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Originally Posted by Rob C
For many homeusers, VOIP viability, will depend on both reliability (I suspect many will argue broadband is less reliable than standard telephone), cost in use savings allowing for cost of setup. For me, as I make few landline calls from home, and very few are of long duration, or distance (£3.00 per month phone use bill is quite high), It would take a long while to recoup the costs, given ntl bundle a fixed phone for "free" with the TV service.
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It also means 999 calls will not work during a power failiure (unless your CM and VOIP router and the network providers equipment are on UPS - unlikely) So most need a mobile phone as a backup 999 equipment.
VOIP is going to be less reliable unless the packets are QoS from end to end of the internet, and as you point out NTL bundle the phone line, and a BT line is required for ADSL.
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Originally Posted by Rob C
There will also be an apathy factor. Many could save money by switching energy suppliers, etc, but they don't so why will everyone drop standard phone like a hot potato? There will also be issues of customers understanding how it works.
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Not really, this was one of the biggest suprises to me. If you have an NTL CM, you just plug the blue linksys box into it and into your PC and your phone into it and off you go. No setup or thought required.
Many are using USB still though (and have USB modems) this will hamper takeup as it is a further cost.
For us there is also the benefit of having a virtual US phone number, not a marketing benefit that will appeal to / be required by all. This means relatives can call us for the cost of a local call (free).QUOTE=Rob C]Having said that any telecoms supplier that is not preparing for the advent of VOIP will be foolish. Its coming soon
[/QUOTE]I believe BT is planning to migrate its entire network to VoIP infrastructure, call quality on such a migration is not likely to suffer as they are transferring the packets over a private network, shows how developed VoIP is becoming.