ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area vonage phone system

Another issue with the VoIP setup is that the cable companies are not required to meet the reliability standards that POTS do. Short of a local wire being knocked down, the phone service will stay up during power outages. I believe the phone system has a requirement to back in service in less than 24 hours, were as the cable service doesn't have such a limit. At my house, we lost cable for 4 days until the cable company could replace the power amp that was knocked down.

Larry C

let me know how you feel on this one

When Comcast can keep my modem up for one week straight, we'll consider Vonage or CDV (Comcast Digital Voice.)

EDIT: Oh yeah, also when my local Comcast Office get's some good service guys to install it instead of contractors. (yeah, like that'll ever happen.) Can you tell my family doesn't like Comcast or anything they do, despite my father working for them?

Ian A.

I'm with Ian on this one. My Comcast connection has been down for about 36 hours and they are saying Saturday now.

I have never lost my phone, even through a half dozen hurricanes. I also only own one cordless phone, actually my wife's. The other 6 have "Western Electric" on the handset. Those things will be working after the nuclear war that kills the cockroaches.
I still have 2 rotary dial phones hooked up.

Another thing to consider is the cable companies do not have eniough lines to carry peak time calling, so when someone calls you they may get an office busy, it took me 2 days of trying to reach someone, and he was not using the line, this will vary from area to area, but don't expect them to improve the number of lines any time soon, and once you sign the contract, your another victim.

We dropped our land-line telephone line completely and rely entirely on cox cable for TV and internet. We use internet for communication more than phones anyhow. I have my computer, router and cable modem on UPS- if I shut the PC down to conserve the battery, it will power the WAP for many hours, during which time, we can use our laptops. For longer outages, the generator has no problem powering all the TVs and computers in the house.

If cable goes out, I have a Treo700p PDA Phone which I can use to access my email and the internet in general. I can also tether it to my laptop via bluetooth and use it as a broadband modem (3mbps!); with my laptop set up as ad-hoc wifi proxy server, my wife and I can both get online with it at the same time So, if we lose cable, we're still up on broadband internet


I use Skype a lot to video teleconference with my parents (who FINALLY got DSL in their area!)- lets them see their grandkids, they like that The quality isn't perfect, but it's not all that bad.

[This message has been edited by SteveFehr (edited 02-16-2007).]

While your UPS can take care of your power outage, the cable companies have pole mounted equipment that requires power between you and their central equipment. Loss of power on any one of these points will result in loss of service.
Don

I have two Vonage lines at the house. One is used for the business and the other for the house. I also have an AT&T land line for the business fax.

In my mechanical room in the house where all of the equipment is located, I have a phone that is connected to the fax land line. In case Vonage goes out I can still make calls or dial 911 from in the house.

Before we had kids we disconnected our land line. My wife and I just used our cell phones. When the kids arrived, so did the land line....

Don't confuse Vonage with voice services provided by a cable company. Apples and oranges. Vonage uses the internet, a cable modem only uses the cable lines for VoIP. At their head end or office their switch connects you with normal telco provided facilities. Usually cable voice service is quite good.

-Hal

Hal,
But in many cases the internet is provided by the cable company. In my area the cable is run out from the main office in fiber and connected to coax in the neighborhoods. Loss of power for the media converter results in loss of cable service and internet service. We have many areas of town where the only broadband choice is the cable as the homes are over 15,000 wire feet from the central office and won't support DSL.

Don

Sounds like my neck of the woods Don. Luckily verizon signal is strong at home...