you're lucky, we had Comcast digital phone for a while and they really 
offered us a good deal, then they turned around and got us real bad on the 
bill and now, all I have them for is internet and when I get in touch with 
the local power company about the T1 connections they offer in homes for the 
same price, I'll never have anything to do with Comcast again. I have vonage 
on my private line and it works fine for me, was with voicewing and still 
trying to get the number transferred over but other than that, it was 
alright but now and then no one could hear me and I had to hang up and call 
back, but with vonage I don't have that problem and we may very well get rid 
of the main phone company and just use my vonage line for the hole house 
down the road since it's a lot cheaper.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Colin McDonald" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 10:49 PM
Subject: voice over IP report


Hi Phil:
Saw your messages on here and on blind-ad as well...
anyway, i switched to digital phone service back in june of last year.
I am not completely sure if this is considered a VOIP service or not since
it isn't installed the same as your typical voip box...basically there is a
separate phone modem as they call it, very similar in size and no doubt
operability to the regular high speed internet modem. They install it
usually in the basement or where ever your main phone line comes into the
residence.  They connect it directly to the junction box so that all you do
is just leave your phones connected to their jacks in the house.
This particular service is offered through the local high speed internet,
cable TV and now digital phone service company...it all runs on the coax
cable originally designed for a TV signal that comes into the house.
They use no loss splitters to separate the phone modem line, the internet
line and the cable TV lines at the spot where the main cable comes in...
anyway, as i said, i am not quite sure if this would still be considered a
Voice over IP service or not.  The audio quality is better then land line,
and i am extremely picky about audio.  Its louder then regular landline
service, however you do get the echo you were refering to sometimes if you
yell at a telemarketer too loudly.  Also, i find on average on long distance
phone calls, there is less noise on the line compared to tradditional land
lines.  This said though, about once in every 200 phone calls, there is some
kind of packet loss and one must hang up and redial to fix it...but it never
happens in the middle of a conversation, its either there from the
beginning, or not there at all...and only very seldom at that.
The reason we switched was primarily the extreme lower cost of the service
compared to the local telephone provider...we found similar differences as
you did, almost half of the cost from the local telephone provider, and more
then double the options included in the basic package....not to mention
unlimited calling in north america.
Also, another plus in our situation was just one bill for cable tv, high
speed internet and telephone.
No more guessing as to how much the long distance phone bill was going to be
and no more paying for star 69 or call waiting or voice mail or any of the
other more then 10 options that were included...which the phone company
charges around 7 dollars each for.
Oh, and 411 directory assistance was free with the package, we didn't have
to fill out paper work and send it in to the company explaining why we
should be most generously granted free 411 privilages...
We did check out primess and found that their offers weren't as good as the
local guys.  Not only that, people who we know that use primess found the
same as you did with regards to the audio quality sounding compressed and
just a little shy of an average sell phone.
I absolutely detest what they have done to sell phone audio and refused to
have that kind of audio quality on my line, not to mention subjecting others
to the same suffering.
73
Colin, V A6BKX