WhichVoIP Blog

There has been some debate recently on the state of Vonage. Will Vonage survive? Will Verizon put Vonage out of business? A little bit of recent history will let you know where these questions come from.

Shortly after Vonage went public in mid 2006, Verizon sued Vonage for infringement on seven patents Verizon own, technology for completing phone calls between VoIP users and people using phones on the traditional public switched network, authenticating VoIP callers, validating VoIP callers’ accounts, fraud protection, providing enhanced features, using Wi-Fi handsets with VoIP services and monitoring VoIP caller usage. Vonage obviously denies this and has defended it vigorously, however so far the courts have swayed towards Verizon. Vonage publically state they have workaounds in development or developed in the event Verizon win.

So what does this mean for you as a customer or a potential customer. The worst that could happen is that Verizon win and Vonage have to spend millions of dollars implementing workarounds they have developed. Alternatively Vonage could go out of business and file for bankruptcy then immediately come back into the VoIP market or Vonage could win and continue to be the largest VoIP service provider out there. If you are a current Vonage customer and you are happy with the service they are providing then there is no real reason to move, however for new customers this law suit is no doubt causing concern for Vonage. It is difficult to market with the specter of patent infringements hanging over you.

Vonage are by far the largest VoIP provider with 2.5 million subscribers, in terms of experience in the VoIP market no other provider can match it. Vonage have a both residential plans and business plans boasting a vast array of features from call waiting to Enhanced 911, from Fax to toll free numbers and many more. Vonage certainly have enough features to keep the average phone user happy regardless of whether it’s for a small business or for a residential phone.

If you are in doubt read the Vonage reviews from current customers or click here to see providers that have at least the same features as Vonage. As you will see there are not many providers competing with Vonage in terms of features however their reviews are not the best.

Technorati Tags: Vonage, Verizon, Voicewing, Vonage patent, Broadband Phone, VoIP,  Digital Voice

SKYPE have just announced a special promotion allowing users to have free VoIP calls to anywhere and to any phone worldwide.  It is for only one day unfortunately, mothers day the 13th of May. It does exclude satellite phones and premium numbers if you read the fine print. However it is a perfect opportunity for you to try a VoIP service and besides free calls to just about anywhere in the world can’t be all bad.

Calum

One of the great things about VoIP phone service is the vast amount of cool phone service features that comes FREE with your plan. If you don’t have a VoIP phone service yet then you can learn more about the most common VoIP features (well, 36 of them!) on our VoIP Features page.

Everyone has a favorite VoIP feature. To be honest I have two favorites. The first one is the portability of my phone number (my VoIP provider boasts the travel globally feature). I love the fact that I can take my ATA with me when we go and visit family in a different state. One benefit, no need to go through the jam-packed answering machine when we get home. I’ve not taken it out of the country yet but next time I go I want to give it a try (have you?). My other on par favorite is the Virtual Numbers feature. This is a great VoIP phone service feature. You can add extra phone numbers to your primary line, with any area code of your selection (as long as your VoIP provider has it available). So, you live in one state but some of your family and friends live in a different state. No problem, you get a virtual number added to your phone service with the area code of where they live. Now your family and friends are only a local call away, saving them money (and no more excuses about long distance fees!).

Well, that’s just two of my personal favorite VoIP phone service features. Please post a comment to this blog and let us know your favorite VoIP feature and why. Dont be shy now! If you let us know we can make a list of the favorite favorites!

Oh, and by the way, if you are looking for a broadband phone service with certain features (for example virtual numbers) then you can use our FREE advanced search engine. This allows you to select the VoIP features you really want (the must-haves) with your VoIP phone service and searches our comprehensive database for all the VoIP provider plans that meet your search criteria.

Technorati Tags: VoIP, VoIP Features, VoIP Phone Service, Virtual Numbers, Travel with VoIP, Broadband phone service, Digital Phone Service, Internet Phone Service

So who is the cheapest VoIP phone provider out there? Well assuming we are looking at residential VoIP plans and not calling card plans, softphones/PC phones or business VoIP solutions then Lingo wins that battle with their basic plan costing $7.95 per month. So what do you get from Lingo for that price? You’ll get the typical features for free, Voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding and Caller ID with name. You’ll also get some advanced features like 3-way calling, anonymous call rejection, do not disturb and all calls to other Lingo users are free. With this basic plan you also get the Emergency calling service (911). This isn’t a bad deal at all.

