Voip Reviews
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is Internet phone service that bypasses your normal local telephone company. Internet VoIP service rings and has a dial tone just like any other telephone, but calls are routed over your Internet connection. VoIP’s growing popularity is lowering the cost of phone communication for many homes, and for some, it’s eliminating plain old telephone service (POTS) entirely. Unlike traditional analog telephone signals, which travel through a PSTN (public switched telephone network), VoIP digitizes the speaker’s voice and sends it through either cable or DSL broadband Internet connections. An adapter connects your regular telephone to your Internet connection.
Call quality of VoIP is a big determining factor in nearly all the VoIP reviews we read while preparing this report. Internet lines that are getting crowded with more downloads can have glitches like echoes and dropped calls, especially during peak hours. This is especially a problem with new VoIP players like Vonage, Packet8 and SunRocket, since they use public networks for their services. An August 2006 VoIP study by Keynote Systems noted that call quality did improve a bit last year, though it singled out cable providers as having the best audio responsiveness and best reliability. The reason: cable companies carry IP signals over their private networks, so they can control the traffic.
PC Magazine’s 2006 Readers’ Choice survey rates ten VoIP providers, culled from the results of the magazine’s annual reader survey. J.D. Power and Associates also conducts large surveys about voice quality and customer service. This study is interesting in that it doesn’t separate traditional phone service from VoIP; readers are merely asked to rate their phone service. While we appreciated seeing these overall ratings, many VoIP companies like Vonage and SunRocket aren’t included in the survey. We also found some good supporting articles and buyer’s guides at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNet.com.
