated as, funny, insightful or 'sad but, true'.
    • I've decided that you have no choice but to use me for phone service

      Just a nit.. it's not your phone company that decided this, it's your town.
    • Hi, I'm the phone company, I've decided that you have no choice but to use me for phone service, so I'm going to screw you. Oh wait, you suddenly have a choice... I TAKE THAT BACK, I'm your best friend, look here's some free stuff, here's a discount, just don't leave, PLEASE!!!

      I love competition

      Its hard to figure out the point of this post, but most phone companies are getting out of the phone company business and going to networking (with the exception of mobile phones, too much money there). I guess t
  • While I realize that bundling will get them somewhere, how can they compete? [broadvoice.com]

  • Too Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:35PM (#11314422) Homepage
    FROM THE ARTICLE:
    "At $40 a month when purchased with Comcast's cable and broadband service, $54 a month on its own, Digital Voice is more expensive than what competitors such as Vonage or AT&T offer. Unlimited domestic dialing plans from other VoIP providers often costs as little as $25 a month."

    $40 Bucks a month? I could have a 2nd line (with a virtual London area code), and a separate fax line from Vonage for the same price.

    Doesn't seem like much of a CallVantage

    • $40 Bucks a month? I could have a 2nd line (with a virtual London area code), and a separate fax line from Vonage for the same price.

      Word, bro'. For Comcast cable TV & internet, I pay $90 a month. They're not getting any more from me, the wankers.

  • Too late. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:36PM (#11314425)
    Comcast has been advertising VoIP service in my area for about two years. I called up four months ago and asked them about it, because I wanted to add it to my internet service.

    The woman on the phone responded with nothing more than "what are you talking about?". She had to speak with a supervisor, who eventually just said "We don't offer that in your area. Or any area, actually. And I doubt we'll even have such a service for a couple of years".

    Didn't explain why they've been advertising it for eons.

    Anyway, they've lost money here, because I went with Packet8.net. Great quality, cheap prices. Unlimited long distance to the states and Canada for $20/mo, including all of the features that most companies would charge a hefty extra fee for (call return, caller ID, call blocking, call forwarding, voicemail, conferencing). And rates to other locations are typically between two and four cents per minute. Can't beat that.

    Comcast would have to beat that service by at least 20% to make it worth my time *and* provide the adaptor for free (since you have to buy one with most VoIP providers for about $50).
    • You sure that was VoIP? Comcast has been advertising local phone service for a few years, and has been offering it, but it wasn't VoIP, it was something proprietary. I knew a few people who have it. I was going to get it before I went with Vonage instead ($5 cheaper, and i can take it other places).
    • In practice, the $39.95/mo price would probably be reduced as part of a package price.

      And keep in mind that Comcast controls your internet service -- what if they start doing some "traffic shaping" that drops a few (or more than a few) of your Packet8 RTP packets here and there, or offers real QOS guarantees for their telephony traffic (at they expense of your Packet8 traffic)?

    • Re:Too late. (Score:3, Informative)

      by DragonPup ( 302885 )
      They weren't advertising VoIP. It was digital phone. Without getting technical, digital phone is similar to POTS except it goes over the cable line(usually in the 700+ MHz range) as opposed to using a normal phone line.
    • Didn't explain why they've been advertising it for eons.

      Marketers market, their jobs have little to nothing to do with products or services.

  • Only three areas? At least one more... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:38PM (#11314470)
    In the article it entions trial areas of Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Springfield, Mass.

    However, I got a flyer a few weeks ago for this service - and I live in Denver! In fact I signed up for the service today and have an installer coming out next week.

    Mainly I was motvated by a desire to user snyone other than Qwest. I am also hoping to get some kind of price break from also using Comcast for my ISP, though they said nothing about it while signing up.
    • You sure you didn't sign up for their regular cable phone service? I've had it for 2+ years here in MN...it works just like regular phone service, except you connect to the PSTN via Comcast's cable connection instead of the LEC's copper. It's pretty much regular phone service.

