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Communications IT

Getting Started with VoIP Devices 171

Posted by timothy from the call-a-lot-emptor dept.
Kerbo writes "If you have been wondering what kind of devices you need to use a voice-over-ip (VoIP) provider or Asterisk PBX, the guys at Geek Gazette have been doing up some reviews of different devices. These allow you to use a standard phone with VOIP providers. The newest review is of the Sipura ATA-1001 ATA." Before you get too happy with the possibilities, though, note what an anonymous reader submitted: "Several VoIP providers have started adding 'regulatory recovery fees' to their users' bills, even though the entire industry is unregulated. The latest one to do this is Packet 8. The whole reason so many are moving to VoIP is to avoid these kinds of bogus fees; it's unfortunate these providers haven't figured this out yet."
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Getting Started with VoIP Devices More

Getting Started with VoIP Devices

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  • VOIP is useless (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:06PM (#12274204)
    We are all going to die anyway (see previous article)

  • I'd jump to VoIP in a second (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Uptown Joe ( 819388 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:07PM (#12274216)
    but I can't keep my old phone number... I would love to lose the $50 plus a month fee.

    I have a Cox phone number now.

    • Re:I'd jump to VoIP in a second (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And tell me: do you like cox?

    • Re:I'd jump to VoIP in a second (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:33PM (#12274552) Journal
      Yes, changing phone numbers really sucks... but consider the flip-side: the fact that you can keep your number with VoIP, even if you move across the country!

      Seriously, I can take my VoIP box on trips and still receive my local calls anywhere... if I move somewhere new in town, my number doesn't change, and I don't have to pay new installation or connection fees... as far as VoIP is concerned nothing has changed. And even if I moved far away, I could keep my local number (and get a new number in the new city), so all my friends and family can still call me (and it's only a local call for them).

      In a sense, VoIP is the ultimate in *keeping* your phone number. I'm glad I made the switch.
      • "Seriously, I can take my VoIP box on trips and still receive my local calls anywhere... if I move somewhere new in town, my number doesn't change, and I don't have to pay new installation or connection fees... as far as VoIP is concerned nothing has changed... In a sense, VoIP is the ultimate in *keeping* your phone number. I'm glad I made the switch."

        Question: Why VOIP over a cell phone?

        (Note: I'm not asking to shoot you down. Rather, I only have a cell phone and I'm curious if I'd save money or som
        • Good point! On the other hand, cell phone roaming and out-of-zone charges can be quite high. Using a cell phone in another country may be impossible (or very expensive). Using a VoIP box in another country is easy (as long as there is a high-speed net connection, of course!). So for some people, a VoIP box may be cheaper for making calls when on the road. However, each person is different and should look into their spending habits. If you already have high-speed internet, VoIP is a cheap replacement for a
          • "Good point! On the other hand, cell phone roaming and out-of-zone charges can be quite high."

            Hmm nah. I have a ~$50 a month plan with Cingular that features no roaming in the US. (even Hawaii!) I don't have a good counter point about using in another country. If I went to Canada, my cell phone would likely be quite pricey.

            " VoIP: 23$/month (which includes voicemail and unlimited long-distance)"

            That's interesting to know. I might want to rethink my whole communications strategy a bit. :)
            • Out of curiosity, does your phone actually let you roam everywhere?

              T-Mobile advertise free roaming but then prevent you from roaming onto other networks.

              At one point i had a T-Mobile (UK) phone and a T-Mobile (US) phone. In my old appt i got excellent AT&T reception and poor TMo reception, my UK phone would let me choose either network but my US phone said I wasn't authorized to roam onto AT&T.

              Bizarely when i travel within the US I can quite happily use AT&T - i just can't do it in colorado.
    • er, I thought the telco had to let you move your phone number to a new carrier? Bellsouth will do it, I know for a fact. it requires some paperwork, but it can be done iirc.
    • I moved my nuber to Vonage from Verizon. I thought it was a legal requirement now?
    • You can move your phone number to Vonage, unless Cox has some legal loophole out of it.

      I do use Cox for my high-speed internet. I'd heard stories, so I was reluctant to try Cox. I guess you have to experiment a little; I found that I love Cox!

    • You may be able to port your number (Score:5, Informative)

      by lorcha ( 464930 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:46PM (#12274701)
      From this page [voicepulse.com], go about halfway down the page to "Check Portability" and.. well.. you know what to do from there.

      I'm sure other VoIP providers have as good or better number porting abilities.

