I thought I would write about my experience with Voice Over
Internet Phone service that is becoming so popular with high speed
DSL or broad band cable users.  I am also cross posting this
because I have seen it discussed on other lists.

     Although, after a trial test, I decided against using it, I
am still not against it.  I think you should know the particulars,
however, about voice over internet phone service before getting
into it, so here is my opinion.  Everybody has one, you know?

     I used Lingo.  This company has excellent customer service,
and frankly, I was half tempted to continue using their service.
To sign up, or to read more about their services, go to their
website at:

www.lingo.com

Yes, there are becoming more and more voice over services so
lingo isn't the only one.  This just happens to be the one I was
the most impressed with during my research on voice over services.
so take it for what it is worth.  I'm not charging you.

     Lingo offers free service to all 50 states and 31 countries.
Not bad.  This included free local service as well.  I should be
using the word "unlimited" instead of free because it isn't free.
You can start with just $7.50 per month service and, as I did,
shoot for the 20 dollar unlimited monthly services that covers,
local, all of North America, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and
31 other countries, mostly in Europe and all of the UK.  I have
friends in the UK so that was nice.

     There are a load of special features with Lingo which are
very attractive.  Many of these have to do with voice mail, plus
you get a lot of other services, including call waiting, three way
calling, 8 digital speed dial, call blocking, and really, just
about everything else, plus a whole lot more, that you normally
get in a bundle for five times the price from your local carrier.
For example, to get the same basic service, minus the 31
countries, I pay 75 dollars a month.  This includes unlimited long
distance for the United States, Canada, and 5 cents a minute for
all of the UK.  In short, I would have saved 50 dollars a month by
switching to Lingo.  Plus, I could have had a total of three phone
numbers.  It is 5 dollars extra per new phone number.  Custom
ringing is also available.  In fact, there are so many attractive
features with Lingo, you'll just have to go there to read about
them all.

     So, why didn't I keep the service?  I'm getting to that so
don't get ahead of me.

     The nice thing about Lingo is that you can use two levels of
voice transmission quality.  Normal and high quality.  The normal
is set to 30 KB per second for audio transmissions and the high
level is 90 KB per second.  Absolutely everything is controlled
through their control panel on their website and it is very speech
friendly.  So, you really couldn't ask for much more.  You can
turn features off and on from the website, raise and lower the
quality, and get all the friendly tech support you want 24 hours a
day and all this for 20 dollars a month.  So what's the catch, you
ask?

     First, I wasn't satisfied with the quality of the voice over.
At times it was perfect.  sometimes I would either hear my own
voice echoing on the line or the person I was talking to
complained about their voice echoing.  You can often get around
this annoying problem by hanging up and redialing but there is no
guarantee.

     Secondly, although you are not limited to a single phone,
that's what comes easiest.  You can, using the wiring to your
other extensions throughout the house, connect additional phones
but you have to disconnect the wiring from your junction box
where the phones normally make connections.  This way there is no
voltage conflict between the voice over system and the regular
phone lines.  Be sure and jumper your wires, however, or you'll
end up with a dead line or phone.

     I used another way.  I connected a wireless, or cordless,
phone system to my voice over service.  This is accomplish, by the
way, I mean the voice over service, by connecting an adapter
between your high speed modem and your router, if you are running
a multiple computer network as I am, or by just connecting the
adapter before the modem if you have no router in the line.
Apparently, there are a couple of other ways of making the
adapter work, too, but those are the two basic ways.  So, the
adapter, once in the line, has a wire that simply plugs into your
current telephone and, bingo, you have voice over.  So it is
pretty simple.  My cordless phone base was, therefore, plugged
into the voice over adapter and every cordless phone on that
system now had voice over throughout my house with no extra
wiring.  Not too bad.  Again, you can accomplish the same thing
using hard wire by using the wiring already installed to your
extensions phone but you should disconnect the wires from the drop
box on the back of the house, or wherever it is, if you are in an
apartment building.

     The quality definitely increased by jumping to the 90 KB per
second higher setting but the difference, after all the tests I
ran, sounded more like speech compression improvement rather than
over all signal strength.  If you have a tape recorder, for
example, with speech enhancement or compression, it is the audio
that is boosted and it makes it sound louder to the human ear.
That's what the high quality voice over signal sounded like.

     As I said, over all, it worked and worked pretty well.  My
work, however, causes me to be on the phone, and often long
distance, for many hours a day.  Hearing the person well makes a
big difference to me.  I did, on the other hand, talk to a lady
who is hard of hearing and uses not only two hearing aids, but a
special device that connects to the phone to assist her even more.
She could hear me just fine and her voice, although not what I was
used to hearing, was good.

     So, over all, I gave Lingo a "Good" rating.  Many times, as
previously mentioned, it was as good as a normal long distance
service while at other times it wasn't.  It was the other times
that made me decide to return the adapter and skip it all
together.  The bottom line?  Voice over internet phone is one step
above cell phones, in my opinion.  This may be due to my
perfectionists attitude when it comes to overall audio quality
but it mostly has to do with what I do for a living in
relationship to phone and voice quality.  I really wrestled with
returning the adapter, however, because 50 dollars a month savings
is pretty good, if you ask me, and I loved all the extra call
forwarding, voice mail, and multiple phone number features.

     with Lingo, and I suppose all the other voice over services,
you also have to have a local service for emergency calls because
you cannot, for some unknown reason, just dial 9 11 as you
normally would.  There is another emergency service, of some type,
which has to be in your county before voice over can be
connected.  At least, Lingo told me back in December I would have
to wait because this was an FCC new ruling.

     concerning dial directory assistance, you can dial up one of
the toll free long distance services.

     so, the moral of the story?  Voice over, based upon my
experience, is a trade off in some areas and a plus in others.  If
you don't mind above average cell phone long distance audio, it is
great.  If audio quality is important to you, you might think
twice.  You couldn't ask for much better customer service with
Lingo.  They give you 30 days free, 14 days to return the adapter
with money back, and if other sign up because of you, you get 25
dollars applied to your bill.  By the way, most local calls seemed
to be just about normal but people who knew I was using it,
definitely could tell because, as I said, it sounded more like a
souped up cell phone signal to them.  I think, if I didn't have so
many others using my phone, my daughter, my wife, my
grandchildren, and the like, I would have considered keeping the
service.  I have a hard enough time understand 2 and 6 year old
kids anyhow.  The plus, as I see it, is that so many people
calling now a days are already using cell phone, so they have
lousy signals to begin with, they might never notice the
difference of the voice over application.  Adding, however, your
diminished signal quality to their's, makes it worse.

     well, that's one man's opinion.  Now I suppose somebody will
reply to this review and tell me I am crazy and that I should have
tried their voice over company because their signals are fine.
As Tennessee Ernie Ford used to say, God bless your pea picking
heart.  Try to remember, this is just my opinion based upon one
company.  Besides, I thought this information might be helpful to
some.

     One more thing.  No, if you use a dial up service, voice over
internet phone won't work. You need DSL or cable internet service
and preferably cable.  Note.  Some cable services provide higher
and lower broad band speeds so ask first.  The less band width you
have, the worse it will be.  No, I could not tell a single
difference on my computer with the voice over internet phone when
it was in service but you might notice a difference in speed if
downloading a 100 gig file or when trying to load large
pornography pictures, grin.

Phil.


Has He Ever Crossed Your Mind?
www.SafePlaceFellowship.com