  • Vonage's success will be short lived (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Evil_Idiot ( 758322 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:41PM (#11314507)
    Comcast has the advantage of having the last mile connection to the customer. Although Vonage has some great deals on phone service, the quality of that service rests squarely on the shoulders of the customer's internet connection. That connection, BTW, is provided by a company that likely has a competing offering (like Comcast) which lowers their desire to make sure your Vonage connection is good. Unfortunately, I speak from experience...

  • Up time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Punchinello ( 303093 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:44PM (#11314540)
    I cannot recall in my LIFE picking up my home phone and not hearing a dial tone. Even with a power failure the phone keeps working.

    By contrast, every month or so I will sit down to use the internet and find my Comcast service completely down or the service degraded significantly. When the service is down it can be for minutes, hours, or in a few cases, days.

    How sucky would it be to have unreliable phone service? I just can't risk it right now.
    • I cannot recall in my LIFE picking up my home phone and not hearing a dial tone. Even with a power failure the phone keeps working.

      I have - it's called rural telephone service. Sometimes you wait a day or two.

      Even in the city I've had the phone out once or twice...

      I have had cable internet fail more often, granted, it will be injteresting to see if peole are willing to accept a slightly lower quality standard for service uptime or if Comcast will have to shore up the network a bit.
    • Its called a UPS. Put your router, cable modem, and VOIP device on the UPS and you'll stay up even during power outages. The cable company has the cable modem infrastructure on battery backup just in case of a power failure so you should to.

      As far as the actual quality of your cable modem service, that another issue entirely.
      • Everytime there is a thunderstorm with momentary power outage, the cable modem headend goes offline and it takes hours, if not a day, for Adelphia (here in Maryland) to reboot it. However, they are quick to make sure cable tv service is back on.
      • um, my systems have nothing to do with it. A UPS here isn't going to stop Comcast's network from taking a dump with just about every weather change. This usually happens when I am trying to host a chat session or something for my cycling team...so they all think that *I'm* the one to blame. Grrrrr.

        worse, of course, is comcast's ridiculous TOS regarding hosting your own mail server. I can't maintain a mailing list that sends more than 1,000 recipients a day, yet comcast is constantly pimping their ghey

    • How sucky would it be to have unreliable phone service?

      Although it has gotten better in the past 2 to 3 years, people put up with cellphones that were very unreliable. Me personally, after I was finished "needing" a cell phone, I paid to get out of my annual contract and threw the phone in the trash due to its unreliability and high rates. (That phone was on many resume's before I got a POTS line).
    • The best part is if your cable craps out, unless you have a cell phone you have to go somewhere else to call in the problem.
    • I've just recently started using VOIP and the Nortel box that I received allows you to optionally plug in a regular phone line to use for failover purposes. That way if your power goes out, as long as you have a working phone jack you can still make and receive calls. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I don't believe you even need to have active phone service to the jack. If the fail over is used (ie. calls are made or received) your next VOIP bill will simply include a "toll" charge, similar to roam

  • VoIP not really ready for primetime (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hpj ( 26910 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:44PM (#11314542) Homepage
    I have been a VoIP user for about a year now and must say that I don't think it is really ready for prime time by the masses.

    For my purposes it's great since I'm a Swede located in California for now and I still have a Stockholm phone number that I can call (And get called) by all my friends from back home. The problem is however that the VoIP traffic is very sensetive to high loads on my cable service. I have no doubt I'm an above average user of my network, but it can't be unheard of that people actually saturate their cable modem.

    As long as you don't run a quality of service setup (Which can never saturate the cable modem since they are usually set up with really weird buffers giving you around 3 second ping times if you start filling with both up and downloads at the same time) you can't use your VoIP solution. Pretty much any P2P application will cause your VoIP to go down as soon as you start it for instance.

