VOIP Experience

[dodge man]

For 911 reasons the old land lines had to be kept up. The old land lines carried the power for the phones so if the power went off they kept working. I know when the power goes off now they have batteries in the nodes that keep things working. They have to run around with generators and keep things going after a period of time. Don’t ask me what a “node” is, I assume one of those bigger boxes you see along the road. I know one of the things my son does when time is available is open all the phone pedestals and boxes and check for mouse damage and put poison in them while avoiding wasps.

 

[Furu]

Not knowing your location, tough to recommend anything specific, but you should at least contact your cellular supplier to see if they have a "whole house" wifi system available for you. My Verizon cellular internet ran at about 40 mbps (avg). Used it for VOIP, 3 Firesticks, an ipad and a PC. Was pretty satisfied. Certainly enough not to have to shell out $600 for Starlink. Verizon now gives you the modem/router as part of the plan.

As was stated in the original post; your suggestion is not really a workable consideration as the cellular suppliers don't have enough signal to keep the cell phones working let alone data for internet at our current house.
At the build site in Montana we have to drive 10 miles to get a cell signal and we are less than a mile off a major state highway. Of course even interstate I-90 has 10-15 mile dead spots in Montana so it is not a unique problem.

 

[Furu]

For 911 reasons the old land lines had to be kept up. The old land lines carried the power for the phones so if the power went off they kept working. I know when the power goes off now they have batteries in the nodes that keep things working. They have to run around with generators and keep things going after a period of time. Don’t ask me what a “node” is, I assume one of those bigger boxes you see along the road. I know one of the things my son does when time is available is open all the phone pedestals and boxes and check for mouse damage and put poison in them while avoiding wasps.

Sure there are batteries to keep things running (NOT). Even though the fiber ends many miles (over 6 miles) from our house and copper runs for the last 6+ miles when there is a power outage the hard wire phone line fails in less than 30 minutes . This has been the case ever since they started putting in fiber in the area (area defined as further than 6 miles away) This has been true for the last 10 years or so because the batteries are not maintained and there is not a large enough battery bank to keep it going.
Just found out that Centurylink is still "working the issue" so we will be without phone for at least 12 days. So glad I pay for a service that is not delivered by a public regulated utility that rips the consumer off. At least internet at a meg up and half a meg down works.

 

[goeduck]

Man, I feel your pain. I just checked and am at 976 kbps down and 210 kbps up. The phone repair guy says we are in the "dead zone".

Do you get the old dial-up modem sound?

 

[Jrasband]

We use a voip phone with fiber optic and have no complaints, it's great! 1-VoIP | Residential and Business VoIP Provider

 

[lman]

I don't have cell service in my home so I use wifi calling with my cell phone. If your internet and wifi is good enough you wouldn't need to pay extra for voip. I think most cell phones now can use wifi calling. I also have internet in my barn to use wifi calling.

 

[goeduck]

I don't have cell service in my home so I use wifi calling with my cell phone. If your internet and wifi is good enough you wouldn't need to pay extra for voip. I think most cell phones now can use wifi calling. I also have internet in my barn to use wifi calling.

Absolutely. However, my wife likes her old land line phone, so I went with Ooma VOIP (not a POTS line, but she is happy). She is deaf in one ear, so what she wants, is what she gets. She likes her land phone and talks to her friends endlessly. I only use a cell phone for my calls and it seems to be WIFI calling 90% of the time when at home.

 

[Oscivorn]

I’ve been using VoIP for a while and once I got the internet setup right, it’s been solid. Had a few call drops before tweaking some router settings, but nothing major.

 

[duffer]

I've used VOIP for probably 20 years, even back to the beginnings of the "Magic Jack" days. The problem has always been band width. Once the band width increased over the years, the better the reception. Now with fiber it's no different than the old style land lines as far as clarity, no time lag, and automatic unlisted number. The trick (at least for me) was plugging in the VOIP device directly into the router, rather than the PC to get the best performance.