  • VOIP not cheaper... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:09PM (#12274250)
    ... at least for us (a small business). Once you add in all of the per-line charges, the hardware, the setup fees, the broadband, and the fact that if you want to use DSL, you still have to buy at least one phone line from the phone company. Plus, of course, the reliability of broadband still isn't nearly at the level of hard telephone lines. After taking this into consideration, unfortunately, going through the local Ma Bell monopoly was still the cheapest and most reliable option for us (a business needing 3-5 phone lines).

    • Re:VOIP not cheaper... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Blapto ( 839626 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:14PM (#12274316)
      For us (a small business) we use VoIP for telecommuting, I feel that's where the real strength is at the moment. Of course, if you're a larger business (100+ employees) in the middle of a city I think it becomes economical to get a dedicated line which should be very reliable.
    • Lots of non-former-Baby Bell ISP's will give you a DSL line without a telephone line.

      Shop around.
      • Why does everyone assume that because there is a lot of competition in the broadband market where they live that it's the same for everyone? I, like a lot of people, can do all the shopping I want and it won't change the fact that there are exactly 2 broadband providers in my town.

    • Re:VOIP not cheaper... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hab136 ( 30884 )
      you still have to buy at least one phone line from the phone company

      DSL with no phone line [speakeasy.net]. I have this in BellSouth territory.

      • Re:VOIP not cheaper... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Kevinv ( 21462 )
        I have a speakeasy DSL with no phone line in Southwestern Bell territory. I use Skype for VOIP.
      • I just looked at that. The funny thing is that their basic DSL costs $80/month + hardware, and DSL from Bellsouth is $50/month + $30 for the phone line... hmmm... Just breezing through all of their packages, unfortunately (because I REALLY want to dump Bellsouth, both at my home and business) it looks like their prices are the same if not more than Bellsouth. We'll see when they get back to me with a quote....

    • Re:VOIP not cheaper... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gregmac ( 629064 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:48PM (#12274721) Homepage
      After taking this into consideration, unfortunately, going through the local Ma Bell monopoly was still the cheapest and most reliable option for us (a business needing 3-5 phone lines).

      Usually there are resellers that will get you a fully-featured POTS line at well below the cost of a line from Ma Bell. Bell Canada is the main carrier here, and I can get lines from either AllStream or Primus for several dollars less than Bell, and they include many features -- call/name id, hunt group, other stuff I don't use -- at less than the cost of a basic line from Bell.

      We've been running on Asterisk for a couple of months now, and it's made an impact on our phone bills. Our telephone hardware was aging anyways, so we deployed Asterisk with all new (and low-cost) VoIP phones [sipura.com], at around the same price it would have cost to get a low-end, not very configurable non-VoIP system.

      We have 4 incoming analog POTS (plain old telephone service) lines (one is dedicated to fax). We have two VoIP providers (mostly just for redundancy.. outgoing minutes are cheap). Long distance calls are routed through VoIP, and a maximum of two local calls will get routed through POTS lines before using Voip, which for the most part keeps a POTS line free for incoming calls. If our internet is down, long-distance calls simply fail over to the POTS lines, and if they're all used up it tells you "all lines are busy now", which is annoying but not any different than it would be without VoIP.

      Since we just moved and were forced to change our number, I'm waiting on getting our old number switched to a VoIP provider. Right now it's call-forwarded to our new number, but when it goes VoIP, incoming calls on it will not use up our POTS lines. I was even considering changing our third line to hunt to that VoIP line, so that when the 3 incoming voice lines are busy, it will use the VoIP line and basically give us a huge call capacity. I think we pay something like $5/mo for the VoIP number, plus 1.1c/min (CAD$). Normally DID's (direct inward dial, which is what numbers that terminate on VoIP are called) are cheaper than that, but this number is in an area not serviced by many VoIP providers.

      A lot of providers will also provide some kind of failover if you're not connected, ie, they'll just forward the call to another number. Often this will cost double (cost of incoming call + cost of outgoing call) but it's definately better than customers not being able to reach you.

      We've already noticed a decent savings on long distance costs. We were paying something like 4.5c/min on POTS, but now we can call anywhere in north america for 1.3c/min or somewhere in there.

      The real benefit (and one of the main reasons we chose a voip system) will be when we setup our first branch office later this year, and calls between them cost nothing. One receptionist (you only get an IVR off-hours, or if the receptionist is busy) can handle calls for both offices, we can have local numbers in both cities that are treated identically, and staff are encouraged to communicate because calling someone in another city is identical to calling someone in the office down the hall.

      There's also the possibility of working from home. You can actually take our desk phones home, plug them into an internet connection, and they'll work the same as in the office. You can also install a softphone on your PC/laptop, and have an extension. I'm looking forward to using that when I go to some conferences this summer.

