Did You Know?
Telephone Over Internet
In the past few years, supplying telephone service over the Internet (also known as Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP) has become a growing business. You’ve probably seen the Vonage ads on TV or in magazines, and Charter is preparing to roll out Charter Telephone locally.Before you fall under the sway of the ads, and sign up for one of these to replace your service from ATT or Verizon, make sure that you know what you are getting into. For instance, right now Vonage doesn’t have any local San Luis Obispo County telephone numbers, so if you sign up with them, you’ll get a Ventura phone number. That means that if anyone here calls you, they pay long distance to Ventura, even if they live next door.
And, since VOIP travels over your broadband Internet connection, the phone service is only as good as that. If your Internet connection is not reliable, your phone service won’t be either. This is especially important if you rely on phone service for an alarm system or for elderly monitoring. In 30 years, I can’t remember more than twice that our wired Pac Bell/SBC/ATT phone service was down. On the other hand, our broadband is up and down weekly.
Remember, sometimes when you are on the bleeding edge of technology, the blood turns out to be your own.
http://www.in-con.com/tips.asp
| Previous Articles | |
| May 2008: | “Free” email accounts |
| Apr 2008: | Mark your calendars! BATTER UP!! |
| Mar 2008: | Label and save your system disks! |
| Feb 2008: | Cell Phone Tricks |
| Jan 2008: | E-card and program born viruses and trojans |
| Dec 2007: | Don’t forward spam, even to us |
| Nov 2007: | Using 1 email account on 2 computers |
| Oct 2007: | Windows Vista |
| Sep 2007: | Special Projects #2- Weather Station and Web Site |
| Aug 2007: | Dirty Computers |
| Jul 2007: | Passwords |
| Jun 2007: | Telephone Over Internet |
| Show All | |