Going back to landlines?

[ChriswUfGator]

How many of you use voip or your cell phones exclusively around here, and have you had any issues?

I can't figure out if I'm being picky, or maybe just unlucky? Cell service in this city sucks generally, that's over the three different providers I've used thinking the next one would be better. Internet connections, while better, are still unreliable if you expect it to work all the time without a fuss. At work we ended up getting both at&t and comcast installed simultaneously with a load balancing router, and since they each conk out and fail at different times the combination of the two has finally proven reliable. Of course at double the cost. The comcast tech they sent out actually told us to do that, saying as long as they're around 90% uptime they consider it acceptable, it doesn't bother them that the 10% always happens in the middle of something. Prior to going to duplicate services, there were a couple days every month where there were problems, total network failures at comcast's switches, hub, etc., you call the number and they tell you it's an areawide outage and you just have to wait. It then got exponentially worse with all the road construction. You can get dedicated T1/2/3 trunk lines from either comcast or at&t, where they guarantee 100% uptime or it's fixed in an hour, but they're expensive and getting two different services for redundancy was cheaper with a similar result. That comcast tech deserves a raise, but will probably get fired for telling the truth when he could be talking people into something more expensive.

Voip has proven to be a headache, some of it's tied to the broadband providers' network issues, and some of it's just the limitations of the technology. When it works, it's great because it's cheap. But even when the internet connections are working, the call quality can still suck, especially at certain times of the day from network congestion. The computer geek who does the networking stuff at work explained to me that voip sound quality will usually be slightly worse due to compression, even using the least compressed codec (g711) most of the services can run. The voip protocol compresses the data for transmitting, and then after that the broadband provider whose network it travels over also compresses and shapes their network traffic at their level, so you basically have stacked layers of quality loss. I have the same issues at work and at home, although at home you barely notice them because I don't spend as much time on the phone, that and it's not as embarrassing having to call your mom and dad back when it cuts out like it is at work.

I threw in the towel this week and got landlines, something I haven't had in years. It seems like a step back in time, since voip was supposed to be better. But it wasn't better, and I'm sick of the quality issues. Regular phone lines just plain work. The voip issues were mostly minor irritations that grow into big irritations after you've put up with them long enough. The silver lining is the cost difference between real phone lines and what we were already paying for voip was minimal.

I was having dinner last night at my friend's house and one of the other guests was some kind of banker over at merrill on the southside, he was saying they'd just finished switching over to voip to save money and that it sucks, he's always getting disconnected or people can't hear him. And that's a huge company that has its own fiber hub and fulltime IT staff onsite, even they can't get it to work right.

So what does everybody use, and for those of you on voip do you find it sucks?

[Josh]

Cell phone only; AT&T. I can count the number of places I have signal issues with on one hand, and they're all pretty much indoors.

[KenFSU]

Chris, we use Comcast for both our Internet and our phones at the office. We have AT&T as a backup in the event that our Comcast goes down, but we haven't needed it in the last two years. I ditched land lines for personal use years ago. I use Verizon, and can count the times I've dropped signal over the years on one hand.

[Dog Walker]

No problems with Verizon's cellphone coverage anywhere.  My brother uses AT&T for his iPhone and has signal problems at his house in Atlantic Beach and several other spots in town especially Riverside.

We use Comcast for landlines (voice & fax) and Internet.  Have been down for a couple of hours twice in the past year.

[JayBird]

AT&T cell service works great for me, few dead zones as I drive around city (like passing NASJAX on 17, which can be expected) but even works in DT elevators which impresses me. We have the same AT&T/Comcast relationship and don't have any issues. Switched over about 18 months ago and think we've had one time the system went down during regular work hours.  And I no longer have a house phone at home, no need and no telemarketers!

