If you are really looking for the best deals in residential VOIP services, look at providers with annual subscription rates. Most VOIP providers only offer monthly plans. Vonage for example is currently offering $24.99 per month for its basic unlimited service (free unlimited calling to anywhere in NA and Europe).

But as a way to reward and attract customers, VOIP companies are adopting what cell phone companies have been doing for years: offering the latest and greatest gear for free in return for long term committment. 

SunRocket markets a similar package at $24.95 per month or an annual subscription at $199 per year. That works out to about $17 a month. So if you can handle prepaying for your service by the year instead of by the month, then an annual package is a good idea.

Packet8 has also recently adopted the annual package deal. For a flat rate of $199 per year, you get get unlimited calling within North Americal, calling features like voicemail and call waiting and a 100% discount on a Packet-8 enabled UIP1868P 5.8-GHz digital cordless phone system, which can be extended to work with multiple cordless handsets.

Tom Keating recently talked about how to pure VOIP providers like Vonage stack up against the cable and telco companies offering broadband Internet VOIP phone services.

In the article he compares pure VOIP providers like Vonage and Packet8 to telecos and cable companies like Verizon and Time Warner. What do consumers really want? Is cost always the bottom line or are people looking for brand trust, quality of service and reliability over the long haul? His assessment may surprise you.

Click here to read the complete article on his blog.

Who is Tom Keating? He owns the VOIP and Gadgets Blog and is CTO, VP and founder of TMC Labs, one of the leading sources for unbiased opinions and reviews in the VoIP, call center, datacom/telecom industries.

 

From: www.quickstartvoip.com

Voice over the Internet phone service is no longer an exclusive preserve of techies. Scores of telecom companies, cable companies and young entrepreneurs have set up VoIP services.

Each one claims to offer extra features and benefits. So how do you decide?

If price/cost is your most important deciding factor, VOIP comparison sites are great. They extract all the rate info and display it in a handy chart. Voipreview.org is a good example. Click here to compare the VOIP phone service and prices being charged by different providers.

The services that you should take a close look at are basic services, advanced services, voice mail, faxes, call blocking, web management, special calling, and customer service.

The most common services being offered by VoIP providers under the different service heads are:

1. Basic Features: Call forwarding, international call forwarding, caller id by number, caller id by name, call-waiting, call-waiting caller id, disable call waiting, distinctive ringing, repeat dialing, return dial and three-way calling.
2. Advanced Features: Call Transfer, conference bridging, simultaneous ringing, sequential ringing, secondary virtual phone number, additional service lines, toll-free numbers (incoming), MS Outlook integration and softphone support.
3. Voice Mail: Retrieval of voicemail from telephone handset, phone number for external retrieval, retrieval via web interface and receiving of voice mail via e-mail
4. Fax Functionality: Support outgoing/incoming faxes, receive faxes via voice mail, and a dedicated fax line.
5. Call blocking/filtering: Block outgoing international calls, block outgoing 1-900 calls, block incoming anonymous calls, do not disturb notice. This also includes blocking of telemarketing calls or selective blocking and selective forwarding via e-mail of filtered calls
6. Web Management: Modify basic/advanced features, obtain detailed call logs, activate order/cancel features/services, activate click to call facility, and provision of web interface that is compatible with non-IE browsers.
7. Special Calling: 911 Emergency calling, 411 Information, free in-network calls, free calls to external VoIP networks, Cable box/SatTV/Tivo compatibility
8. Customer service: Technical support via telephone, technical support via email, web-based technical support and account management by telephone.

Reprinted with permission from: www.quickstartvoip.com 

You may have heard this before: Voice Over IP (VOIP) needs a certain amount of bandwidth to be usable. In other words, VOIP needs bandwidth so that voice conversations are intelligible by both parties. Your broadband Internet connection (provided through a cable or DSL service) provides that bandwidth.

Basically, bandwidth is the amount of digital data that can be transmitted in a certain time period. Internet connections are usually measured in KiloBits Per Second (kbps). Your connection may be rated at 512/128 kbps. This means that the upload stream (leaving your computer) has a maximum bandwidth of 128 kbps and download stream (coming to your computer) has a maximum bandwidth of 512 kbps. Find out the speed of your broadband connection…

For example, a web page that is 3000 bytes can theoretically viewed in 0.05 seconds – almost instantaneously - at a download speed of 512 kbps. However, in the real world web pages don’t usually load that fast.  That’s because data is held up, or delayed by various factors. Latency is the delay caused by the physical limitations of each piece of hardware the data is passed through. Delays are also caused by pathway congestion, error checking, transmission negotiations and extra data sent with the web page to identify its type, origin and destination.