      Anyway, the possibilties are really endless, and there's no reason that "going VoIP" means ditching all your analog lines. I'd even say that combining them gives you the best solution.
      • "The real benefit (and one of the main reasons we chose a voip system) will be when we setup our first branch office later this year,"

        Here you have the big benift to VoIP.
        Another place that VoIP makes a big win is for companies outside the US and Canada. International long distance is expensive. With VoIP a call center in India can have local numbers in the US and Canada. For better or for worse. I wish I could find an Inexpensive VoIP provider for Mexico and the EU.

      • I think we pay something like $5/mo for the VoIP number, plus 1.1c/min (CAD$). Normally DID's (direct inward dial, which is what numbers that terminate on VoIP are called) are cheaper than that, but this number is in an area not serviced by many VoIP providers.

        Please tell who you're using. I'm also in Canada and have had trouble finding DIDs.

    • WORD!

      I can't tell you how many times I've had VOIP vendors approach me with their hair-brained notion of saving us money. The ridiculous per-line charge is where they start to fall on deaf ears with me. Our per-line cost with two PRIs is way lower than with VOIP. What, then if not cost savings, would inspire a change? Nothing that I can think of... some bells-n-whistles administration? Not going to offset the cost of equipment either since we own our phone stuff.

      VOIP providers need to go back to the

      • Re:VOIP not cheaper... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gregmac ( 629064 )
        I can't tell you how many times I've had VOIP vendors approach me with their hair-brained notion of saving us money. The ridiculous per-line charge is where they start to fall on deaf ears with me. Our per-line cost with two PRIs is way lower than with VOIP. What, then if not cost savings, would inspire a change? Nothing that I can think of... some bells-n-whistles administration? Not going to offset the cost of equipment either since we own our phone stuff.

        Sounds like a case of sales people blindly sugge
    • What made me switch to VOIP was a house guest that stuck me with a $250.00 long distance bill.

      I don't much care for surprizes of that kind.

  • If I may interject (Score:4, Insightful)

    by matth ( 22742 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:13PM (#12274296) Homepage
    The reason packet8 and some are charging the USF fees is because they may be regulated in the future, in which case they want to be covered.. I can't blame them.. good grief it's what 50 cents or $1.00... it's still a TON cheaper then POTS...
    • Instead of in anticipation of future regulation, why not just tack on a "regulation fee" line that is currently $0.00. Tack on a $0.00 tax line while you're at it.

      Then and if regulation or taxation occurs, these lines get filled in with an actual amount that is the correct amount. Not only that, but users would know right away that the government has added fees as they shows up in the bill.

      I'm betting all hell would bust loose when a $0.00 line suddenly clicks upward.

      Yeah it's cheaper, but that doesn't mean they can't write an honest bill.

      • Because it's possible they could get charged BACKWARD for the amount of time they have been using things like 911... etc that the USF charges... it's very smart for them to do it.. otherwise they risk having to dish out thousands and thousands of out of pocket dollars to pay back the years they have been using 911..

    • Oh Come on.... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You're saying they're justified charging a fee because someday the government might charge them a fee?

      Seriously?

      In that case, the fee is too low! God bless them for only keeping it to $1.50! They're so freakin' generous!

    • Re:If I may interject (Score:5, Funny)

      by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <slashdot AT monkelectric DOT com> on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:26PM (#12274462)
      WHAT? Way to drink the VOIP koolaid! They need money NOW because they MAY need it in the future? That makes no sense whatsoever. Are they going to refund the money if they dont need it?
    • The reason packet8 and some are charging the USF fees is because they may be regulated in the future, in which case they want to be covered.. I can't blame them.. good grief it's what 50 cents or $1.00... it's still a TON cheaper then POTS...

      While $0.50 might not be much to you, and you may wish to donate, people like me want to get something in return for a fee paid. If there is no expense to the company in the future, will they refund that $0.50 they take every month? Why don't they wait to charge the

    • And if all businesses decide to start charging extra to cover "potential fees" that's OK with you as well? Afterall, what's a $1 extra on every single service that you use?

      If they aren't being forced to charge the fees then they shouldn't be charging for them. Its as simple as that. I can't fathom why you think users should just be fine with seeing extra charges on their bills that are going straight into the pockets of the VOIP company. At least with the regular phone company they have to charge a fee, wi
    • Says you. For $25/month I can either get Packet 8 or I can get Qwest. Only difference is where the packets go.
    • So in other words, FRAUD.

      You cannot anticipate a regulatory fee since it is unknown if there will be any and if there will be, how much it will be. Furthermore, do they stipulate that this "fee" will be at a higher rate for those not presently subscribing?

