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SBC, ATT and Vonage

  • Articolo

I just received my last SBC phone bill today. That's right, no more DSL, no more local and no more long distance. For some weird reason I felt compelled to switch once I ditched DSL for the cable modem (3.1 down/ ~ 700 up) just because I could. Well, actually, I switched because ATT gave me 5,000 American Airlines miles and 5 miles for every dollar I spend.

I do find it ridiculous that with a land line you pay for each additional service like caller id etc. Things that are free with cell phones. In fact, I would just go ahead and cancel my land line all together, but there are some people my wife and I do not want to give out our cell phone numbers to, so the land line works well for that.

I thought about switching to Vonage, a Voice over IP company. However, when I went to their website to see if I could keep my landline number the site said no and offered no explanation. When I called them to inquire, the person I spoke to sounded like she was in Siberia. The connection cut out ever few seconds. That didn't make a good impression since I assumed they were using their own technology I guess. Oh, and I still got no explanation as to why I could not keep my number.

Until there is Qos for things like VoIP I don't see how it will take off. I already have to put up with reliability issues with my cell phone, I don't need that to expand to other areas of my life.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    Here is what it says when I try:

    Our records indicate you cannot keep your current telephone number.
  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    But I live in San Francisco! ;-). ANd that Number Portability was for cell phones, not land lines. Those numbers have always been portable.
  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    What we did was transfered the landline number to my wife's cell phone, and we got a new number from Vonage.

    Our Vonage has performed extremely well, just about as good as the landlline. We love the ability to check voice mail online and to get your voicemails emailed to you (as a .wav attachment). Best of all our bill is $16.94 (including all taxes and fees) for 500 local/long distance minutes.

    Remeber too that you can take your Vonage ATA anywhere in the world and place and receive phone calls.

  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    Vonage. Works great until the power goes out!
  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    I am using Z-Tel which gives unlimited local + unlimited long distance service + all the bells & whistles for $50/mo. www.ztel.com So far I am very happy with the service.
  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2004
    Vonage does transfer phone numbers. Some carriers in some geographies are not set up yet to do the transfer. I have Vonage phone and fax. The phone works much better than the fax. A problem I am running into is the uploade data rate I have with Comcast. It varies between 0 and 256 KBytes/second for the standard service ($49/month, (19.99/month if you get the promotional price for 6 months). Vonage requires 90KBytes/sec transfer rate in both directions to support a phone call. When connected to a cable network, homes share a router that can become overloaded at times (usually in late afternoon and evening). If a router is loaded such that one's network upload rate drops below 90KBytes/second, you hear silence until the data rate recovers or the connection times out. If the connection times out, the call is dropped. The download speed through Comcast is not usually a problem because its usually 2400+ KBytes/second. The upload rate is problematic becasue Comcast guarantees 0 to 256KBytes/second upload rate. I have had the rate drop down to 78 KBytes/second on a regular basis.

    I am not sure if I am satisfied with the service yet. I am still in testing mode.

    I am paying 24.99 for unlimited local and toll calls and 500 minuits/month of long distance. The fax is an additional 9.99 for FAX with 300 minutes of long distance
  • Anonymous
    April 16, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2004
    I have DSL from SBC. Vonage requires DSL connection. As far as I know SBC wouldn't give just DSL( With out the phone connection).
    Is there any way out of this?
    I donot want to move to cable for my broadband, since my upstream is around 512KB/S with DSL. I believe this is very tough to achieve with Cabel...
    Thanks
    Extreme...