VoIP Phones at Home

[tosugrad]

Currently I have Vonage at home. I have an old Vonage phone system for 1 line and an adapter for a 2nd line.

The adapter works fine (also use it as a fax line) with the "regular" phones I have hooked up to it.

However, my home line, has turned to VERY poor connection.

I was looking to replace with another Vonage system which got me thinking what are others doing for phones (hard line) at home?

Im open to anything and have a very fast home wired/wireless system.

I pay about $40 a month for the 2 lines.

Thoughts?

 

[tosugrad]

So I was looking at something like this:

http://www.voipsupply.com/siemens-gigaset-s675-ip

but my question is what kind of "provider" do I need for this? I assume I still need a Vonage or someone for this?

Or am I missing the boat?

 

[WOODY]

PUT SKYPE OR A SIMILAR APP ON A SMART PHONE OR i PHONE AND IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY SWITCH FROM YOUR CELL SERVICE TO VOIP WHEN YOU HAVE A WIFI CONNECTION

 

[minsbang]

I'd give them a call and see if they can resolve any technical issues that you're encountering. I'm not sure if you're willing to spend over 20 minutes on the phone troubleshooting with the tech support agent.

 

[robr]

So I was looking at something like this:

http://www.voipsupply.com/siemens-gigaset-s675-ip

but my question is what kind of "provider" do I need for this? I assume I still need a Vonage or someone for this?

Or am I missing the boat?

You can get service for a SIP based VoIP phone from many companies such as broadvoice.com or if you're a techie, you can set up your own VoIP/PBX server for free using Asterisk or a variant such as PBX in a Flash or Trixbox. If you do that, you basically have a full featured PBX system that rivals $200K Lucent systems and you pay around $10/month for unlimited US calling. Probably total overkill for what you're looking for though. This all uses your standard internet connection but I would recommend a connection with a decent amount of incoming and outgoing bandwidth. The protocol used for VoIP is typically G.711 which only requires 64kbps of up and down bandwidth, but even still, if you're downloading stuff on your PC, you'll wipe out your phone service if someone is trying to talk at the same time. QoS won't really help with this either. I threw a lot of jargon out there, most of it likely irrelevant so I won't explain it all, but if you have questions, feel free to ask.

Oh. and the whole G.722 (HDSP) thing.... it's not useful unless you're talking to someone with G.722 at the other end. ie, if you're just calling people that have standard PSTN landlines or are using cell phones, you get zero benefit from it.

 

[NsXMas]

CostCo sells Ooma... I've heard great things about them, and a friend has one, and it's crystal clear when I'm chatting with him.

 

[minsbang]

CostCo sells Ooma... I've heard great things about them, and a friend has one, and it's crystal clear when I'm chatting with him.

It's a great price. But once you break your device, you're done. You have to buy another one.... unless they changed their policy.