      You cannot charge someone money that is not in the original agreement and it not presently justifiable. I would consider looking to legal measures to remedy this problem. Taxation without representation launched the American Revolution. Surely this f

    • Re:If I may interject (Score:3, Informative)

      by bahwi ( 43111 )
      When they have a DID (Incoming #) They still get charged some regulatory fees, all they are doing is passing some along to regular users. Even with a T1 or colo at the CO you have to pay a bit of fees for incoming DIDs, they're just doing what the bells do and are passing it to you. But there are some fees they are excluded from.

  • Recovery fees (Score:5, Informative)

    by 0kComputer ( 872064 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:14PM (#12274309)
    Sound almost like the Spanish American War Tax [internetnews.com] that we've been paying for the last 100 years on our telephone bills.

    How the hell do thes companies get away with these idiotic taxes?

  • VoIP phone recommendation (Score:5, Informative)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:17PM (#12274341) Homepage
    The Polycoms IP500 are decent phones, I love them.

    re: Voip

    VoIP's main draw isn't that it's cheaper, or at least, it shouldn't be. It may be, but that can change on a dime ( heh, hat trick pun! ). It's a matter of usability. My asterisk server is far more useful to me than the old partner ACS system we used to have.

    I have my voicemail emailed to me. I can record conversations on the fly. I can move my phones and have my number follow me. I can make any changes I need on the fly ( within minutes, typically ). I can train others to do the same with little trouble.

    And when people say VoIP ( and asterisk in particular ) is difficult to learn, they are really referring to the POTS aspects of it. Old phone lines are complex, no doubts, and the parts of asterisk that are carry overs from a traditional pbx are similarly complex. However, asterisk itself is incredibily easy to work with. Have you ever setup samba? Apache? Asterisk is easier.
    • You seem to know asterix well. Is the on site documentation good enough or are there other resources you would recommend?

      I tried out the asterix@home cd and it installed and set itself up flawlessly but I couldn't figure out a lot of tasks which I would consider simple and the asterix@home site didn't seem to have any useful docs.

      • Re:What's the best starting point? (Score:4, Informative)

        by gregmac ( 629064 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:59PM (#12274844) Homepage
        Is the on site documentation good enough or are there other resources you would recommend?

        voip-info.org is like the bible of the VoIP/asterisk world. I definately recommend browsing around there before getting started, and keeping it bookmarked while you're installing and configuring asterisk.

        I'm actually one of the developers for AMP [sourceforge.net], which is the web GUI that asterisk@home uses, and one of the biggest things I see is that there's a lot of people that want to just jump in thinking they don't need to know anything to get started. I'm not sure why this is, but you most definately need to understand basic concepts of a PBX, and some telephone technology, and how asterisk itself works in relation to those things. Most definately do not setup a mission-critical phone system (and I'd argue that any phone system used in a business instanly becomes mission-critical) without testing - a lot - first. Some people even setup test systems in their homes before hand.. and since the entry cost is so low, this is entirely possible. It's hard to recommend how much and what method to use for testing, since it varies depending on the size of your install. voip-info has some deployment tips though, that are probably very useful.
        • Thanks for the site reference.

          I believe I've got a decent understanding of VoIP but not necessarily of Asterix configuration. Although like any other situation this is probably a case of me knowing so little that I realize how much I don't know!

          I was actually trying to set it up at home before deploying it in a production environment. I'll check out those deployment tips.
      • The wiki is my personal source of choice, I've even done some editing on the polycom pages. But also the mailing list. Tons of people on it, very knowledgable, and generally pretty nice. Do your homework first, and you should be ok.

        I haven't played with asterisk@home, so i can't speak much about it. I do know that once I got the basics of asterisk, I was able to start doing some pretty advanced things without breaking a sweat.

        So read read read, once you "get it", you'll get it, and you'll see what I m
    • VoIP's main draw isn't that it's cheaper, or at least, it shouldn't be.

      This statement is misleading. It depends on many factors, and usually it does break down to be cheaper, depending on how you look at it.

      If you have dialup networking and you don't make a lot of phone calls, VoIP won't save you any money. That's assuming $35 for a basic phone line plus $20 for an ISP. $55 total. If it's good enough for you then good for you.

      To use VoIP, you really need a high speed connection for the best quality a
      • The only way it really isn't cheaper is if I stayed with basic dialup and had no cable TV. So it really is cheaper, you just have to shuffle the funds around.

        That really is irrelevant however. It *may* be cheaper, but that's not the point I was trying to make. I was pointing out that voip is more usable and managable than it's traditional counterparts.

