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

"Some phone companies use an outside enclosure with batteries, hydrogen tanks and hydrogen fuel cells. The batteries are for the few minutes until the fuel cells get going. The ones I saw at a trade show could use a number of H2 tanks to provide the required run time."

And there are a lot of the older switches, and remote centrals, that even with power loss, will still switch but loose ring voltage, you still have service, with all the different phone companies out there, they all pretty much have good equipment, with the exception of some of the smaller private companies. For the newer switches, and fiber holes, they are pretty much using the fuel cells now.

Don,

Vonage, and the cable companies remind me of remote centrals they used back in the 50's and 60's when the production housing was in boom stage, we had 2500 homes served by a central remote with 12 lines, busy busy busy, and it looks like these so called bargin phone services are still trying to get away with a few lines as possible, in my area in the peak usage times, I get office busy when I try to call anyone with cable phone services, the outbound works, but not eniough lines for the inbound calls, and just about the same for a lot of cell providers.



[This message has been edited by LK (edited 02-17-2007).]

The only compressed gas tanks I've ever seen connected to any telephone equipment are the nitrogen tanks Verizon (former GTE) used to keep moisture out of their paper-insulated cable that should've probably been replaced years before.

Brian,
The tanks are in the enclosure.
Don

If you live in western Canada for $10 more a month Shaw Cable will activate a QOS (quality of service) option to improve the voice quailty of Vontage or any of the other internet phone services that use the public internet.

Shaw also has their own digital phone service which does not travel over the public internet to access a telephone switch and is not subject to this charge.

Last I heard Vontage was going to the CRTC (Canada's version of the FCC) to have Shaw remove the QOS charge.

I have some friends that have the Shaw telephone service and other than a few outages the voice quailty seems to be ok when I call them.

Fair enough, but I would expect that such equipment would need a vent to the outside, which again, I don't see on any Verizon remote concentrators. If this is new technology, then that explains it, as these concentrators are at least 10 years old if not older.

The service I have with Vonage is acceptable, but my major gripe is that they are switched in the US which means I cannot dial any Canada-only toll-free numbers.. This includes several government offices.

Vonage Canada customer service claims they are working on it.. But it's been a problem for 2+ years.

I've been setting up our construction trailers with Vonage now. What I like about it is I can get 2 phone lines for half the cost of comparable Bell service, and when the site closes down, I can pick the box up and move it to the head office, or to a new job site.

And if I recall correctly, Cogeco also offers the QoS charge.

Brian,
It is new stuff, but there were no obvious vents on the enclosures.
Don