Re: [PLUG] VoIP

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On 10 Jul, 2004, at 16:37, Paul wrote:
> James Kelly wrote:
>
> > Just make sure you have a cellphone as a back up in case your 
> > broadband/power goes out.
> Oh, I've been thinking about a UPS.  That should keep the cable modem 
> and VoIP box online, right?

Maybe... but only for the length of time your batteries survive AND you 
MUST have your VoIP "phone" also on a UPS. A VoIP "phone" is a powered 
device. (Be that a stand-alone phone or your PC.)

And then you have to hope that your Cable provider stays up. If the 
power outage is widespread, their equipment between you and their 
head-end may not function.

In theory, if you have dial-tone, you have adsl ... at least as far as 
the phone company part of the circuits are concerned. Although, if the 
outage is for an extended period, the DSLAMs may not be powered. It 
would depend entirely upon the relationship between the Central Office 
and the particular co-located equipment.  All CO wire-line equipment is 
powered with emergency generators. And, generally speaking, all Telco 
(not CLEC) equipment connecting one CO to another is powered by those 
same generators.

I have been through one situation where power was out, cable was out, 
but my Verizon ADSL line still talked to my ISP, DCAnet, over in Old 
City.

> One thing I don't like is being locked into using Comcast.  Does VoIP 
> work well over Verizon DSL?

VoIP will work over anything that supports IP ... the quality will 
suffer depending upon the backbone traffic between the two endpoints.

Vonage doesn't seem to list any speed communication requirements on 
their website, but they do talk about using AOL/DSL.

The other important thing about VoIP -- it does not provide "life-line" 
services ... i.e. no 911 information! And, you may not be able to dial 
911 AT ALL. Vonage offers a "work-around" to the 911 problem:
     http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=911

but it IS different than being able to dial 911 directly.


T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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