        Of course, this is from a business perspective. For home use, I'm biased. Not only is it insanely cheaper than my regular pots line, I get all sorts of
    • these are all features of a good pbx, not whatever trunk flavor is being used. going by feature set, Televantage kicks asterisk's ass, but of course its not free. any good PBX can take whatever trunks you have and give you great feature set.so yeah, it kinda does come down to trunk/line costs. voip can save money for small businesses who make lots of international calls, but mostly its great for tieing together offices in different states.

  • my voip experience... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kebes ( 861706 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:17PM (#12274343) Journal
    I recently switched to Vonage from a standard phone, and I'm very happy. With regard to hardware, they ship you a Linksys router that is pre-configured with your details, so all you have to do is plug it in and it works. The router replaced my previous router for my home network, and seems to work great. The hardware hasn't caused me any problems.

    The harder part was re-wiring my house so that all the phones would work using voip (instead of just having one phone plugged into the Linksys router). Even this is not too bad: just disconnect your internal wiring from the Telco, and then plug the voip router into a wall-jack, so that all wall-jacks are now connected to it. (Be sure to disconnect from Telco wiring properly, or you'll fry your voip hardware!!) Even getting my alarm system to work with voip was pretty easy (just had to invert its wiring...).

    Serious geeks may want to shop around for the coolest hardware, but honestly the box that Vonage ships is good enough for most people. I think voip is fast becoming accessible to the "average consumer" and I'm now recommending it to everyone I know. For a low price you get every telephone service imaginable, free long-distance calling... The Vonage ads (phone bill going from 60$ to 20$) are not exagerations. So my hardware review is: you can use whatever the voip provider ships and you won't have any hassles!

    • Re:my voip experience... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So my hardware review is: you can use whatever the voip provider ships and you won't have any hassles!

      You Sir should be a White House spokesperson.

    • Re:my voip experience... (Score:4, Informative)

      by gregmac ( 629064 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:20PM (#12275090) Homepage
      The harder part was re-wiring my house so that all the phones would work using voip (instead of just having one phone plugged into the Linksys router). Even this is not too bad: just disconnect your internal wiring from the Telco, and then plug the voip router into a wall-jack, so that all wall-jacks are now connected to it.

      Here's another idea: if you want your POTS line as well as a voip line, phones only use two wires (red and green). Yellow and black are spare, and are often used to run a second line. If you hook up your ATA to the yellow/black pair, then you now have both lines running everywhere in your house.* Get a two-line phone, and you can access both lines (this may require adding an additional jack wired to yellow/black), or selectively you can wire yellow/black instead of red/green to any jack to make it use the second line.

      (*: This is assuming that all 4 wires have been connected anywhere they split in the house. Most newer homes have all the phone jacks with one continous wire coming down to a central location, where it's connected to the telco demarc, but the old method was to daisy-chain or just randomly splice into a nearby wire to add a jack. If this was done improperly, or worse, yellow/black red/green were interconnected somewhere, it can fry your equipment and be very hard to track down. Make sure you know what you're doing before you try anything like this. If you blow your phones/ATA/computer/self up, I take no responsibility :) )
    • If you're reading this thread or any voip thread and you see the rave reviews for Vonage please note as always that your "results may vary." my story is: I gave Vonage a try on my cable connection to avoid all the land-line fees. The audio quality was terrible! While calls sounded great to me - I was barely audible to others. I called their customer service to see if they had any hints on improving the audio quality... nothing. When I tried to cancel my service the reps repeatedly gave me the run-around. I

  • Extra fee's (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:22PM (#12274420) Journal
    Several VoIP providers have started adding 'regulatory recovery fees' to their users' bills, even though the entire industry is unregulated.

    If VoIP is really Voice over IP, why are there any fee's, why are there any regulations? Why can't someone make a device that records my voice in real time, sends it to a different computer, where it is played?

    I am suprised there is not some DNS type scheme where people use their computers like a phone. Instead of calling a land line or cell phone, you use your computer to call some IP. What else would we need? Voice mail? Someone could make a program to watch a port for calls, and if not anwsered, then the stream is recorded into a mp3.

    The only thing which worries me is abuse. People sniff networks. People try and gain access of computers using open ports. VoIP would require some trust.

    If people wait for the telcom companies to take command of VoIP, we can expect another phone bill. Maybe comcast will offer a combined package that is difficult to opt out of, like the $10 off broadband if cable is purchased. Maybe they will add $10 more to your bill if you don't buy their VoIP.

    • Re:Extra fee's (Score:5, Informative)

      by the unbeliever ( 201915 ) <chris+slashdot&atlgeek,com> on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:27PM (#12274468) Homepage
      Have you never heard of Skype [skype.com]? It's exactly what you describe.