    Setting up QoS is not something that everyone will be able to handle and in that case I think they will be disappointed with their VoIP experience.
    • I don't think Comcast would be delivering this service unless they could address teh QOS issue. Indeed that's possibly a good reason to sign up with Comcast rather than other providers if you have Comcast as a bandwidth provider. The downside of course is Comcasts known qualities regarding network stability (I have problems also somewhat frequently). But they cannot suffer the massive overload of service calls they will get if the phone stuff hiccups (phone service problems are a lot more likley to gener
    • By way of comparison, I often:

      1) Talk on my Vonage line while,
      2) Playing CS or Enemy Territory, and
      3) Listening to radio on the Internet

      with no degredation in my service. Yes, when I'm hammering a big download quality can suffer but I've never had it go out completely as a result of bandwidth usage.
    • Vonage is currently giving the Linksys RT31P2 to its new customers. It's a router + telephone adapter, and it automatically uses QoS to prioritize voice on the upstream. If I try to do a file upload during a call, the upload just goes slower, and the call doesn't degrade. However, if I disable QoS and try a file upload, it will sound terrible.

  • VoIP Isn't all it's cracked up to be. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by serith ( 658009 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:52PM (#11314627) Homepage
    Until Comcast upgrades their infrastructure, and has oodles of bandwidth to shovel out to its customers, I'd be hesitant to switch. I have VoIP myself with Time Warner - Roadrunner in central New York, and it's nothing to write home about. With VoIP sucking on my modem's limited upstream bandwidth, (thank you again Time Warner for the mammoth 384kbps upstream) you start to notice the packet loss in your conversations, along with the frequent disconnects, and the nice lag you notice on your cell phone but shouldn't have to worry about on your land line. Before you jump ships and think VoIP is some sort of messiah, just take a closer look at what you're getting yourself into.

  • PSTN, not POTS. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:53PM (#11314642) Journal
    With Comcast owning the network that the voice calls will traverse (until it gets to POTS, if needed), will Comcast's VoIP quality be better [...]

    PSTN, not POTS, please.

    POTS = Plain Old Telephone Service. It's an electrical and signaling specification: Two wire, 24v DC supplies, ringing, pulse/tone dialing, cabling and line impedence standards (typically CAT3), etc. RJ and other connectors. POTS, and customers attached to the PSTN by POTS, are a (large) subset of the PSTN but far from all of it.

    PSTN = Public Switched Telephone Service. It's the whole telephone ball of wax. Customers attached by POTS, ISDN (basic or primary rate), Tn with SS7, and several cellular standards, etc. Common numbering plan. Division of effort between long-haul, local, and cellular system providers. International carriers and standards. I could go on.

    POTS is a wire connection standard. PSTN is The Telephone Network.
    • Well, if you're going to get technical about it, this service is really properly called IP Telephony (which is the application; the thing you're actually doing) and not VoIP which is the just transport. But everyone just calls it VoIP anyway. Oh well.

  • Comcast user.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sinner0423 ( 687266 ) <sinner0423@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday January 10, 2005 @05:58PM (#11314697)
    As a Comcast user for about a year now, I've had my fair share of problems with the service. Most notably :

    1) DMCA letters
    2) Outages at exactly the same time every night
    3) Prompt, yet horrible, customer service

    I expect VoIP from the same company to be on par, if not worse, than their cable service. If I could afford a decent DSL package that offered me 3mb/sec I'd do it. I have a feeling a lot of people use Comcast because they have no other HSI choice in their area, which is really sad.

    The market is just begging for competition right now, and companies just can't dole out the cash to provide & maintain a competent, COMPETITIVE residental high speed network.

    The only other option I have (greater chicagoland area) is SBC - which is about 1/3rd of the bandwidth Comcast offers for the same price. Looks like I either have to move, or stick with Comcrap for the rest of my suburban life.
    • I have comcast in my area and Bellsouth. Since they can't offer me HSI at 3+ MB/s since I have fiber coming into my house I had to dump them and move to Comcast. Comcast has proven to be mostly reliable at my location in Atlanta - I'd put them in the 99% group, but they have some issues with things like cable boxes resetting suddenly for no reason :)

  • Cringely scores (Score:3, Informative)

    by LuxFX ( 220822 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @06:09PM (#11314862) Homepage Journal
    Hey, that Cringely guy is good ;)

    6) VoIP will continue to shatter the telephone industry with the arrival of WiFi phones, which might finally be the killer app for hotspots. Eventually, all the backbone suppliers will figure out that VoIP is their salvation and will either start their own VoIP companies or ally with big VoIP players.

    from Betting a Billion: Bob's Predictions for 2005 [pbs.org]
  • Later this year, regional phone providers such as SBC Communications and Verizon Communications plan to introduce their own video service in hopes of stealing customers from cable...

