Residential VoIP - No Operators

Some say the media sensationalizes our economic woes for their personal gain. Others say the media accurately portrays the extreme financial burdens we find ourselves facing. And some people say, “Hey. I don’t care about anything, I always have and always will try to save money.” With today’s world becoming increasingly digital, VoIP (digital telephone) seems like a naturally good idea.

Clearly, we at VoIP Tech Chat advocate VoIP. We love it. We love it so much, we made a website called VoIP Tech Chat. And we actually now and then have chats and write articles on VoIP (ok, that last part was a little sarcastically since both Patrick and Fred seem to have been too busy to actually talk or write lately… but anyway…).

Residential Telephone Service and VoIP

If you can read this, you probably live somewhere. Or you’re a robot… which would be AWESOME since we are desperately trying to increase our robotic readership, but seriously, most people in our “audience” live somewhere and have residential phone service. Well, we should say most people used to have residential phone service.

Ten years ago, Mobile Phones were a novelty. Today, they are viewed as a necessity. In the United States, more people have wireless phone service than have traditional landline (POTS) telephone service. And, even with higher drop rates, lower voice quality, and service availability issues, 1/3rd of the current US population live in “wireless only” households (interestingly a very small percentage live in a landline only household, with the group represented mostly by persons “well over” retirement age).

There are some disadvantages to the Wireless Only approach, including emergency calling (aka 911), coverage, name listing in directories, and cost. If you are a “heavy” talker, your wireless phone bill can be very costly depending on your usage. The advantages include calling features (such as caller id and voicemail), having your phone with you at all times, and (interestingly enough) the ability to make emergency calls away from the house.

But wait… isn’t this VoIP Tech Chat? Yes Virgina… let’s continue. VoIP generally provides advanced (and included) calling features, “unlimited” local/long distance calling, inexpensive international rates, and all at a price less than your traditional POTS landline service. The negatives with VoIP? VoIP 911 service does not compare to landline usage. Although most VoIP providers implement an e911 service, the reliability of VoIP for emergency calls does not compare to a landline. A landline simply provides better 911 service, period. (we actually wrote a pretty decent article about VoIP and 911 back in the day… )

Landline POTS telephone service remains the most reliable telephone service available. The consistently maintain five-nine (99.999%) availability and provide the best access to emergency service (911). POTS service also comes with a limited feature set (by default) and hefty price tag.

Let’s compare VoIP, Traditional Telephone, and Wireless

Verizon Unlimited Local service starts at $24.95 per month. If you wanted Caller ID, Voicemail, and Call Waiting (with Caller ID) your bill jumps up to $51.90 — which is absolutely ridiculous, considering this price is the pre-tax rate.

Vonage offers an “unlimited” Local and Long Distance service for $24.95 monthly which includes more than 25 features (such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, and Voicemail). VoIP.com offers the same package for $19.95 (or more than $30 less a month than Verizon). Now, the “unlimited” voice on VoIP providers tends to be around 5,000 minutes a month or so. If you go over it, expect a notice.

Cellular Service ranges anywhere from $30 – $130 monthly per phone depending on the options you choose. By the time you reach the high end, you’re generally getting unlimited minutes and data (mobile web, email, etc.).

For a typical household, VoIP remains a very cost-effective telephone solution; although you must remember that without good (and we mean good), high-speed Internet, your VoIP will be unusable. Many local phone companies offer a “dial tone only” line for less than $15.00 monthly. With the use of VoIP and a dial-tone only landline, you can still save more than $150.00 yearly while providing your family a reliable method of calling during emergencies and power outages.

As Billy Joel would say, it comes down to reality, and that’s fine with me. If you need to tighten the belt, VoIP can help. However if you can get by without having high speed Internet and don’t mind using the mobile phone all the time, you may be fine with becoming a “wireless only” household. Or you may not care about money whatsoever and decide to have all three maxed out.

Either way, when you do realize the benefit of VoIP and embrace the force, we’re here to help.

Traveling with Fred and Patrick can be adventurous. If nothing else, the facial expression of the unlucky passenger winning the “I got to share a seat with Fred or Patrick on Plane” lotto is fantastic. Yes, we need to diet, but that’s another post. Besides the adventures in spacial planning one must overcome to sit on a plane these days, communication while traveling also provides challenges. Thankfully, the majority of places travelled provide wireless Internet access — via either HotSpot or, our favorite, Free WiFi. Mmmmmm… free WiFi.

VoIP allows us to connect like never before. Sure, most (if not all of this audience) use Mobile phones; but there are times where a cellular signal simply doesn’t exist. And with a cellular phone, you don’t have complete direct access to all of your “local” functions. Enter the WiFi phone — perfect for those times where you have ample WiFI signal and simply don’t feel like running your softphone client.

With most WiFi VoIP phones, one easily connects to the Wireless Access Point, registers, and makes calls. However, if the WiFi network requires a “click through” acceptance, a web logon, or a similar HTTP (web page) acceptance, the Wireless VoIP telephone becomes as useless as Brussels Sprouts in a buffet.

The Linksys WIP330 WiFi VoIP Phone includes a web browser, complete with mouse capabilities, allowing you to logon to hotspots, click ok buttons, or do any of the commonly required tasks of gaining access to WiFi networks. This one feature not only makes the WIP330 stand out from the crowd, it also makes it one of the only devices you can use while traveling.

Fred purchased a Linksys WIP330 in early August and is ready for the 3 month review…

First the Negatives

Battery Life: You’ll charge the phone every day. And, if you use the phone heavily, perhaps 2x / day. On the positive, the included cord is long enough to allow use of the phone while charging.

Voice Quality: Although no complaints from “the other side” of the conversation were received, the voice quality can be choppy; regardless of the codec used.

