VoIP phones use the Internet to make and receive phone calls. While this saves you a great deal of money each month, it does come with its price: if your Internet access goes out, your phone won’t work.
So, what should you do? I have Vonage and I do like saving money. However, my high speed Internet access is a bit spotty. I’d say that my access goes down at least two or three times a month. Normally, these outages only last for a few minutes but it’s still a concern. What if I miss an important call? What if there’s an emergency and I need to dial 911?
In addition to cable company outages affecting Internet access, power outages also affect VoIP phones. If the power goes out, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the cable is out too - but the cable modem requires power as does the VoIP router. Without these pieces of equipment powered on and working, the VoIP phone doesn’t work.
To top it off, even if the cable Internet access was rock solid and the power never went out, modems and routers need to be rebooted from time to time. At least several times a week, my Internet connection will simply sputter and go out. According to the cable modem, I’m “online” but according to reality, I can’t check my e-mail, surf the Internet, or use my VoIP phone until I reboot both my modem and wireless router.
So far, I haven’t had any problems with the Vonage system going down though I suppose that’s possible too. If their system is interrupted, it would make sense that my phone wouldn’t work during the interruption.
All of this adds up to fairly unreliable phone service. Each week, my VoIP phone is temporarily not working. Vonage has a feature that helps with this - if you have a second phone such as a cell phone. When the Internet goes down or some other disruption takes place, Vonage will forward your calls to an alternate number, such as your cell phone. Simply log into your Vonage account and go to the Features tab. Find the Network Availability area and enter in the phone number that you would like your phone calls to be forwarded to in the case of a service interruption.
Until VoIP becomes more reliable, it’s smart to maintain either a single land line or at least have a cell phone available as a backup.
Celeste Stewart | August 14th, 2008
You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