You also get more than just the features and the price, there are a few intangible benefits related to Lingo. Lingo is a subsidiary of Primus Telecommunications Group, joining the VoIP phone service market in 1999, so they have been around for a while and have a mature product, which should relate to fewer problems for the customer. Lingo have been reviewed by customers over fifty five times on our site. This gives 55 completely independent opinions about the same service, more than enough for you to judge the quality of their service.

What don’t you get? Well every minute costs 3 cents regardless of where you are calling to in the US or Canada. Still not a bad deal but then if you have a teenage daughter on the phone for 3 hours every night them maybe this is not the VoIP plan for you. The cheapest plan that has unlimited minutes to all of the US and Canada is Viatalk. At $15.95 per month you get unlimited calling in the US and Canada and at present they have a special deal of 1 Year free. Less than $10 a month for unlimited calls and a whole bunch of features thrown in, that’s an exceptional deal that won’t last long.

Cost should not be the only consideration when choosing a VoIP service, customer VoIP reviews give you an excellent insight into a company, friends and relatives recommendations are also useful and your own experience of a provider should all be weighed. Many customer choose to go with their broadband carrier for example Verizon have DSL and they have their Voicewing or Comcast broadband have their Comcast Digital Voice service.

VoIP is an inexpensive, reliable alternative to your traditional phone. Have a read at our How To Select a VoIP Provider article for tips on how to select the best VoIP provider that suits you and your families calling habits.

Technorati Tags: Lingo, Viatalk, Broadband Phone, VoIP, Cheap Phone, Digital Voice, Verizon, Voicewing

Following on from the earlier blog on the problems that Vonage is having with the Verizon patent dispute, it appears that the situation may get much worse before it gets better. Since we posted, the Vonage CEO has stepped down and it is becoming apparent that Vonage does not have a work-around for the Verizon Patents.

One of these stories is here….

All we can say is continue to do your due diligence at WhichVoip

Technorati Tags: Sunrocket, Viatalk, Broadband Phone, VoIP, Vonage, Digital Voice

  Viatalk have just re-introduced their 1 Year free again.Sign up for their yearly unlimited calling VoIP plan, currently $199 for the year and receive one whole year FREE.  This deal has been on twice before and was for a limited time only, this will be the same.

We try not to introduce blatant advertising on this blog but we’re seeing huge interest on our website for this VoIP provider right now.  The Viatalk VoIP review section on our website, written by users, also gives Viatalk a high score.

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/visit_site.php?id=vt_500

Calum

Technorati Tags: Viatalk, VoIP, VoIP Special, VoIP Review, Viatalk Review

So you are thinking about switching to a VoIP phone service to save money on your phone bill and to enjoy the vast feature set that comes with a VoIP phone service. But you are wondering about all the VoIP providers out there and the fact you have probably only heard of one or maybe two of them. Is this a case of sticking with a brand name to be safe?

Well, everyone has heard of Vonage, right? They advertise their “broadband phone service” on the television, in major newspapers, fliers in your mailbox and even ads on your local buses. They have been the face of the VoIP phone service market revolution. They are certainly one of the biggest and one of the most well known VoIP providers today. Vonage were founded in 2001 and could well be considered as the “brand name” in the VoIP phone service market.

But what about the other VoIP providers out there providing broadband phone service, internet phone service, and digital voice service, to name but a few of the marketing names for VoIP phone service these days. Are they just small fry or do they really compete with the likes of Vonage?

Well, actually, some of them have been around longer than Vonage and yes, there are plenty of alternate VoIP providers snapping at the heels of the Vonage marketing machine. Here is a list of just some of Vonage’s main competitors, listed in order of their founding dates. Use the links for more detailed information on the providers and some of their history.