    I was expecting to see this sentence go a bit longer:

    "...while Qwest sits on it's big shiny blue [mnginteractive.com] ass and watch the market free fall away from it."

    Disgruntled user trapped behind Qwest residential splitter, AKA "DSL-proof firewall".
  • Ummm... what about the (growing ever ubiquitous) cell phone?

    You might make the argument that they suck in areas where there's poor reception... but then, you expect these same areas to have kick-ass broadband that you can readily access for cheap?

    And with a cell phone, you're getting data services that are getting faster and faster all the time.

    UMTS is around the corner with Docomo [wifinetnews.com] offerings soon after.

    Soon the question might be "why have a wired connection at all?" instead of "which broadband/V

  • Comcast is the LAST to do this!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by funkdid ( 780888 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @06:51PM (#11315346)
    Why is Comcast getting press on this for being the LAST major Cable Co to roll out VoIP?

    Cablevision and Time Warner have been offering VoIP for a long time now and I can personally attest that Vonage is better then both.

    I was a low level net admin at Cablevision when they rolled out their VoIP product. Sure out network was great but no one had any idea how to setup a VoIP infrastructure. Mind you Cablevision spared no expence with equipment, all high end Cisco stuff throughout. We brought in Siemans and they set everything up for us. We had four guys on staff 24-7 just sitting around working on it.

    NOTHING WORKED RIGHT EVER. They would blame our BETA IOS, they would blame Corporate IS, they'd blame our Software Engineering, etc. No matter how "perfect" (by their definition) we made the environment it still never worked. When it did there would be god awful distortion. This was blamed on freak RF anamolies.

    Vonage only does VoIP, they do it realy well. It works the same as when other companies (Like earthlink) Piggyback another Cable Co's modem. Once you get passed the UBR you hop onto another network entirely. If your "On Demand" works ok and your screen doesn't pixelate you should be fine. From the RF point of view all things are created equal. The only differences that you see will be directly attributable to the VoIP provider.

    For the record I understand that Cablevision's VoIP is still crap and Time Warner hasn't done a full blown release yet. If the submitters point of view was accurate these companies would have a far superior product and they would have released it full blast by now without hickups. After all the have network insight that no other company posseses. It would seem obvious that they would be able to make the better product.

    Another side issue is that most Cable Co's have trouble handling the overhead outbound of all these VoIP calls. Think how many Cable Providers Cap uploads low, or cap people after long periods of heavy upload. Guess what happens when you hand out VoIP modems like candy. With TCP/IP an insane network up screws up everyone's down.

    Has anyone seen a Cable Co launch a VoIP service successfully?

