Re: VOIP

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 18:41:55 -0500, Stuart Levine
<[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Does anyone on this list use VOIP either for home or, more
> importantly, for the office.  The bells and whistles look great, but I
> am concerned about sound quality.  Is the sound quality sufficient
> for business use?

I have been experimenting with Vonage for small-office use for a
little more than a year now. Quality has waxed and waned somewhat -
mostly on the quality of the network connection and bandwidth
available. I got substantial improvement in quality by moving to a
router with QOS features which will prioritize VoIP packets over other
Internet traffic.

The price and features are great. The quality has been so-so. This
summer our office will likely relocate - at that time, I'm planning to
get a better net connection (if it's not already part of the lease)
and am hoping quality will improve.

At home, I have experimented with unbundled VoIP service from
providers who let you use your own equipment (I have several IP-based
telephones behind an Asterisk open-source PBX) - sound quality with
them has also been in between acceptable and bad. Most of the
providers I'd found so far have been on the East coast or the Midwest;
one of my providers (<www.voipjet.com>) has recently announced a West
coast network presence which is close (in mileage, if not by network)
to my home, and quality through that node has been somewhat improved.
All of the consumer-grade VoIP stuff is still a work in progress, as
far as I'm concerned.

One very nice feature with the bring-your-own-equipment providers (not
Vonage) is that you can set outbound Caller ID for your calls - so I
have mine at home set to show my office telephone number, so I can
call clients back from home without giving them my home telephone
number, or having to explicitly block outbound caller ID.

-- 
Greg Broiles, JD, EA
[email protected] (Lists only. Not for confidential communications.)
Law Office of Gregory A. Broiles
San Jose, CA





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