• Packet8 was founded in 1987 and started their VoIP internet phone service in 2002. They started offering videophone service in 2004.
• Lingo is a subsidiary of Primus Telecommunications Group, joining the VoIP phone service market in 1999.
• ViaTalk is a subsidiary of HostRocket which was founded in 1999. HostRocket launched their ViaTalk internet phone service in 2005 and now offer their phone service in all 50 states.
• VoicePulse launched their award winning broadband phone service in 2003 and have grown steadily.
• SunRocket launched their internet phone service in 2004 and are one of the fastest growing and well-known providers in the VoIP industry.
• Other VoIP providers that have become well known and have started to provide some stiff competition in the VoIP market over the last 2 years are VoIPYourLife VoIP phone service, ITP (Internet Telephone Provider), Zingotel broadband phone service, ECR Voice internet phone service, and more recently VoIP.com phone service and VoIPgo phone service.

These are just a handful of the VoIP providers in the market today. The VoIP provider market is a fast growing one, with new VoIP providers appearing monthly. Some of the larger well-known phone companies and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) now have a VoIP offering, such as AT&T CallVantage, Verizon VoiceWing, Charter Telephone service, Comcast digital voice service, and Earthlink trueVoice internet phone services.

With this much choice you are going to find a VoIP provider that suits your phone needs. The good thing is that if the one you choose does not work out for you then there are plenty of other choices out there. Read our guide on “How to select a VoIP Service Provider” to help you with choosing the right VoIP provider for your needs or browse through the information on our home page.

Technorati Tags: Vonage, Sunrocket, Packet8, Viatalk, Voicepulse, Lingo, VoIPYourLife, VoIP Providers, VoIP Provider Comparisons, VoIP Options

Vonage was granted a stay of execution after it appealed a judge’s ruling on Friday which resulted in Vonage not being able to sign up any new digital phone voip customers. The appeal has temporarily allowed Vonage to continue business as normal, but this problem is not likely to be resolved any time soon.

Vonage currently has the largest customer base of all the internet phone providers but growth has slown in recent months. At the end of last year it was estimated that Vonage had around 2.2 million digital phone subscribers and although revenue had doubled, it still had not turned a profit. We at Whichvoip don’t expect current or new Vonage subscribers to be affected by this lawsuit as these things typically play out resulting in a large settlement and on-going royality payments for using the patent. Our biggest concern with a result like this would be that it would push Vonage even further away from becoming a profitable company, and at the same time add a large royality hurdle for it to overcome.

So the question we would ask ourselves if we were a current Vonage digital voice customer or a potential one, is how long will the cost of this service remain at its current price. After all, the money for any settlement or roylaties will have to come from somewhere, and with Vonage under huge pressure to increase shareholder value, there is a high chance that Vonage may push this down to its subscribers and make them pay more for the same service.

In summary, just be sure that you research your VoIP options before finalizing your digital voice purchase decision.

Here is one of the articles that is bouncing around the web..(MORE)

Technorati Tags: Broadband Phone, VoIP, Vonage, Digital Voice

Although problems with VoIP and digital internet phones are not as common as the likes of Verizon would have you believe, they do exist. One such problem that I have the unfortunate pleasure of encountering is intermittent or choppy audio when using my VoIP Phone. 

If you have read any of the blogs in our Techie corner you will have a good understanding of how VoIP works. With a VoIP phone call your voice is digitally sampled and divided into small sections. Each section is sequentially sent out over the internet embedded within an IP (Internet Protocol) Packet. The choppy or intermittent voice comes from one or more of these packets being lost, not sent or delayed in the network somewhere.

So what can you do if you have this problem with your own VoIP phone?

There are a few simple things that you can do before you phone your providers customer service line.

Try and characterize the intermittent voice. Is it in one direction only? Is it when you and your family are using the internet? Typically if you are on your VoIP phone it will be the person on the other end who can’t hear you properly and you will not experience the intermittent audio. A common cause of this is a lack of bandwidth in the uplink direction. Residential broadband internet such as DSL and cable are asymmetrical in nature. Comcast may promise 6Mbits, and they do deliver on their promise, however that is in the download direction i.e. to your PC or Internet phone. In the upload direction you won’t see more than 384Kbits. Try running a speed test when you are on the phone and experiencing problems and take a note of the bandwidth you are getting in the uplink and downlink directions. Compare it to when you are not on the phone.