      However, the vast majority of people are still attached to the old telephone, myself included. I can't see using a PC with a headset or a microphone as a normal communications tool.
      • It might be what he describes, but I want a small box with a phone plugged into it on my desk running some sort of "skype" like software that is independent of my machine running.

        Does such a box exist?
        • Every single VOIP provider I know gives you one of those, Vonage included. Plug it into your LAN, plug your phone into it, follow activation instructions and *poof* -- voip.
          • Yah, but I can't dial an IP on my phone to some user using Skype (or another device similar to the one I describe) can I?

            I don't want a VoIP provider. I want to dial over the internet without using a PC.
        • Yes. I just bought one, called SkypeBox. Skypebox [mplat.com]

          /Pedro

      • Re:Extra fee's (Score:3, Informative)

        by bahwi ( 43111 )
        Ditto. I need a real telephone. I'm using a 5.8Ghz AT&T Exampandable up to 8 system. But, I am using VoIP. Haven't had a POTS line in years. With the D-Link DVG-1402s (unlocked from http://sipphone.com/adapters/ ) I get great quality. I work with asterisk a lot, so I've got my own custom set up, $11/mo incoming line w/ free incoming minutes, and 1.3c/min outgoing, but I rarely make any outgoing calls, so my bill is $22(2 lines, one in Houston, one in Dallas, although they both ring the same hard phone,
    • Why can't someone make a device that records my voice in real time, sends it to a different computer, where it is played?

      Because VoIP really isn't a Voice over IP service, it's a service that links a normal phone number to a digital audio channel. "devices that record your voice in real time and play it on a different computer" have been around for a long time, at least a decade. Any voice chat program (MSN, SpeakFreely...) does exactly that. But you can't get incoming calls from a regular phone number.

      I
      • uh no. voip is voice over ip. you have described a voip gateway, more specifically, a voip to pots gateway. informative ?
      • In short, VoIP is a misnomer.

        Incorrect. Getting VoIP calls from a POTS line has nothing to do with VoIP. What you describe is a gateway that digitizes and routes data from analog circuits onto an IP network.

        VoIP, on the other hand is just that. Audio and video data packetized and transmitted with a set of protocols optimized to minimize the limitations of IP networks that make such data transmissions difficult.

        Getting onto or off of the PSTN is the job of the loop signaling software and hardware. Gett

    • You can build your own VoIP system, and you won't have to pay anyone or be regulated. You don't have to use headphones and a mic: you can get the hardware so that you can use a normal telephone, and call other users of the software anywhere in the world. No cost (other than you buying the hardware and paying for broadband). These issues have all been dealt with. The software is available. [skype.com]

      The difference is that a VoIP provider needs money because they are routing your call down that "last mile" of conven

    • It's called ENUM (Score:3, Informative)

      by mamladm ( 867366 )
      The DNS type scheme you are asking for is called ENUM aka E164, it exists today, it's an open standard and Asterisk supports it already. Roughly speaking, ENUM uses DNS to translate phone numbers into IP addresses.

      http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/enum/ [itu.int]

      You could sign up for a free account on e164.org and enter your existing telephone number. The system will call you back and an automated message tell give you a verification code which you type into a form on the web site to verify that you are in fact at that
    • Remember that when the VOIP companies are delivering your phone calls to old-fashioned real phone companies, they're getting charged money to do it. Some part of that money is regulatory fees (not usually most of it - it's still a bogus explanation, but there's a grain of truth under the misdirection.)

      Also, if you're getting incoming phone calls from phone companies, there are costs attached to those phone lines. It's cheaper than traditional phone lines, because they're not only buying big pipes inst

  • stick with sipura (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:23PM (#12274424) Homepage
    the linksys stuff is all doorstops if you chance from the provider that has branded it. There are thousands of linksys voip boxes on ebay that are worthless because they are vonnage or packet8 locked.

    the spa-2000 is the best module I have ever used, and after you are done with the voip provider it can be resold or used with asterisk or FWD.

    I also will not use a provider that will not let me control the hardware or use asterisk, but then I'm not a typical customer.

    • Well I didn't pay for my Vonage box...so why does it matter that it's worthless? It's like a cable box - if I switch providers the new provider gives me one of theirs instead.

  • Regulatory fees... (Score:4, Funny)

    by wiredlogic ( 135348 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:30PM (#12274515)
    You just know they're going to add a $4.00 surcharge for that new-fangled touch-tone service.

