Do you have or would you consider Digital Phone??

[lago]

Time Warner has finally wired the neighborhood for cable. Now I can dump the 26.4K dial-up. They are offering a package of Digital Cable, high-speed broadband, and Digital Phone for $130/month. I am currently paying $61 for DirecTV and $58 for phone/dialup, for a total of $119.

Not knowing how long Digital phone has been available, I am reluctant to be on the cutting edge. TW does tell you up-front that phone service will not be available in the event of a power failure since it goes thru a modem before being connected to your internal phone lines. Digital cable doesn’t offer anything that I really want as compared to the standard cable package except for the Military Channel. They are also offering a package with broadband at $14.99/6 months along with standard cable. Haven’t called yet to find out with the price will be after that but that is another option I am looking at.

Are there any forum members that have digital phone or know of someone that does. If so, what have you experienced or heard?

TIA

Ken

[jziegler]

Their digital phone, I beleive, is the same as VoIP (Voice over IP) or internet phone. I, along with several others here, have it through various companies. I have Vonage. It works well, but there are downsides to it over a regular phone, which is why I still have one regular line to the house. If your power goes out, your phones will stop working, unless you setup a backup for the cable modem, the phone router (the box the phone plugs into) and usually a data router. Of course, even a small computer type UPS will power these low power devices for some time.

911 services might not be quite the same as a regular phone, although they should be available by now. They may connect you to a different call center than a regular phone line.

I would suggest checking the price of getting their cable modem and getting VoIP through Vonage or one of the others. It might be cheaper than getting the big package from the cable company. Vonage is currently $25 / month for unlimited or $15 / month for 500 minutes.

Jim

[Alex Franke]

Digital phone = VoIP.

I've been speculative with home phone service lately and it got me in trouble when SunRocket.com went belly up. (See this thread.) But overall I love the VoIP services. Currently I'm with Net2Phone because they honored SunRocket contracts, and I've been very happy.

Correct that 911 works differently, and that power outages may affect the phone. (You can also consider getting a UPS for your router, VoIP adapter & modem to protect against this.)

Personally, I will rely on the cell phone if the power goes out.

Another cool service you might want to take a look at is GrandCentral (recently purchased by Google). You get a phone number & voicemail that you can keep forever and have it ring/forward (or whatever) to any other numbers you want given certain rules. So, for my closest friends, my GrandCentral number will ring my cell phone, home phone (except working hours) and business phone all at the same time. If I'm on my home phone and need to go somewhere, I can transfer the call to my cell phone and just keep talking. If you ever change home phone number or jobs, for example, you can just change your forwarding options.

[LinuxRandal]

What features do you have on your regular phone?

I have a plain Jane phone line. No caller ID, call waiting, etc... So for me, it would cost me more to have it, and not use it any differently.

[maxparot]

I have a digital (VOIP) phone and have no problems with the service.
As in your case my Cable provider offers a package with TV, internet and phone. I found using then for TV and internet with a separate provider for phone to be a few bucks cheaper. In my case my internet service is paid by my wifes employer. I'm now considering switching to Dishnetwork for my TV which will lower the cost a bit further.

[Russianwolf]

voip is nice if you've got the bandwidth to get good sound quality. We had sunrocket until they went bust and just switched back to landline due to problems with other companies. Through a cable modem we had small problems with the quality, I don't want to think about how it would be with DSL.

As a side not. Right before laying me off, I switched my company from landline to VOIP (the difference being this is a corporate type account through a T1 line). In this case the quality was outstanding and one of the features that made the deal was if we lost power, I made a call and every phone was forwarded to the person's cell phone. Less than 5 minutes of down time. That's a nice feature when you're in a professional service environment.

[justaguy]

Comcast keeps trying sending ads trying to get me to convert to the Comcast phone offering. I keep telling them that I got a cable modem in July 1997. Since then my cable internet service has been down for more than 1 day 19 times. During the same duration my POTS (Plain Old Telephone) service has been down once.

I'll wait a bit longer before converting to a digital phones.

YMMV

[crokett]

Mike,

I have DSL and my VoIP works just fine.

I would get the cable company's cable modem and then look hard at another company's VoIP. I have vonage and I am happy with it.

[cwsmith]

I just quickly scanned the other replies, so I hope I didn't miss anything... but, for what I read, I agree with.

I got the Time Warner 3-in-1 service last year (digital cable television/phone/Road Runner ISP).

The cable's okay, and the extra channels are nice. With double the channels, there's still slip pickens for quality stuff to watch (for my taste anyway). I still gravitate to TCM and History. But, occasionally the Military Channel has something of interests as does the DIY and DiscoveryHome channels.

The phone is a bit upsetting at times. In 30 years at this house I've never lost the phone service, until I switched to TW. It's been out at least six times in the past year. I went out and bought a "GoPhone" cellular, just for emergencies. My old service (MCI) provided an answering system, TW charges an additional $5 a month for that.

The Help desk stinks. They're good for scheduling a service call and that's about their limit.

The Road Runner is great, I like the high speed. But, I have a real problem with using the RR interface, anti-virus controls, firewall, e-mail, etc. I'm one of the original AOL users and I guess I've been spoiled. I know there are plenty of critics of AOL, but they do a complete job of installation and safety. AOL is just simple, completely packaged, and has rock-solid help.

With Road Runner, they just hooked it up and walked out. No instructions, no setup, no virus protection, nothing! When I called the Help Desk, they said, "Oh, you have to set that all up yourself, here's a link to download whatever your need." When I asked if there wasn't some form of written instruction or possibly a handout, they just laughed. So, I downloaded and installed their stuff, it totally screwed up my computer. I couldn't pull up any web-based graphics, even on the MS News site. I spent over an hour trying to resolve the problem with TW's online assistance. Talked to three different technicians and finally their remedy was to have me go back and disable their own anti-virus and firewall software.... like "DUH".

So, I still have the RR high speed connection but removed all their other garbage. I then had to re-install AOL and went back "free" subscriber. I no longer have 24/7 tech assistance by phone (that's only for paid subscribers), but I prefer their packaged home page, and anti-virus, spam protection, mail, etc.

The only other problem I have with TW, is that darned Motorola cable modem. I doubt that any normal person would have a problem with it, but for me, it's "RF" noisey. I'm on my second one, and it emits far more RF energy than it should, which causes problems with my Ham Radio equipment.

CWS

[scorrpio]

Signed up for Optimum triple-play (TV, Internet, Phone) when I moved, and haven't looked back since. Only outage I had once, tech showed up next day, found loose cable, no problem since. For what's it worth, both me and my wife have cell phones if needed.

From what I was able to gather, Comcast sucks. And it tends to be the only choice in many areas, alternative being the (reportedly) finicky satellite, so Comcast got real obnoxious on its near-monopoly status. Over here, Verizon FIOS keeps Cablevision(Optimum) on a VERY hot plate.