Another simple test you can do is a ping test. Open a DOS command prompt on your PC and type the following command “ping -n 100 yahoo.com” (don’t type the “”). Below is a screen shot of what you would expect to see.

What you are doing with this test is sending IP packets to yahoo.com. The servers that host the yahoo website are sending a response back to your PC. The 66.94.234.13 is the IP address of the server on the yahoo side. The bytes are how many bytes in the IP packet and the time is the round trip time for the message to be sent from your PC to Yahoo and then sent back again. Once the test has completed you get a summary of the results, the important one is the “lost” statistic, ideally this would be 0%. Any more than about 3% and the dropped packets will result in intermittent voice over your broadband phone. Try this test a few times and see if there is any correlation between using the phone, time of day or kids home from school and downloading music!!

It’s also important to check your setup and make sure you have followed the instructions your VoIP service provider sent with the ATA. This is particularly crucial if you have a router. Your ATA is effectively a VoIP router, it will give your voice packets priority over the data packets from your PC. This means that your voice packets will be sent out on time and will not be delayed even if you are downloading or uploading large files. The most common set up is is to have your modem, then your ATA and then your router.

Try the speed test and the ping tests with the ATA removed and again try and see any correlation.

If you see a slight drop in bandwidth or one or two more dropped packets while you are on the phone then this is actually a good sign. This means that your ATA is giving priority to your broadband phone at the expense of a few dropped packets of data. Data can be resent without a loss of content unfortunately voice can not.  

These are all fairly simple test to run and you don’t necessarily have to take any actions based on the results however it will give the customer service technician you eventually call a lot of valuable information and it will save you running these tests while he’s on the phone as he’s “scripted” to ask you. Very often the technician can change your ATA settings to use a CODEC with higher voice compression thus using less bandwidth and resulting in less lost packets. They may also get you to call your broadband provider and have them check your connection. The above tests are also valuable as your broadband provider customer representative will no doubt ask you run them.

The one thing that I find somewhat ironic in the residential VoIP market is the fact that the likes of Verizon push their POTS telophony on reliability and suggest that VoIP is not so reliable. Probably half the problems associated with VoIP are problems with a users DSL or Broadband connection and not the actual VoIP application.

There are many triple play deals out there, VoIP, Broadband and TV all from the same provider like Comcast, these are decent deals, but you could find a cheaper service if you shop around for individual services. However having one company to contact when you have problems and eliminating the excuse “call the other guy it’s his problem” could be worth the extra cost.

Calum

 http://www.whichvoip.com

Technorati Tags: Broadband Phone, VoIP, Choppy Audio, Intermittent Audio, Broadband bandwidth

OK, so you are thinking about getting VoIP (also known as Internet phone service, broadband phone service and digital voice service, see Andy’s Blog below for more information on this), but you are wondering how you can have several phones scattered around your house? The days of people having just one phone in the house are disappearing (I have one in the kitchen, living room, bedroom and one lost somewhere in the house!). Well, there are some options you’ll be pleased to hear. While we wait for technology to catch up with things like VoWLAN (see another one of Andy’s blogs below), I will just stick to some of the current options available.

The following provides four possibilities for adding multiple phones onto your VoIP phone service, depending on your requirement and situation, as a starting point.

1) One simple method is by using a multiple jack extension connector. You can plug this into your VoIP service Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) and this will allow you to have multiple phones on a single line. However, the limitation with this is that the phone connections are still at the location of your VoIP providers ATA device. This is a simple solution but not too flexible if you want to distribute your phones throughout your home.

2) Cordless phone systems are a great option for distributing your VoIP phone service throughout your home. Cordless phone systems are commonplace in homes these days with 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz versions available. So, if you don’t already have a set they are actually very reasonably priced due to the large competition out there. Cordless phone systems come with a base unit (also referred to as a Base Station by some phone suppliers) that plugs directly into your VoIP service ATA. The additional cordless (also sometimes referred to as wireless) handsets can then be placed anywhere in your home, distributing your VoIP phone service to wherever you need it. The great thing about this option is that if you already have cordless phones then you are ready to go and do not need to buy any additional hardware to distribute your VoIP phone service throughout your home.