  • I am interested in more than what Asterisk has (Score:4, Informative)

    by bayerwerke ( 513829 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:32PM (#12274536) Homepage
    I want a PBX replacement with voicemail, call accounting "for hotel guest phone charges". The last item is where I don't see an Asterisk based solution is workable. I would like to be wrong, any suggestions?

  • Cheap ATA adapters? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lorcha ( 464930 )
    Does anyone have any inexpensive ATA adapters to recommend? I don't need any bells and whistles--I can just put those into my Asterisk dialplan.

    Just looking for a reliable ATA adapter at a low cost.

    Any recommendations?

    • Re:Cheap ATA adapters? (Score:3, Informative)

      by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
      I use a Grandstream Handy Tone ATA-286 - it's small, I'm using it with asterisk, it has worked w/o issue since last November. When you first get it you have to set the IP address with the analog phone (which is pretty wild, a little box going "to change IP address, press 1", etc) but from then on you just use a web page to configure everything else. There were a bunch of options I didn't even get into, just setup sip user and password, match it to an asterisk extension and go. If it loses connection to aste

  • 911? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SpongeBobLinuxPants ( 840979 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @04:44PM (#12274678) Homepage
    But you can't call 911 from some VOIP [slashdot.org]
    • Vonage has had 911 calling in most of the states for awhile, and has phased-in 911 calling in Canada recently. I don't know about other VoIP providers, but it appears that this situation is being dealt with.

      When you sign up with Vonage, they are exceedingly clear about the limitations of 911 dialing (and the fact that you have to explicitly sign up for it). This is certainly in response to criticisms (and lawsuits). I know that in Canada the CRTC was strongly urging VoIP providers to supply this functional

  • VOIP is a momentary fad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:01PM (#12274879) Homepage Journal
    Sure, it's cheaper right now, and needs to happen, just as a lever to get the telecom companies to quit holding back society and actually charge a reasonable fee for small-bandwidth voice communications.

    However, it's a trap, and a nasty trap for a lot of networking people. A lot of networking people are going to end up getting 'scapegoated' and losing their jobs before this is over.

    Why? The whole QOS thing. All VOIP packets get top-level QOS scheduling on the network, meaning VOIP data packets all get priority over all the other 'normal' data packets. Not a problem when VOIP is less than 10% of your network traffic.

    However, all the PHB types see is that VOIP is way cheaper than normal telco methods, and they are starting to want all the phone lines in the company switched over to VOIP to 'save money'.

    Problem is, once you get over a threshhold where there's a lot of VOIP traffic, the normal data packets take a huge backseat to the VOIP data. Suddenly you've got packet timeouts happening constantly with 'normal' data (Which the data networks were originally put in place to handle), and data transfer slows to a crawl. Packets are getting dropped all over the place. File transfers start taking 10 times longer than normal, if they don't just fail due to timeouts.

    Now the network guys are in all kinds of trouble because critical business functions, which rely on the 'normal' data packets, are not working, or are insanely slow.

    So, the network people get bitched out, and turn around with huge cost increases due to needing to massively increase the pipes between locations, and that still doesn't solve the problem in all cases. So you throw in extremely expensive high-performance routers to handle all the packet shuffling and scheduling. Pretty soon, you're back to costs HIGHER than it was to start out with with normal data networks and normal voice/telco connections.

    To avoid being burnt, either demand completely separate networks for VOIP and normal data. Or just stay away from VOIP. In the long run, you'll be better off. But in the short term, enjoy explaining this to PHB types who only see the short-term cost savings that they are being force-fed by the VOIP vendors.

    It's a scam, nothing is free.
    • It's a scam if you enter into it like you describe, and aren't aware of exactly these kinds of problems. However, I think there are some inherent advantages to packet-switched voice communications which use the same infrastructure as your data communications.

      The expectation is that the VoIP charges will allow ISPs and providers to expand their bandwidth to support both voice and data over the same network. It's not necessarily orders of magnitude cheaper, but once it scales up it should be easier to suppor

    • Re:VOIP is a momentary fad (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jtn ( 6204 )
      Sorry, but if you're a responsible network administrator and do capacity planning and keep tabs on your network, this just doesn't happen. Incremental upgrades can be made ahead of a dangerous line, just as with any network upgrade. These issues should be presented prior to any organization's rollout of ANY service, not just VoIP. To not perform such duties of a responsible network engineer is gross negligence.

      In the event that such your PHB's ignore your capacity planning and advice, time to put that resu
    • According to Gartner Group, VoIP is so much of a momentary fad that the last circuit switched telephone call on the planet will be made in the year 2020, a mere 15 years from now.