[ChriswUfGator]

Well this seems to be pretty much a unanimous vote for Verizon, that's the only big carrier I haven't tried yet. I've had AT&T Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile, and with all 3 of those I can barely finish a call without it dropping or acting up, and I had issues with signal indoors, and still have that problem with T-Mobile. I have to see how long I have left with them, I'll switch to Verizon next. On the VOIP, I guess it must just be me and bad luck then, everybody seems happy with theirs. Go figure.

[Lunican]

I've found Verizon to be the most reliable carrier by FAR. I had them for many years and don't know if I ever had a dropped call. But they are also the most expensive so I decided to cancel them and just rely on my cell phone less.

For work I use VOIP which is great, but it is part of a very large phone system (tens of thousands) operating over a dedicated network and it is very reliable. In this scenario, the phones, the network, and the servers can all be optimized to work properly.

[Lunican]

But yes, if you are taking business calls via cell phone I would definitely recommend Verizon over any other carrier.

[Debbie Thompson]

I never had a problem with T-Mobile.  Sprint, not so much.  Dropped calls.  I guess it depends on your area of town and where the towers are.  We've maintained an AT&T land line since 1971, although we just went to Comcast, only because it was part of a bundle.   

As for reliability of a land line, I would only say this.  During Hurricane Andrew, we spoke to my Uncle Jessie in Perrine.  The shingles of his roof had been blown off.  He was sitting on his couch, ankle deep in water, the storm winds literally still raging outside his modest home, but his land line was working.  We were talking to him on it.  That, my friends, may be the definition of reliability.

[spuwho]

The key item to note here is that you have choice.

When the Feds ruled that AT&T had completed the network and later ruled them to be a monopoly, it was sometime before choices became more prevalent.

Today you have many choices for voice and data services at different levels of quality and price points.

What people don't know is that AT&T (and the remaining CLEC's) simply carry "land line" service in an analog form over copper until it reaches the nearest fiber hut or central office. There it is converted to a digital form and carried over their IP network to its intended destination. So while many may rue voice over IP, all analog traffic today is carried over the carriers IP network. Many companies that have embraced VoIP do so with a mixed history of capability and deployment quality. Since most of corporate america relies on voice for conferencing global staff, their needs are somewhat not as strenuous as the guy standing in a foot of water during a hurricane.

Even AT&T's u-Verse is just digital voice/data/video over fiber until it is modulated over a bonded set of copper pairs when it comes into your house.

As the wireless carriers move to LTE, many of them will be dropping dedicated channels in their spectrum for voice calls and will be moving to voice over LTE. This simply means they will be treating all calls as data and stop simulating analog voice switching technology developed by Bell Labs in the 50's.

Pity Verizon FIOS customers. Once you agree to take on FIOS fiber to the home, they come out and rip out your analog copper service permanently. (unless you maintain an analog alarm for your house) So if you decide you don't like FIOS anymore for your voice piece, there is no going back.

Consumer VoIP is still much to techie, has poor 911 support in many cases and requires infrequent user intervention. Being the least regulated, it is inexpensive.

Today I can call almost all toll free numbers using Skype or my VoIP service, I can spend hours and hours on conference calls and never worry about billing.

[mbwright]

AT&T cell service is poor in many parts of Tallahassee.  I am on Comcast, but for voice data and tv, but am not very happy with the phone service.  It seems that when there is a power outage, it impacts data and voice.  It also goes out too frequently for my taste.  Since there are no guarantees, you are stuck.   

[Debbie Thompson]

Well, since about the only calls I get on my "land line" with Comcast are marketing calls I don't want, I'm OK with it going out a lot.  Now, if I need to dial 911 and it's out, I may feel differently!

[Lunican]

^ You can use any old cell phone (even without a sim card) to dial 911.

[Timkin]

I use AT&T for cell service.   The only time I have trouble with it is, for whatever reason, crossing a bridge.   Also have AT&T U-verse for internet/TV/Phone. Rarely use the land line.   U-verse has worked well.

I really can't complain about the cell service, although I do recall having Verizon service for my last company Cell Service and I do not recall going anywhere I could not get service with Verizon. Even over a bridge.