3) A variation on the cordless phone idea is to use wireless phone jacks. A base unit connects directly to your VoIP phone service ATA. Then, wireless jacks can be used that plug into your household electrical outlets in the locations where you want your additional phones. You can then connect each of your additional phones to a wireless jack and voila, you have your VoIP phone service available anywhere in your home that you want it.

4) Many people have used their existing telephone wiring and telephone extensions in their home to distribute their VoIP phone service. Be warned though, you cannot just plug your VoIP ATA phone line output straight into a phone jack in your home though. The traditional phone landline carries a voltage on its wires, used to make your telephone ‘ring’ when someone calls you. These voltages can potentially damage your VoIP equipment.  The way people have avoided this is to disconnect their landline phone wiring at the Demarcation Point in their Network Interface Device (NID, typically a grey or black box located on the outside of your house). Once the existing phone line to the home has been disconnected, the VoIP service ATA phone line out can be plugged directly into one of the existing phone extensions inside the home. This will then distribute the VoIP phone service to all other phone extensions in the home that are wired to that phone extension. If you decide to do this it is highly recommended that you seek advice from an electrician or someone who is familiar with internal telephone wiring on how to best connect your VoIP service to your current phone wiring to take advantage of your homes multiple extensions. It is also advised that you pre-check the wiring on the phone jacks to make sure you don’t have live PSTN voltage on the jacks before connecting them to the VoIP phone service ATA. A simple telephone line tester device can be used for this purpose. The following is a useful link to a website that provides more information on connecting your VoIP service into your existing phone wiring: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

Well, hope this helps provide some useful options for having multiple phones on a home VoIP phone service. There are probably other methods out there that may suit your needs.

If you have used other methods to add multiple phones to your VoIP phone service with success (or not) then please add a comment to let other people know advantages, drawbacks, funny installation stories, etc.

Mike

Technorati Tags: VoIP, VoIP Phone Service, Multiple Phones, VoIP Installation, Broadband Phone Service, Internet Phone Service

Okay, who out there is confused by the new phone services that seem to be popping up daily in TV commercials? In particular the different names their highly paid marketing teams use to describe their phone service?

Let’s see what phone service names are used by the main service providers, often on prime time TV commercials.

• Broadband Phone Service : Vonage, Verizon and Viatalk providers use Broadband Phone Service.

• Internet Phone Service : Sunrocket and Packet8 service providers use Internet Phone Service.

• Digital Voice Service : Comcast phone service is called Digital Voice Service.

• VoIP Service : Lingo refers to their residential and business plans as VoIP phone service.

What is going on?
The consumers are getting confused, can we not just stick to one name to describe this type of phone service. After all it is all the same type of phone service : it is Digital Phone Service over your Broadband High-Speed Internet connection.

Now in fairness we could be described as hypocrites here. Take a look at our site. What do you see?
You will see reference to VoIP service, Voice over IP providers, Voice over Internet Protocol, Broadband Phone services, Digital Phone provider, Internet Phone providers, Digital Voice solutions.

Yes we are guilty of doing this too. However in all honesty we did start with the plain old VoIP name because at that time this is what the name was for transmitting your voice over the Internet. Makes sense if you think about it, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Internet Protocol is the protocol used to send everything over the Internet backbone. The problem for us is we have to keep dropping in other names for this form of digital phone service too otherwise some of our readers get confused if for example, they have never heard of VoIP but have heard of Internet Phone Service.

The problem, in our opinion, is that as time has gone by the marketing team for each service provider has put their own spin on it to make it appear like it is a different form of phone service. There are a few reasons for this:

• VoIP is not seen as a good marketing term since it does not describe the phone service well at all and most people do not know what the acronym means.

• In the early days when the service was referred to as VoIP the voice quality was not as good as it is today. Service providers do not really want to associate themselves with this type of service and quality.

