Verizon strike [telecom]

The company I work for is telling employees who work from home offices that they should keep their total cost for a work voice telephone line under $40 per month. The preferred solution is a company VoIP system which does not require POTS. This supports the thought that Verizon and other wireline telcos might be losing business to alternate lower cost providers.

Steve

How would the workers get a VOIP line? I thought one had to have either DSL (on top of a landline), or, digital cable on top of cable TV service.

Can one get a data line _by itself_ without anything else attached to it--and one that would be cheaper than a landline?

:> The company I work for is telling employees who work from home offices :> that they should keep their total cost for a work voice telephone line :> under $40 per month.  The preferred solution is a company VoIP system :> which does not require POTS.  This supports the thought that Verizon :> and other wireline telcos might be losing business to alternate lower :> cost providers.

:How would the workers get a VOIP line? I thought one had to have :either DSL (on top of a landline), or, digital cable on top of cable :TV service.

:Can one get a data line _by itself_ without anything else attached to :it--and one that would be cheaper than a landline?

Sure, most places. In Chicago, T, Comcast, and RCN will, if they serve your building, be happy to sell you just data. (So will a number of other peple who serve smaller areas of the city.) No, it won't be cheaper than a basic land line phone. But note that anyone working from home has to have a data connection these days, so the marginal cost of getting a connection that supports VOIP is pretty small (I'd want a dedicated IP telephone, though, and not an analog through a converter.).

You can get a DSL line with out having an actual working phone number but not all internet providers allow you to order this type. In my area you can order what is known as a dry loop DSL connection. They do charge extra for no phone number being bundled with the DSL but it is still cheaper than a phone number plus a DSL feed.

As for home phone service I use a NetTalk phone adapter. I have used others like Vonage and Skype.

I got rid of Vonage as it required a PC be powered on all the time to have continuous phone service, same as Skype (no adapter, just software). With the NetTalk adapter you can plug it directly into a router or your PC allowing you much more flexibility.

Here is a link that will take you to a screen for ATT's offering.

Cable companies will sell you just Internet, although they would rather sell you a package with TV and phone and someone's cell phone service.

In the past ILECs were supposed to sell bare DSL but I gather that since the FCC no longer enforces the rules, you can order it but you can't get it, or if you can, it's more expensive than voice+DSL.

R's, John

Do you mean that the rules are no longer in effect, that the FCC is no longer responsible for enforcing the rules, or that the FCC chooses not to?

Bill Horne Moderator

On Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:54:49 -0700 (PDT), Lisa or Jeff wrote in comp.dcom.telecom:

Charter certainly offers internet-only.

Love the domain name!

Bill Horne Moderator

Yes, and not the employers problem since they don't reimburse for home office Internet connectivity.

I don't know.

Steve

Charter is the most hated company in the US. They billed me for service

Huh? When I had Vonage, they provided me a Cisco ATA-186 with one jack for the RJ-45 from the router and another jack with the RJ-11 to the phone. I couldn't have run it through my PC if I wanted to.

R's, John

... and Telecom Digest Moderator responded:

Some combination of the first and the third.

xR's, John

Grandstream, Aastra, Polycom, Gigaset, and quite a few other companies which make VoIP phones... most have two Ethernet ports and a built-in switch, and most speak SIP. Cisco makes VoIP phones as well, but many of these come preconfigured to use Cisco's own VoIP protocol rather than SIP.

Various Aastra models seem to be selling for between $65 and $200, depending on features. Prices vary a lot depending on brand, model, and where you buy from.

If you are willing to buy used kit, you can often find real deals. I've bought several SIP phones and analog-telephone adapters through electronics recyclers and at a local electronics flea-market, and I don't think I spent more than $15 on the most expensive one.

To get full service for these phones, you'd deal with a telephony provider who will handle both VoIP origination, and can terminate a DID phone number and route the call to you via SIP. There are many such providers... some cheap and some expensive, some fly-by-night and some with long histories of stability. Plans range anywhere from flat rate "all you can use" (up to a large limit per month) for a flat rate, down to pay-as-you-go-by-the-minute. Ask around for recommendations from existing VoIP customers.