  • Does anyone have any suggestions for home alarm systems? the alarms that are monitored by ADT and the likes seem to need a telephone line, but i would rather not have one. Is there a way to do this over VOIP or something else without a POTS?
    • the company I work for recently had a discussion around moving to alarm monitoring over the Internet this with the alarm co. I suspect that alarm companies will start with business customers where the margins are better. It won't be too long until home users get this option too. It's cheaper for everyone, plus, they can monitor for "cut" lines easily (i.e. you can ping a router every 5 minutes for free, but you can't have your alarm system take over the phone line to check-in every 5 minutes!).
  • I see this 1st-party vs 3rd-party VoIP playing out like Tivo vs In-house PVRs. You can either get the generic crap from the cable co. or you can opt for the nicer 3rd party stuff.
  • I've seen a lot of posts about the various experiences, VoIP isn't ready for the end user, etc. I agree with the end user bit, but VoIP is certainly ready for and should probably be exploited by the geek community. Here's my setup and situation:
    • Internet: Mediacom 3Mbps down, 256K up cable modem. Quite reliable, down probably for 10 minutes a month, maybe less. About $45 for that.
    • VoIP Provider: BinFone Service through Binhost Technologies, a company I'm a part of. We're small but we know our shit, we're cheap, and we have geeks running the entire show. We are more into reselling VoIP but also do individual IAX and SIP accounts. Rates are $0.03/min for USA, $0.05/min for Australia (wife is Australian, we call there a lot). More info here [binfone.com].
    • Phone: Grandstream Handytone 486 [grandstream.com] SIP phone adapter. A very cheap ($65, I believe) phone adapter, but has a web interface, good features, and does what I need it to. It is plugged into the network via CAT5 and into the phone patch block via standard POTS wire.
    • IAX Server: I run my own IAX server (Asterisk [asterisk.org]) in-house. It talks to Binhost's server through the IAX protocol (Asterisk proprietary) which is very efficient. I have an X100P FXO PCI card in it that allows connection to the PSTN (my landline) and a NIC to talk to the network.
    • Firewall: All of this sits behind the firewall, a simple Pentium 233 running Slackware 9.1 and using iptables and QoS scripts to regulate traffic. The QoS designates packets by the MAC address of the Grandstream as highest priority so my VoIP packets always get through quickly.
    All right -- big deal, you say. But wait, there's more!

    The phones in the entire house are connected to the phone patch block through the patch panel and a 66 block. The VoIP adapter is also connected to the phone patch block as well as the network. The Asterisk box is connected to the network and to the PSTN landline. So. When I pick up a phone (any of the three in the house), I simply dial a number. The signals from all the phones run through the Grandstream VoIP adapter to the Asterisk box. The Asterisk box figures out if it's a local call or long distance. If local, it uses the FXO card to send out the call on the PSTN. If long distance, it communicates via IAX to the Binhost server and places the call over the Internet. No intervention is required on my part as to where it goes, it just does it right.

    If the Internet connection is down or otherwise inaccessible, it automatically falls back to the landline so calls can still be placed.

    The end result is that I get much cheaper phone calls than I would if I used my long distance on the landline (7 cents US/12 cents Australia vs 3/5), yet I don't have to inconvenience myself with having to worry about which phone I have to use for a phone call.

    Incoming calls are received by the Asterisk box. Assuming I haven't turned on call forwarding or do-not-disturb, it rings through the VoIP adapter to the phones in the house. If nobody answers, Asterisk picks up the line and gives a message and allows the user to pick either my or my wife's voice mail box and leave a message. Very handy.

    Costs:

    Monthly VoIP service: About $20 for the calls, $5 for the line.

    Internet: $45/month

    Asterisk: Free

    Asterisk server: Free donation

    FXO Card: $15 on eBay

    VoIP Adapter: $65

    Wiring: out of some old box

    Firewall: Free donation as well

    Landline costs: $17.95/month
    So total? $80 in startup, $87.95 monthly for all my phone calls and Internet service. I call that a *deal*.

    • Vonage Experience (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dios ( 83038 )
      Not to flame, but more as a comparison...

      I have the basic Vonage 500 minutes/month plan for $14.99. Cox internet service (4 Mb down, .5 Mb up) for $50/month (would be $40 but I don'tuse their cable service). Additional minutes for VoIP (which I've never come close to the 500 minute limit) are billed at 3.9 cents/minute.

      So for $64.99 month I get my internet access and Voip.

      Start up fees for internet were free, for the Vonage VoIP Service it was 29.99 + 9.95 shipping/handling. So lets say $40 for sta

      • actually there is a setting in the router to adjust the Quality of Service settings for the voip. When a voip call comes in, it automatically adjusts my bandwidth allocation to provide for the phone service, when I hang up, my download speeds/torrents/whatever go full rate again.

        That's really cool, I didn't even know they had anything like that yet. I think that's a big issue; I know that until I applied QoS to the firewall, if I was doing something big on the 'net I would hose out my VoIP and that woul
  • Comcast has offered VOIP in Tacoma for the last 6 months.
  • As often as comcast's network goes down; if I had this I wouldn't be able to call about the problem. I'll stick with the local telco for phone service and cognistate for long distance, thanks.

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