Overall Quality: Poor. Within three months, my speaker seems to have blown, causing the ringer to sound like a robot screaming for help while trapped in a well.

Any Positives?

Usage: Easy to use, saves WEP passwords, remembers last location.

Hotspot: Works GREAT at hotspots, airports, restaurants, schools, and every WiFi access point tested.

Bottom Line?

Decent WiFi phone with the ability to access almost any hotspot imaginable. Battery life needs improvement. If you need a WiFi phone that must be used at hotspots or Access Points with click through agreements, this is your phone. If you don’t need it, it’s a little too expensive for what you get

Pike & Fischer recently published their Residential VoIP Market Outlook. The reports advises that more than 8.5 million household will start using VoIP within 2 years — bringing the estimated number of US residential VoIP users to 30 million by 2010. Clearly 2010 will be a VoIP odyssey.

Traditional POTS providers such as at&t and Verizon will notice decreasing numbers of residential customers while stand alone VoIP providers (such as Vonage, Packet 8, and voip.com), Cable companies, and wireless providers pick up the slack.

Imagine this scenario — You’re the bus driver. At your first stop, half of your passengers get off the bus and none get on. You keep driving and on the next stop, half of the remaining passengers get off, and again, no new passengers get on the bus. At the next stop, the same thing happens. You keep seeing passengers get off the bus, but no one is getting on. Now, what do you do? If you’re at&t, you raise the price of bus service. (For extra credit, who’s the bus driver?)

The Tennessean posted today that at&t is raising the rates of basic phone service and calling features in the hopes of increasing profits. Although basic phone service would increase by “pennies,” other features would see a much more significant increase. For example, Caller ID and Call Forwarding would increase about a dollar and bundle packs would increase about 2 dollars. Oh, and at&t reported a profit of 3.46 billion dollars — in just the first quarter.

So now, you’re a landline service provider. People are dropping landline service for VoIP and Wireless Only plans. You’re making an average of just over a billion dollars a month profit. You want that number to increase. So, you raise rates? Wouldn’t that make people jump ship even more? So, instead of making your services more attractive, you’re going to jack up prices on your loyal customers who are chosing to stay with you despite cheaper alternatives. Nice.

We love this quote:

A spokeswoman for AT&T, Dawn Benton, said the company’s decision to raise rates had nothing to do with the loss of landlines.

“Our focus is to bring greater value to our plans: a unified portfolio, greater consistency and simpler pricing right up front,” she said in a statement. “Even with these changes, we still offer some of the best values and offers in the market today.”

VoIP providers like voip.com, Vonage, and Packet8 bundle residential service and include more features than you’ll ever need. Oh, and most plans include long distance, too. Someone needs to help Dawn Benton find a clue.

Verizon recently announced new discounts for wireless only customers interested in Internet or television service. Called the “Flex Double Play” bundle, the discount offers a reduction of $8 – $12 a month for people combining Verizon Wireless with broadband or TV services.

Now, remember of course, that Verizon originates from the traditional POTS provider, Bell Atlantic. Back in the 80’s (1983 to be exact), when there was one big phone company called Bell, the US government decided that Americans would benefit from 7 companies instead of 1 big one. The 7 smaller phone companies, or “Baby Bells” were to handle local phone service and allow other companies to handle long distance.

With that historical digression, please remember that Verizon essential developed from this split; therefore sometimes still thinks like a traditional POTS provider.

How so you ask?

Well, the discount sounds great — but the big phone companies just don’t know how to provide something without conditions. If you want the fastest DSL or FiOS plans, you get no discount. The discount will only be offered towards DSL plans of 3 mbps and FiOS plans of 20 mbps.

Still, if you don’t want the best of the best, saving up to $12 a month still adds up to a nice deal. Maybe they should read our Wireless Only article to learn more about Wireless Only customers.

When we see “government study,” we’re often immediately sent into a digression of thought. What would possibly motivate an official to take tax-revenue and give it to a group of government employees to learn about something of this nature. And then, we usually get so frustrated that we turn to the bottle for answers. This being said, more often than not, a study that you could never imagine as needed will generally provide at least one or two interesting results.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) exists (in theory) “to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.” For more than 60 years, the CDC has pursued malaria, studied plagues, eliminated polio, fought small pox, and even studied cell-phone usage. Um… studied cell-phone usage? Yeah, that one caught our eye, too.

At first, we were under the belief that maybe the CDC had investigated the rumors of cell-phone brain cancer or something to that degree, but as John Pinnett would say, “Nay Nay.” 

Apparently, the CDC does a tremendous amount of research by just calling people and talking with them on the telephone. As more and more people switch away from traditional POTS (plain old telephone service) members of the CDC began to question whether the people that would choose to become VoIP users or Cell-Phone only homes had different health habits than people who maintained a land-line in their home. Since the CDC telephone surveys avoided all wireless customers, a new study was conducted.

So, from July 2007 through December 2007, the CDC started to collect data. After all, they are still members of the government, and the government loves collecting data. The CDC estimates that 32 million adults in the US are “wireless only,” with another 31 million as “wireless mostly.” (Kind of like in The Princess Bride when Welsey was mostly dead. Not 100% dead, just mostly dead)

Of these 63 million adults, about half are under 30 years of age (and we’d love to give props at this time to the CDC because they realized that this statistic also meant that half are over 30 years of age). What are some of the generalizations learned by the government?

Wireless Only adults are more likely to:

• be uninsured
• exercise
• smoke
• binge drink (drinking more than 5 drinks in one day)
• get HIV tests

Wireless Only users were also less likely to have diabetes or be obese and generally were in better health than landline users. We’re not sure how that relates to the drinking and smoking but are more than willing to experiment and see.