Why isn't everyone talking about VOIP?

[virginruinedntl]

I don't know about you guys but i've been doing some research into voip considering BT is upgrading 67-90^ of britain to FTTC/FTTP and Youview is launching this year so most people will have a lot of bandwidth.

Vonage is doing unlimited landline calls to any numbers 24/7 for £5.99/month which is around half the price of what line rental would cost from an isp nevermind calls. There are some setup costs too of course but in the long term it will be far cheaper.

I was looking into other voip providers on comparison sites but the others like bt either don't seem to actually do it or they hide it on their websites, vonage is the only one i could actually find.

Does anyone have Vonage in the uk, anyone able to comment how it is?

Virgin charge around £8 to add M+ phone package to a tv/broadband package aswell as £13 ish line rental so it costs a bomb really to get a phone with virgin voip seems way better. Does to superhub allow pre-allocating of bandwidth for a voip phone so that phone calls aren't interrupted by someone using loads of internet bandwidth?

I hope virgin launch their own voip service, they would get alot more customers as saving the line-rental cost would be a big incentive for customers to jump to virgin.

[Dush]

But you get a large discount by getting a phone line installed too and the type of internet connectivity you get at home has no SLA so it's not as reliable as a regular phone line which has far less chance of going down. That's why I wouldn't do it.

They are good though if you need international numbers though.

Virgin's phone line is pretty expensive though. Sky costs £2 a month less for me and I get free caller ID and weekday free calls off peak.

[Sephiroth]

Here's the problem. If you intend to rely on VOIP rather than a separate telephone, then a contended network can be problematic; i.e. in areas that suffer peal time woes.

In all business scenarios, VOIP is accorded the highest QoS over the WAN; i.e. highest priority, and that usually on dedicated bandwidth.

In short, on a contended neywork you take your chances with VOIP.

[virginruinedntl]

ahh yeah, didn't think about congestion at the cabinets etc. If Virgin did a package of XL tv + XL Broadband i'd get rid of the phone from my package and use vonage, unfortunately virgin only seem to do L package tv and broadband together without a phone line

[sm66]

Originally Posted by virginruinedntl

Does anyone have Vonage in the uk, anyone able to comment how it is?

I have had a Vonage package for about 5 years, and have to say I think its excellent. Its terrific value for money, with free landline calls 24/7 - including international numbers, which is what attracted us to it. Plus you get a lot of other services thrown in that would cost more than just the cost of the vonage package with other providers, like call redirect, voicemail (it will email you a .wav file of the message if you want) and others. Quality is normally excellent.

But there is one problem - Virgin.

For most of the time I've had Vonage there have been no problems, and on the few occasions there were, it was the internet. But in the last 10 months, Virgins service has started to collapse to a breathtaking degree. As well as low speeds and high latency at peak times, I now regularly get packet loss, which murders VOIP. And because I only take their internet cable and Vonage, I don't have any other phone line.

I'm now going to leave cable after 12 years but have the infuriating situation that your can't get any other internet service, even the new fibre, without a phone line, and I want to stay with Vonage, I will end up paying for 2 phone services.

[jb66]

Or don't bother and use a mobile...