      Besides, how do you think the large carriers are shuffling telephone traffic around the planet today? Much of that is VoIP based already, just that you don't know about it. Sure there is managed (private IP networks) and unmanaged bandwidth (public Internet) but the technology is steadily heading towards VoIP everywhere.
      • According to WHO?? Oh, Gartner Group. And I wonder which VOIP vendor paid them to 'research' those findings? *snork*
        • Ok, let's put Gartner aside. I bet 10.000 USD that by 2020 there will be not a single POTS line left in any OECD country -- I am not so confident about third world countries although they might well be the first ones to switch off POTS because they haven't got much of a POTS infrastructure to begin with.

          But of course we are talking real IP telephones here, not some softphone running on your PC. Yet, the transport will not be circuit switched. Even TV will be IP based by then. It's rather silly to assume th
      • Also, the large carriers are using VOIP, no doubt about it. But the big difference is they are using dedicated networks for the VOIP traffic.

        My point was that the mixing of VOIP and normal data traffic is horribly abusive towards the normal data packets. You get 50 'normal' data packets, and 50 VOIP packets, the 50 'normal' packets sit at the back of the bus until the 50 VOIP packets are done. Then only if there were no more VOIP packets received while transmitting the first 50 packets will the 'normal' da
        • Oh Jolly, by 2020 we will have so much bandwidth that VoIP packets will not even be the proverbial needle in a haystack.

          Packets are only going to pile up if the amount of packets you feed into the pipe is higher than what the pipe can carry. If you have a pipe so outrageously oversized that you can't fill it up with all the packets you could possibly generate, then there will be no piling up and the scenario you describe is just a storm in a teacup.

          We have got FTTH here, 100Mbit fibre full duplex. When I

    • Don't forget about the compression.

      I've done some experimenting with an SIP gateway from brujula.net [brujula.net] -- free IP calls, cheap as hell to regular lines, and with a standard SIP setup easily portable to your favorite hard or soft phone, plus a free DID (incoming number) in Washington State.

      The brujula line ran on my system at about 28 kbps both when I used it to call my cell phone and when I called from the cell phone to the free WA number. I used the X-ten Lite SIP phone they have on their homepage on a

  • Regulatory Recovery Fees Bogus??? (Score:3, Informative)

    by GreyPoopon ( 411036 ) <gpoopon@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:22PM (#12275111)
    The whole reason so many are moving to VoIP is to avoid these kinds of bogus fees

    At least with Vonage, these fees are miniscule -- only a couple bucks a month, and I wouldn't consider them to be bogus. I would expect that the money taken in by these fees to ultimately pay for the necessary infrastructure for E911 service. But at any rate, these fees are definitely not why I switched to Vonage. Some of the other fees (like the per-minute federal taxes) had something to do with it, but the most prominent reason for me was the fact that Verizon is trying to get every last cent out of its customers. Forgetting the regulatory fees for a moment, consider that until Vonage (and other VoIP services) began to provide some serious competition, Verizon didn't even offer a flat-rate package that included unlimited long distance. Consider also that the unlimited long distance package for Verizon is something in the neighborhood of $55 (before the regulatory fees), and that Vonage charges only about $25 for essentially the same thing. This is all about a monopoly, and VoIP services are the first real competition that the well-entrenched Baby Bells have had.

    The break-up of AT&T did a lot to reduce the costs of long distance, but it seems that absolutely _NO_ progress has been made on the cost of local access. That's primarily because there is no competition. Even though you see advertisements for other local phone carriers, they are still enslaved to the Bells because the Bells own the last mile connection to your house. Years of trying has not eliminated this problem, and it has taken VoIP to finally put on the cost pressure. As much as I don't want to see archaic regulatory fees imposed on VoIP providers, the related costs pale in comparison to the extra overhead that the local carriers are charging.


  • BroadVoice Unlimited World Plus is better than Teleo, recommended in the article.

    BroadVoice is not completely reliable, but fine for informal situations.

    • BroadVoice is not completely reliable, but fine for informal situations.

      Actually, their service has been very reliable for me. What IS unreliable with Broadvoice is live customer service. It's damn near impossible to get a person on the phone during normal business hours. After 8pm Pacific time, you usually can get someone, though. If you can live with that limitation (I've been able to, so far), Broadvoice should do fine. Also nice is the fact that you can bring your own device. There are only a

  • Fees to Pay for Costs of E911 and Wiretaps? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Skjellifetti ( 561341 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @10:52PM (#12278241) Journal
    VoIP is subject to regulation. Others have already mentioned E911. But there is also the issue of FBI wiretap access [voip-news.com] to VoIP phone calls. The VoIP Cos are gonna pass the costs of these "services" on to consumers just like Ma Bell and its kiddies have done since day one.

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