VOIP Internet Phones Cheaper & Inferior

[jeffrey]

It probably won't come as a surprise to people who have tried VOIP Internet phone service, but usatoday.com is reporting that a new survey by Keynote Systems Inc., finds that Internet based phone calls are still quite a bit inferior to normal phone lines:

Internet-based telephone services are still very inferior to traditional phone connections in reliability and sound quality, according to an extensive study that judged Vonage and AT&T CallVantage best among the top providers...




Keynote declined to disclose the full rankings from the study, which it is selling to clients but said the scores varied widely from top to bottom and that even the leaders had substantial room to improve...

Disruptions in the ability to make or receive a call was a key problem, the study found. Keynote said service availability ranged from 99.4% of the time to as low as 94.8%, meaning that for customers of the worst performers, one out every 20 call attempts failed.

While the Internet based phone services can substantially reduce your phone bill, taking into account the inferior quality should be part of your calculation if you are considering the switch.

[pierre]

Do they say who paid for the study? I don't think so...

We use Vonage for over 2 years now. We have 4 lines (3 lines and a fax machine). I have an office at home.

We started with one line just to see how it worked. We took the small business unlimited long distance package with free additional fax line. Cost: around $50 a month compared to the business lines with Qwest -$50 for the line and $50 for the business fax line AND NO LONG DISTANCE.

The quality was as good as the land line (Qwest) so 6 month later we switched the 2 remaining lines to Vonage along with the number. We took the $14.90 package for each with 500 minutes, long distance included.

Before Vonage: $50 + $50 + $35 + $35 = $170 plus $45 montly for unlimited long distance on 2 lines. Total of $215 per month
With Vonage: $50 + $14.90 + 14.90 long distance included. Total of $79.80
and I'm not talking of international calls! Vonage has a $0.06 per minute to Europe where my family lives and $0.03 to Mexico, even no extra charge for Canada.

That's a monthly saving of $135.20 per month, over $1,600 per year...

Big land line companies such as Qwest... are not too happy with this. They called us every week offering tons of benefits if we switched back. But they can't beat $14.90 per month for the line and 500 minutes long distance included...