It's possible to have an existing DID number "ported" over to a VoIP provider, just as you can port them to alternative analog dialtone providers or to cellphone providers. The FCC has made it clear that VoIP providers are bound by the same rules w.r.t porting of existing numbers.

You can quite easily "buy" DIDs in two or more cities (or overseas) and have the calls terminated to your same SIP phone or adapter or gateway/proxy. This can be very handy if you travel a lot or do work in several cities... you can have a local number in many places at not much expense.

For what it's worth - I recently ported my wife's low-usage business line over from analog (about $15/month) to VoIP, with the existing number being terminated by Vitelity. Cost per month is under $2 for the DID, plus about a penny and a half per minute for calls (inbound or outbound).

I've got another line with no DID, but outbound servide through Future Nine... about a penny a minute. Oddly, it's cheaper by a hair to call landlines in London, than landlines here in the U.S.

Both of these use our existing home DSL service, so there's no incremental data cost.

A word of caution... VoIP running on consumer-grade DSL will probably not provide call service that's entirely as reliable and glitch-free as standard switched-circuit "analog" from your telco, because very little of the TCP/IP backbone that the calls traverse will carry any sort of quality-of-service guarantee. Occasional stutters in the voice are to be expected (but I don't find them as common or severe as the artifacts present in most cellphone calls.)

I do recommend keeping at least one analog land-line with a phone that requires no separate electrical power to operate... it's good to have a plain and simple fallback in an emergency (natural disaster, network outage, etc.).

In _most_ areas you can get a 'naked' (no dial tone) DSL circuit.

The cost of such a circuit is -- almost always -- higher than the cost of DSL when it is bundled with an existing voice circuit.

This is -not- surprising, if you think about it. The telco has 'costs' (maintenance, etc.) associated with the physical circuit that are included with the _first_ service provisioned on the pair. any additional service that 'piggy-backs' on the the same pair does not have to include those costs, since they're already paid for.

There is also a 'nuisance' factor associated with a naked DSL pair. Unlike a pair with 'dial tone', a field tech cannot tell that whether pair is 'in use' (meaning 'active', not 'off hook') by simply hooking a butt-set onto the pair, and 'listening' for voice, or dial-tone. There have been *lots* of 'naked' DSL circuit outages because a field tech unwittingly 'stole' an active pair to fix another problem.

I usually see it labeled as a "dry line" (i.e., no battery.)

In Bell Canada territory, the cost depends on your area, and varies from $7.25 per month to $25.10 per month. Obviously, the low end is a fraction of what the most basic POTS service costs, but by the time you add the DSL service, dry line fee, and VoIP service you're saving little if anything. However, VoIP may an economical option for a second phone line, which may be very desirable if you work from home. VoIP service also usually includes features that cost extra to add to POTS service. It may also permit you to connect to your company's phone service so that your direct number or extension rings wherever you want it... but that's another story.

Right you are John.

Sorry, it appears that my memory was malfunctioning as usual. I meant to say that I had booted Magic Jack, not Vonage.

Lineman have been equipped with DSL detecting butt sets for many years now. When the butt set is connected to a DSL signal pair it sounds an alarm and / or will not go off hook. So accidental downing of DSL service is no longer that much of a problem. Some Butt sets can even function like a piggy back telephone and conduct voice calls without downing the line. I own two such Harris sets.

-- Tom Horne

I can state -- from first-hand experience as recently as 2005 -- that 'stealing' "DSL-only' pairs _does_ happen. I

the shop were I was employed at that time provided DSL for all employees, to support "work-at-home", when needed. One employee was in a near- saturated neighborhood, and 'lost' their DSL 3 times in a little less than

Perhaps, but a couple of weeks ago I had a (naked) DSL problem that the tech who came out blamed on just such a cause. "Well, I don't want to say anything against the [new ownership and name] company, but some of the contractors they hire don't recognize a DSL without dialtone..."

Whether that was in fact the problem, I have no way to know. But he then went to the cabinet (2 blocks away) and came back and said "it's fixed".

Dave

I had a Linksys RT31P2 that had the same setup. No computer required. You did need a computer to manage your account but that is the entire extent of it.

I've had plenty of digital circuits and loop circuits of various sorts nynexed over the years, but then again I have also had a few active pots circuits taken down too. Dial tone is no guarantee they won't nynex it.

--scott