What this means for VOIP is that enough bandwidth must be supplied to allow for the transmission of the actual voice data in real time as well as extra bandwidth for the overhead required for any data transmission.

So how much bandwidth does voice data use up? Well that depends on the codec (enCOder/DECoder) used to compress the data. Anywhere from 16 to 64 kbps is normal. Add onto that the extra overhead of about 10 to 24 kbps. In total, VOIP uses 26 to 88 kbps. As a general rule, assume that you will need at least 88 kbps to use VOIP reliably. Note that VOIP service providers will provide you with their broadband requirements.

You will need an Internet connection that can handle at least 128 kbps on the upload side. Extra bandwidth will allow others in the household to surf the net or download files while you are talking on the phone. If you wish to use conference calls even more bandwidth will be required.

While there is no set rule for the amount of bandwidth that a household will need, count on 128 kbps as a minimum.  If you have several computers and other devices connected to the Internet, consider going up to the maximum available.

Note that these speed are for uploads – the download speeds are usually quite a bit faster and present no problem for VOIP.

With so many companies assembling at the starting line for the race to mobile VOIP world domination, I wonder if we’re seeing a hurry-up-and-wait sort of thing. On the VOIP Service Blog read about mobile VOIP in a nutshell.

I got an email today from Carolyn Shuk from the Voxilla forum, a gal who’s been writing about VOIP for a few years.

In a recent post she talks about what happens when VOIP doesn’t work. Sigh. You can always make a call the old fashioned way.

“There’s just no limit to the rosy picture promoted by VoIP boosters. But what seems to get overlooked in the VoIP conversation is what people really want to do with it – I mean, other people, people who aren’t industry boosters. They just wanna make calls. Remember phone calls? Like “one ringy-dingy?”

Read When will VOIP stop batting 1000 

 

Hi and welcome to my blog about VOIP, voice over IP, Internet phone, broadband telephone, or whatever you feel inclined to call it. This is NOT a blog about women, or even necessarily about women who use VOIP services–I mean how boring is that. I called it The VOIP Girl because well I’m a gal. And I want to write about this industry. That’s about it. What really prompted me to get going however, is the fact that there are no women commentators on this subject. I’m curious to see if my perspective will be any different.

I want to write about how consumers (that’s you and me) are doing using VOIP.  I don’t necessarily care about IPOs, who’s buying who, and all that insider industry stuff. There are tons of blogs out there talking about all that. In fact I would say that is mostly what you’ll find when you look for VOIP commentary in the blogosphere. It’s great stuff, but really I’m interested in how ordinary folks are using Vonage, Skype, Gizmo, etc., and how is the free stuff stacking up against heavy hitter paid services.

Iristel is the first to bring HD VOIP to Canada.

Whoa…I don’t think I can handle this. We just recently enduring a long and arduous process of researching and purchasing our first “big” screen TV with…heaven help me…HD-high definition. You see in Canada it’s important to actually see the puck when the Canucks are playing. Apparently this is impossible on a 21″ tube TV with a pink stripe across the top of the screen. (Who knew?)

Maybe fellow bloggers can help me out here, but is HD VOIP something that consumers should consider when choosing a VOIP service, or is it more marketing lingo to work through? As I understand it, HD, high definition, or wideband VOIP refers to voice sampling at 16 kHz rather than at the measley 8 kHz supported by the PSTN and just about everyone else. If you capture voice with a wider spectrum of frequencies, the quality is better. They say it’s like comparing the quality of AM and FM radio. (See this article from voip-info.org).

Sounds good to me, but the catch is you have to have HD end to end in a VOIP call. It’s no good having 16 kHz at one end and 8 kHz at the other. In fact, 16 kHz downsampled to 8 kHz (which happens if you are calling a landline) may sound worse than 8 kHz from start to finish.

So I guess you can make the argument that HD or wideband VOIP is wasted on the masses when most calls travel partially over the PSTN or use VOIP networks using an 8 kHz voice capture process.

What folks are using VOIP for…FierceVOIP reports that last year over 614 billion national long distance minute were served, compared with 382 billion local and 82 billion international LD (iLocus report).

On the weekend, my husband had an important long distance call with a client. Downstairs, PhoneGnome had husband talking to the UK over VOIP using Gizmo credits. Upstairs, PhoneGnome had son talking local to his buddies. So easy. And we didn’t even realize that the whole thing panned out problem free until much later…no dropped calls or weird noises, and a whole dollar’s worth of Gizmo call out credits consumed. This is how VOIP should work…totally transparent.