• If referred to as Internet Phone Service or Voice over IP consumers tend to associate this phone service with their PC at home because of the term “Internet”. This of course is not the case, although this is the business model for Skype. Consumers can continue to use their regular phone with no PC in the communication path. The service providers send you an adapter (ATA) that you connect your regular phone to and the ATA hooks to your Broadband High-Speed Internet connection. No PC is required!

To make our point again, regardless of the phone service name that the service providers use, they are all the same type of service. All of them require a Broadband High Speed Internet connection and your voice is sent digitally from your phone over your Broadband connection as VoIP packets. Look at the words in the last sentence and it is easy to see how the marketing folks end up with Digital Voice, Digital Phone Service, Internet Phone Service, Broadband Phone Service and VoIP.

So are there really no differences?
Providing your broadband connection is high enough speed you should get good quality phone service from all of the service providers.

The likes of Comcast and Verizon promote the fact that they can put everything on to one bill which is definitely convenient and in the case of Comcast they have a “Triple Play” package, providing TV, Phone Service and High Speed Broadband Internet all on one bill. This is certainly nice to have although keep in mind that you will typically pay a price premium for this convenience over the standalone service providers such as Sunrocket, Viatalk and Vonage. It is through these service providers that you will achieve the best digital phone service savings, in our opinion.

Hopefully you are a little clearer now on all of the names used for this form of digital phone service. Many different ways to name them but ultimately they are all the same. Let WhichVoIP.com help you choose a digital phone service provider and start saving on your phone bills today.

WhichVoIP Team

Technorati Tags: VoIP, Broadband Phone, Internet Phone, Digital Phone, Digital Voice, Service Providers

Interesting news from Charter Communications in the last week or so.  By all accounts they now have 500,000 VoIP customers - 300,000 of them in 2006 alone.

The other interesting side to this is that 7 out of 10 of their VoIP customers signed up for the Triple Play package.  I am sure with all the advertising these days you are aware of Triple Play.  If you’re just back from solitary confinement the Triple Play is Video (TV), Broadband Data (Internet) and Voice (VoIP or Broadband Phone or Internet Phone or Digital Voice….yes the marketing guys are having a field day with this aren’t they).

I can see the benefit of the Triple Play, all services from one company and therefore only one bill.  The other advantage is of course when things go wrong.  No doubt who is responsible if things go wrong.  This is a problem some users have right now when they have different service providers for Voice and Data - if the phone service does not work, is it the VoIP service provider or the Broadband Data service provider that is at fault.

However before you jump up and order Triple Play you may want to take a look at some of the deals the “Single Play” VoIP service providers offer.  You might just find you will save a good chunk of change.  For example some service providers offer 2 years of unlimited service for $199.  Now that is tough to beat Charter!

Take a look at some of the VoIP solutions we currently have on our main site:

http://www.whichvoip.com

Andy

Voice over Wireless LAN, or VoWLAN as it is referred to, has been getting a lot of publicity recently.

What is VoWLAN?  In simplistic terms this is VoIP but over WiFi or Wireless IP.  Many households have WiFi these days just due to the convenience of accessing the Internet, especially those with laptops.  Sit in the living room watching the basketball game on the TV and surfing the web and with no CAT5 Ethernet cable or the likes getting tangled up with your bottle of beer.

How nice would it be if you had the same flexibility with your telephone.  Yes with cordless phones we have this already….well kind of.  You still need to have the base connected to the VoIP ATA or the POTS line if you have the old fashioned form of telephony   Yes the technology up until now has definitely been of the wired variety.

VoWLAN gives you additional freedom.  Here your WiFi enabled VoIP phone will talk directly do your WiFi router wirelessly.  Many providers are now releasing such phones in the marketplace or frantically designing one to release imminently as this is likely to be a huge market over the next year.

However, there are some technical drawbacks with this technology that should be brought to your attention.  All of these can be overcome but may be of interest to you.

