VoIP Stories: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

During our first few months we are trying to operate very lean, and this package has a lot of great features that help us accomplish this. Most notable are email notification when a voice mail message has been received (great when working from home or Starbucks) and complete control of your account through a Web-based control panel. This includes being able to turn call-forwarding on and off remotely.

The return on investment is far better than any wired solution. We are currently in the process of installing a T1 from NuVox, which will be broken down into 24 channels, with half being used for Internet access and the rest for VoIP. We are a reseller for NuVox and are now able to justify the cost. VoIP is probably the future for voice communication, with the SBCs and their competitors providing the copper, and vendors like NuVox leasing it for their services.

The only problem we have experienced was a hardware failure which required that we give Vonage our credit card before they would cross-ship the replacement. Once they received the failed device we received a credit on our card. Because we use the Vonage service for business, we would like to have seen a quicker replacement to our device.

One surprising omission was that none of the providers made mention of a minimum bandwidth necessary. All that was specified was a broadband connection. Wonder how well it would work with a 128/256K DSL (or some percentage thereof) service?

One caveat is that VoIP doesn't work very well over slow or over-utilized Internet connections. During the first couple of weeks in our new office we tried to make use of an existing Covad 144K DSL circuit while our T-1 was being delivered. It got us by for e-mail and limited Web browsing, but the Vonage service was totally unsatisfactory. Calls were choppy, with enough gaps to make talking impossible. But once we plugged into the T-1, the phone quality was as good as any land line.

I rehooked my system for a system check as soon as power was restored after a long hiatus due to the storms. I had bypassed my UPS system because it was no longer charged. I was only online for twenty minutes checking my business email when POW! The area around here received quite a surge that took out my cable modem, my router, my IP packet generating device for VoIP and my main computer. It was an ignorant move -- I should have delayed until my UPS was up again in another day. I had to wait until the billing cycle was over for that month to transfer my original number back to BellSouth, and it took about two and a half months for analog services to be restored. Everyone else in this park had their telephone service during two of the three storms continuously without a hitch.

Fortunately, I still had a backup and was able to restore data to my main PC, so I was able to find and call all my clients and my vendors, supplying my cell number, with which I have a plan providing free incoming calls. I lost all my new contacts via phone from advertising sources and so on, but I am about to recover financially soon. My full system backup saved me.

If anyone else wants to be an early adopter, they should take my advice and try it with a new number for a while and keep their old telco as a backup. There's nothing like analog when you don't have guaranteed power!

One of the features that Vonage under-promotes is the fact that you can have their server automatically forward calls to an alternate number (like a cell phone) if the Internet connection goes down due to a power outage or communications problem. Even the phone company can't figure out how to do that!