| Art Clemons on 14 Dec 2004 12:12:28 -0000 |
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Anyone using commercial VOip? I was looking at the AT&T site. They claim they need 90Kb Up/down BW/line/call. That really sounds excessive. What is this super high fidelity phone connections! I would think they could get by with a lot less then that even with overhead. Given a 3K voice channel you should be able to sample at 12-16K, Add overhead and control.. so we double that... 32K ... what the heck is the rest? I think verizon breaks a T1 down into 23 voice channels / 1 control, each 48K. That always seemed like a waste of BW to me. Actually you probably do need that much bandwidth for some calls and to help prevent what I call the "echo chamber" effect. Remember, telephone calls are really two sets of audio signals, one from you and one from the individual you're talking to. If you limit the audio to let's say 3Khz like phones used to, the audio often doesn't sound right Anyhow it might make sense to change a DSL lines analog voice number to absolute minimum service and get one of these all inclusive digital voice packages. You can get everything under the sun for $29 and there are many less expensive packages. The difference is that there are no hidden charges like wireline or wireless where they hit you for darn near 20% of your bill in hidden costs. There are cheaper services like Lingo, Packet8 and Vonage. The only downside is that to really use them throughout a house, you need wireless phones with more than one phone able to access the same service. It's not fun to be let's say on the 2nd floor and the only phone connected is on the first. One hint though, get 5.8Ghz phones if you do this. Also Verizon is offering VOIP too over broadband in case you're not sick of them enough to avoid any additional services from Verizon. ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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