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DEPARTMENTS
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An Alternative Telephone Service
by Fred Green Jr.
NNPA Columnist
Are you looking for an inexpensive alternative to your home telephone needs? The answer may be closer than you think.
The service is sometimes called broadband phone or cable phone. Its proper name is Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP (pronounced VOYP).
As the name implies, you use it the way you have always used your phone but the phone itself works using Internet technology. Instead of the little box on the side of your home, it requires the high speed connection of your cable modem.
The technology isn’t new; in fact the phone companies have been using it for years to lower their cost. They just haven’t been passing the saving on to you. What is new is the use of this technology over CATV lines.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying cable is cheap; but the times they are a changin’ and the communications industry is getting cut throat in its competitiveness.
As stated the big advantage of this technology is cost. When compared to the traditional phone technology, VoIP is about one-third of the cost to build and maintain. Most VoIP plans are under $30 and include unlimited long distance within the continental U.S.
Many also have attractive pricing for overseas calls as well. Similar plans using traditional technology cost upwards of $60.
Assuming you haven’t been living under a rock for the past five years, you have probably noticed a dizzying array of services being offered over your cable lines. Advancement in technology has seen cable develop as the perfect platform for service delivery.
Think of it like water. If you want more water coming to your home, one of two things has to happen. 1) You have to increase the water pressure so more water comes out of the smaller pipes. 2) You have to increase the size of the pipes.
Your basic telephony technology is more than 100 years old. To improve capacity, the only answer was to run more wires. Even though the wires were going to the same community, technology dictated the only way to service additional homes was to run more lines (a lot of small pipes). Even with the advent of CATV, technology had not advanced beyond that problem.
Until now.
To make cable TV work a much thinker and differently designed wire had to be used, called coaxial cable or coax for short (a very large pipe). It could transmit a lot of information (which is what a TV signal is) but it could only send signal in one direction. So if the cable went out, no one at the cable company would know about it unless the customer called to complain, thus rendering CATV useless for telephones.
Flash forward 100 years; the development of digital communications has allowed for a lot more information to be sent over wires, which is what lead to dial-up Internet service. When this technology was combined with the computer processor, the one-way transmission issue of the cable industry was solved. This has lead to VoIP. Now both your phone company and your cable company find themselves offering the same services to the same customers.
The cable industry does have the trump card, since its systems were originally designed to send (and now receive) more information (the larger pipe).
So which do you choose, traditional phone service or VoIP? Why?
The deciding factor is Internet service. If you already have cable modem service, the saving over your traditional telephone could be considerable.
The only draw back is the reliability of the cable service in your area. Simply stated, with VoIP if your cable services go out, so could your Internet and phone services.
On the other hand, keeping your traditional phone service probably means your phone company is raking you over the coals once a month. When added to the additional incentives your cable company would offer you to switch, you could be giving up a substantial savings.
But if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. One hundred years of traditional telephone is a good indication that they have worked all the bugs out.
The major players in VoIP are names you are probably familiar with: AT&T, Comcast and a newer player, Vonage.
All three are up and running and each is offering various enhancements over standard telephone features, such as the ability to check your phone messages while checking your e-mail.
The real question is does your desire to save money out weigh your fear of trying something new? That’s a question you must answer.
Fred Green Jr., NNPA’s technology writer, is technical training specialist for a national communications company.
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