The fundamental problem is the way that the packets are handled.  The beauty of Internet Protocol is that the packets sent over the Internet backbone can be voice, video or data.  It does not matter, they are made up of packets of digital bits and sent across the Internet to their destination.  However, all packets are not the same.  Data packets such as web browsing tend to be large packets often over 1000 bytes at a time.  Voice packets tend to be significantly smaller, often as small as 30 bytes depending on the codec used for the voice compression.

Now with the various OSI stack layers used to send data and voice over the Internet, each layer adds overhead packets that define protocols, source and destination addressing, checksums for error correction and the likes.  When the actual voice packets are so small to begin with this ends up making the data transmission very inefficient due to the extra overhead, often as bad as 30% (e.g. 100 byte packet but only 30 bytes of actual voice information). 

Why is this such a bad thing?  Well, the WiFi Media Access layer tries to give each station on the network equal access and gives no consideration to the time each station has during its access time.  Therefore, because the voice packets are so small compared to the data packets a lot of time is spent by the VoWLAN phones backing off and waiting to transmit the next voice packet.  Now VoIP is very much reliant on low latency and low jitter.  This environment does not suit it well at all especially when many Data nodes are trying to access the WLAN at the same time.  The result, if not managed properly, is reduced system capacity and poor voice quality.

Another issue is the distance from the WiFi access point.  The further away you are the lower the signal strength and the lower the transmission rate needs to be otherwise the signal to noise ratio takes a serious hit and some of the voice packets can be lost.  The lower the transmission rate the longer it takes to send the packet and the more hold-offs required by the stations on the WLAN.  Again the voice quality can suffer and of course the system capacity.

It’s not all bad news.  The VoWLAN providers have worked hard at resolving these issues or at least limiting their effects.  The upside is the lack of wires and equipment needed in your home and the portability of your voice and data network.

I hope this has given you some insight into the world of VoWLAN. 

Interested in buying a WiFi VoIP phone, check out our hardware section for more details:

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/voip_business_hardware.htm

Any of you using this technology at home or at work now - we would love to hear about your experiences, please add a comment below?

Andy

Technorati Tags: VoWLAN, Wireless IP, Wireless VoIP, VoIP

Vonaged just announced that more than 94 percent of its U.S. subscriber lines are now equipped with Enhanced 911 (E911) service — a feature that automatically associates a physical address with the calling party’s telephone number. The most recent upgrades bring the total number of lines fitted for E911 to more than 2 million. Vonage’s E911 solution gives customers the ability to reach a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) or 911 centers, through the dedicated 911 network infrastructure. With Vonage’s E911 solution, a customer’s call is automatically routed to the appropriate 911 center, with the caller’s registered street address and telephone number appearing on the dispatchers screen — regardless of where or what exchange they are calling from. Vonage will continue to turn up and test new PSAPs that are VoIP-ready every day.

Since December 15, Vonage has equipped 50 locally-run emergency call centers across the U.S. with E911 — bringing the total number of calling centers with emergency 911 service to more than 6,600.

Now this is not an advert for Vonage but with this level of commitment they obviously see a bright future for VoIP and are in it for the long run. With more than 2 million lines they are probably the biggest VoIP provider in the world - all they need to do is to keep improving their customer services department and they will easily stay number 1

Calum

http://www.whichvoip.com

Technorati Tags: Vonage, VoIP, VoIP Review, E911

Looks like the cordless phone market is really starting to take VoIP seriously.

We now have Linksys and Belkin creating WiFi phones purely for VoIP service.  No need for RJ-11 cables into your VoIP Adapter any more.  Use your WiFi cordless phone to talk to your wireless router and out through your high speed internet modem.  This is really starting to gain popularity and likely to be a huge market in the coming years.

Another recent new product introduction, from Philips (1211) and Olympia, are the DECT / VoIP hybrid cordless phones.  Now for those still concerned about giving up their landline connection, this really does make sense.  Use the phone in its standard form for calls with your landline provider.  Then if you wish to save money for your long distance calling, hook a USB cable to your PC and whenever your PC is on you can use Skype VoIP to send and receive calls.  Recent reviews have been favorable.  May be worth a go and it acts as middle ground before the inevitable move to VoIP for your phone service needs.

Andy

http://www.whichvoip.com/