June 22, 2004VOIP, Part IIII took the Voice Over IP (VOIP) plunge ... and the good news is it's cool and refreshing. Cool because it works, and works pretty well. Refreshing because it's blissfully cheap, at least for now. After much deliberation I decided on AT&T's Call Vantage VOIP service, early last month. Their introductory half price offer proved to be too hard to resist. Even at full price (which was $39.99 per month, back then), it seemed like a bargain. At $19.99 for the first six months, VOIP was absolutely irresistible. The CallVantage VOIP installation package arrived via FedEx a few days after I placed the order. It had to sit untouched for a few days until I wrapped up my latest book ... but once the book was put to bed, I wasted no time installing the D-Link VOIP telephone adapter (TA). Installation was a simple affair. The VOIP TA looks a bit like an oversize conventional modem and is directly connected to my cable modem via Ethernet. It took some tweaking to get things worked out with the firewall router, which the TA feeds, but it wasn't insurmountable. So how do I like it? Honestly? Well, if it wasn't all about the money ... But it IS all about the money. By trashing my conventional phone line for the CallVantage VOIP service, I'll be saving hundreds of dollars per year. I'm getting rid of my conventional phone line with its expensive local and long distance service. Why? CallVantage gives me unlimited local and long distance calling. And tons of features. All at a fixed price that's a mere fraction of what I've been paying. All told, my average conventional phone bills have been running in the $100 range. By going with VOIP, I'll be cutting that down to $20 for the first six months and $35 a month, thereafter. (AT&T slashed $5 off the monthly costs shortly after I signed up.) It's not hard to put up with some shortcomings after doing the math. CallVantage doesn't just includes all of the good stuff like Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, and Voice Mail. It takes those features and adds smarts to provide a "Locate Me" service when I want to be hunted down and a "Do Not Disturb" feature to keep out unwanted calls (while letting certain calls through). And when someone leaves a voice mail? CallVantage emails me to let me know about it ... and even lets me listen to the calls over the web, if necessary. But here's the trump card ... CallVantage includes a built-in, no-charge conference call feature that allows up to ten users per call. I'm itching to try it out. Okay, so about those shortcomings. Overall, the sound quality is just fine. But once in a while, the sound can get distorted or "computerish" on the other end ... nothing horrid, so far ... just a tad odd. And while I haven't had any problems browsing the web and using the phone simultaneously, I did run into some choppy lines when uploading huge files to an FTP server. Although AT&T allows CallVantage customers to select a phone number from almost any location they'd like, it's almost any location. I was not able to select a phone number from my town, nor from the next town over. I ended up settling on an exchange from an even more so doing nicely, thank you part of the county. (Of course, I'm still calling from my room off the back of the garage.) I had thought about placing my number in a really exotic place ... Website access is an issue. The CallVantage website requires Microsoft Internet Explorer, unfortunately. Needless to say, I won't be accessing it from my PC. The site does, however, support both MSIE and Safari on OSX so it's not a deal-breaker for me. Fax machines are not supported. But since I haven't used my fax machine for months on end, if I do have to fax, I'll look into an online alternative. If the power goes out, so does the phone service. Ah well, time to whip out the mobile. All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with my new VOIP service. It doesn't make toast or mop the floor, but it does save me a considerable sum and it's far more versatile than the conventional line it replaced. Posted by geekbooks at June 22, 2004 07:25 AM |
