What vexes VoIP users?

Joe Greco jgreco at ns.sol.net
Mon Feb 28 22:34:03 UTC 2011


> On Mon, 28 Feb 2011, Leigh Porter wrote:
> > On 28 Feb 2011, at 18:37, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> >> On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:29:08 EST, Bret Clark said:
> >>> On 02/28/2011 01:17 PM, Leigh Porter wrote:
> >>>> VoIP at the last mile is just too niche at the moment. It's for people on this list, not my mother.
> >>
> >>> Baloney...if that was the case, then all these ILEC's wouldn't be
> >>> whining about POT's lines decreasing exponentially year over year!
> >>
> >> I do believe that the ILEC's are mostly losing POTS lines to cell phones, not
> >> to VoIP. I myself have a cell phone but no POTS service at my home address.  On
> >> the other hand, I *am* seeing a metric ton of Vonage and Magic Jack ads on TV
> >> these days - if VoIP is "too niche", how are those two making any money?
> 
> It's more cellphones than VoIP or cable provider services, but the latter 
> two are still eating POTS' lunch in the US - even if you don't count 
> something like FiOS where Verizon tears out your copper POTS and moves 
> your line to their ONC.
> 
> > It is quite a different market here. I can get POTS services over the 
> > same copper from, I'd say, about 5 different companies. Maybe more, I 
> > have not counted. I guess the competition already available on the 
> > copper would largely preclude anything but the cheapest VoIP service.
> 
> Sounds very different indeed.  In the US, it's basically "your local Ma 
> Bell derivative, or something not-POTs."  Anecodtally, as of this morning 
> we just dropped one of our POTS lines for the cable company's alternative. 
> Cost dropped from $69/mo to $29/mo right there.
> 
> With say, Verizon POTS you're looking at nearly $30/mo just for dialtone, 
> with everything else (outbound calls, LD, caller ID...) extra.  Now there 
> is some added value in real POTS, but it's awfully hard to justify the 
> cost difference.

Oh my, with other VoIP providers offering service at much cheaper rates,
I simply don't get why anyone would pay $29/month to their cable company
for phone service, unless maybe you really needed thousands of minutes a
month and could justify an unlimited plan, and you wanted to be able to
hold the cable guy's feet to the fire if any problems occurred...  

Services such as VoicePulse offer local unlimited with 200 minutes of
US LD for ~$15 (not a customer, just aware of them as a reputable carrier
from the Asterisk community), and some of the cheapies like InPhoneX have
"World Unlimited" plans that work out to $20/month or thereabouts (again
not a customer).

I have no idea why anyone would be paying Ma Bell $69/month for a phone
line, unless you like giving them your money or something.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.




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