aemeijers wrote:
On 8/10/2011 8:20 PM, HeyBub wrote:
frank1492 wrote:
Any ideas? I won't have my phone service restored until Aug. 20 due
to the strike. Have checked box connections and checked the ground.
All I hear on my phones is a slight hiss. Verizon says the line is
OK. Have tried phones directly from the box and also no dial tone.
If you have no clue, is there a forum that is particularly good
at this type of issue?
Thank you!
Frank

If you can't get a dial tone at the DMARC (the box outside that
connects the 'phone company's lines to your house wiring), it's
definitely a TELCO problem.

As to what caused it, it could be anything from moisture in a
terminal box to union sabotage.

With Vonage - and others - you can get a box that plugs into your
network router. The other side of the box is a telephone jack. That
jack acts EXACTLY like a TELCO trunk line (except it's cheaper, you
get all the add-on stuff for free, and all the long distance you can
eat). Beat feet down to Best Buy, Walmart, and other places and pick up
the Vonage starter kit (about $20). Plug it in and you're good to go.

If you currently have call forwarding from your Telco, contact them
and they can forward all your calls to your new Vonage number.



Only works worth a damn if you have a real good internet connection.
VOIP and data do not play nice together.

Agreed, sort of. IF you do have a good internet connection, voice and data
DO play well together. We've had both our VoIP lines in use while one of the
computers on the network was engaged in a massive download with no
degradation of voice quality. 'Course we have a really peppy internet
connection.


Might be worth trying, to see if it is 'good enough' for your needs,
but it isn't a real phone line.

Correct. VoIP is NOT a "real" 'phone line. In many respects it's better.

First, is the price: $19.95 (or thereabouts) per month. Period. No sales
tax, Al Gore tax, Spanish-American War tax, excise tax, Universal Access
Fee, blah-blah-blah.

Second - and this is tied to the first - no charge for the add-on features:
call waiting, caller-id, call-forwarding, three-way calling, touch-tone
capability, princess-phone rental, etc.

Third, you get all the long-distance you want. At three cents/minute our
small business ran up about $200/month in LD charges. All that went away
with our VoIP connection.

Fourth, you get to pick the area code you want. If you live in Floating
Stick, Oklahoma and all your relatives live on Cape Code, you can get a 508
area code so when they call you, to them it is a local call.

There are some downsides. (Let me think...)

Ah, yes. If you lose power or your network connection, you are deaf and
dumb. Power and internet interruptions are more common than land-line
failure. In this event, we fall back on a cell-phone.

I use VOIP via a dial-around for
overseas calls, and at work, we have multiple VOIP connections to
sandbox. Quality of call often sucks.

Just sayin'

You're right. The quality of a call might be sub-par (we've never had that
happen). YMMV.