Questions about switching to VOIP

[Jem]

[quote M A V I C]The coax in my house is not good. For internet, I have a new line run to my house, and then a new line from there to my modem.

How tough is it to get two VOIP lines?
Why do you want 2 VOIP lines? IS it to have 2 numbers, or to be able to call out on 2 lines simultaneously.

SunRocket allows you to have 2 (or more) numbers on one line. 2 numbers are included, ones beyond that are an extra $2 or $3/month.

I'm guessing its technically possible to have as many VOIP lines as you want, as long as you have bandwidth (internet) that will support them all at the same time. You'd likely have to pay for additional accounts for each additional available line.

Many of the VOIP boxes include setups for 2 lines, so I'm guessing this is not that uncommon a request.

I'm not sure the quality of the coax in your house will make a big difference. More likely it is the usage patterns of your neighborhood and whether or not it saturates the maximum bandwidth and chokes what you are getting as a fraction of that. If you are getting a high enough quality signal to carry the internet and cable TV signals, the bottleneck is likely somewhere else. The Cable company can connect to your line and tell you how good your signal is, if you have a doubt... though they might charge you for a service call.

[M A V I C]

I have a home office, so right now I have two lines - one personal, one business. It's for tax and expenses purposes.

Other than the coax in my house, my signal is pretty good. Ideal, IIRC. I talked a lot with the cable guy the last two times he's been here (has been about a year.) Pretty smart guy, willing to share his knowledge. When the internet went down last time, I took out my router and even hooked the modem up directly to the PC so he wouldn't have to troubleshoot on a Mac, and routers are/were unsupported at the time. After talking with him a bit he said I didn't need to bother with that if it happens again, just let him know it's not working and he wont even test inside the house. He ran a new line from the pole, and all has been good since.

I'll take a speedtest when I get done uploading this 150MB file, but it's usually around 6Mb down and 300kb up. I can pay an additional $10/mo and get that increased.

[graylocks]

i second VoicePulse. i've had them over a year for $15. unlike Vonage, VP does not charge tax or an additional charge for E911 service.

comcast digital phone is over paying for VOIP.

[Jem]

[quote M A V I C]I'll take a speedtest when I get done uploading this 150MB file, but it's usually around 6Mb down and 300kb up. I can pay an additional $10/mo and get that increased.
Your bottleneck will be in your upload speed... as VOIP is a two way street in terms of bandwidth. In otherwords... the incoming stream might sound fine, but YOUR outgoing stream (your voice) will be fighting with all the other upstream traffic for that 300kbps. Probably not a problem for a single VOIP line, but maybe asking for trouble with 2... especially if you do a lot of uploading at the same time :} Theere are QoS (quality of service?) settings in many routers that allow you to reserve a fixed minimum of your upload (or download) streams for you VOIP services, which would mean in heavy use, your uploads (of files/traffic) would suffer and not your VOIP sound quality... at least in theory. Haven't experiemented too much with this myself yet.

[M A V I C]

Thanks Jem. I just did a test and got 330kb up. How much bandwidth does a single line use? $15/mo + $10/mo for extra bandwidth is far cheaper than the $75/mo I'm paying now.

I rarely, rarely use both lines at once. I quite possibly never have. My wife uses her cell phone for everything. The home line doesn't even have long distance.

[Racer X]

FYI, the existing relationship thing is only legally valid for 18 months. There may be a few exceptions that are 3 years.

[M A V I C]

mattkime, thanks for the call forwarding tip. I didn't even think about that. And thanks Ombligo and graylocks for the Voicepulse suggestion. I hadn't even heard of them.

[M A V I C]

[quote Racer X]FYI, the existing relationship thing is only legally valid for 18 months. There may be a few exceptions that are 3 years.
Ah, good to know. They've called back twice since my original post. I've actually never done this, but with these last two calls and knowing they have no good reason to call me, I've just hung up on them. I don't like hearing the phone ring and ring.

[mattkime]

>>I have a home office, so right now I have two lines - one personal, one business.

The device that you buy from SunRocket supports two phones lines. I have two numbers with SunRocket (the one they provided and my transfered number) but I really only use one number. I'd assume that this is to support two phone lines but obviously you'd want to verify this.

[Racer X]

[quote M A V I C][quote Racer X]FYI, the existing relationship thing is only legally valid for 18 months. There may be a few exceptions that are 3 years.
Ah, good to know. They've called back twice since my original post. I've actually never done this, but with these last two calls and knowing they have no good reason to call me, I've just hung up on them. I don't like hearing the phone ring and ring.
I think the specifics are on the do not call list website, or linked from it. They should have a list of exclusions and exceptions.