anyone here use broadband phone service?

Video Master Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1815

i'm thinking of switching over to broadband phone. i got an ad mentioning primus phone service and i'm wondering how reliable it would be. also does this type of service affect things such as online gaming lag? any answers would be appreciated. also incase it matters, i'm using shaw cable internet.

http://www.primustel.ca/en/residential/talkbroadband/talkBroadband.htm

thanks!
Wink

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 4061

I have a broadband phone. quality of the call aint that great. but when the calls are free, cant complain.

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 04 Jun 2004 Posts: 4371

my brother uses it and one of my friends out west uses it .. its a good deal if your one of those people who pay for all the useless crap that bell has and your phone bill is $60+ .. and or you make alot of long distance phone calls .. i was gonna switch but my phone bill right now is $26.50 and cogeco here wants $39.99 for the first 6 months which goes up to $49.99 regular price ..

phone rant .. most people pay for , call waiting , call answer , call display etc etc .. waste o money .. you mean to tell me that you think your important enough that if your on the phone and someone calls YOU HAVE to get it ? .. i don't get 2 phone calls a night when im at home and the chances of them happening at the same time are not worth the $5 + that call waiting is worth ..

call answer .. bell here charges i think $6 or more a month for this USELESS feature .. i bought an answering machine at giant tiger for $14.99 .. you realize your paying over $60 a year to have call answer !? .. and yes i can call my answering machine and check my messages from anywhere , you could do that with tape answering machines in the 80's .. huge waste o money ..

call display isn't to bad if you have enemies or ex-girlfriends , but really , you can't just answer the phone and if you don't want to talk to that person HANG UP ..

phone rant over ..

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 5024

The VOIP service that my ISP offers (Cablevision) is waaay better than something like Vonage. All of the IP traffic stays on their network so they're able to do quality of service (QoS) to keep the voice traffic prioritized over everything else. I still stick with a landline though just because if my Internet connection or power goes out I'd be stuck with nothing.

Yeah if you're on the phone game traffic will be affected a bit. I think it's only around 32kbps but still it can add a little latency. If you're not on the phone there's no effect.

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 2075

TPP, try link2voip.com or iax.cc to get your feet wet. The quality is about as good as a cell phone which for my needs and my wallet suits me just fine. Our monthly bill dropped from $50/m to about $10.

-p

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 1826

Or buy this: http://www.voipsupply.com/product_info.php?products_id=1646
and get a small fee to the voip competitor of your choice. This way you keep the freedom of switching voip supplier any time you feel like it, simply by changing settings within the ATA-box.

I ordered one of these boxes. Can't wait to fiddle around with it.
The best known voip-supplier is www.voipbuster.com although there are cheaper one's around. Voipbuster would cost me 10 euro per 120 days, about 2,50 per month. Calls within the Netherlands are free with that deal as are calls to lots of other countries. Other suppliers offer different foreign countries with free calls.

Kai Beginner Joined: 16 Jul 2006 Posts: 22

i work for a landline phone company, with that being said.......

as mentioned above, what i've heard is that the calls are about like a cell phone, it can drop the same way. what you have to think about is anything that affects your bandwidth, such as downloading, playing video games, and whatnot, will affect the quality of your phone conversation. the more burden you place on your broadband connection, the slower everything else on the system runs.

it can be compared to video games. when you have a laggy connection in game, it jumps around, you see players walk through walls, you get stuck in mid air, you shoot a player and do no damage, things like that. eventually you lag out of the game. the phone will act the same way. your voice as well as the voice of the person you are talking to will begin to get choppy. the more lag you have, the longer the silence will be, until you "lag out" of the phone conversation.

it has a lot to do with the upstream bandwidth. most isp's offer a large amout of downstram bandwidth, most starting at about 1500k, the upstream, though, ranges from about 128k to 384k. consider that in normal operation, you should only expect 60-70% of the speed you are paying for. where i work, our standard upstream is 384, and most people pull about 225-250k. that means if you are playing on kai, which if i am not mistaken requires about 125k minimum, that leaves you at or less than 100k bandwidth on the upstream side for your other devices. have a day that your broadband is running slower than usual= can't talk on the phone and download or play games at the same time.

it is an ok service from what i hear, but you shouldn't depend on it. if your home has a security system, the voip service won't work with it. also, 911 service is a no go on voip. if you want or need those things you should definately steer clear, but if you don't need them, and don't mind to drop calls, then voip would be an option.