Then there’s SBC…
July 11, 2005 by Mike Wendland
The VoIP SunRocket service has been out for more than six hours now. Even the SunRocket Web site is down more than it’s up.
So… hat in hand… I called SBC, my regional phone company, to confess that I made a horrible mistake in disconnecting my landline two weeks ago and to ask them to take me back.
They did - for a $41 reconnect fee.
Got my old number back, too.
updateService from SunRocket came back around 8 p.m. - a more than 8 hour outage.
Not everything new is perfect. Much as I love my cordless phones, I keep a couple of the old plug-in types. The only time it didn?t help was when the grid when down a couple of years ago. Normal power outages, I can drag one out, plug it in, and I?m still connected to the world.
Hang in there, Mike. All wives have a God-given right to say ?I told you so.? Doesn?t mean we love you any less.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they some kind of diagnosis and estimated time of repair they could share. It’s very disconcerting to have your phone service just ‘hanging’ like it is now.
Mike W - at least you didn’t port over your old phone number like I did. If I do go back to SBC it’ll probably mean the agony of either getting a new number or trying to fight Sunrocket for my old one back.
Ugh.
I took the leap of faith and went with Vonage 2 months ago and ported my home phone. Great Move!! VOIP is awesome. I have not experienced any bandwith issues on my home PC’s or the VOIP. Sorry you are having trouble. Maybe the problem is not with VOIP, but with your choice of companies. I have never heard of Sunrocket. Why did you choose them?
I would second Lee’s comment, except that next month will be TWO YEARS since I ported my Qwest number to Vonage, and I would never go back. I figured I’ve saved about $500 in two years and get cool features to boot (web management of settings and voicemail, etc.). Outages are rare and short and inconsequential since you set a ‘backup’ number to have your calls go to in event of any outage. Occasionally my cell phone will ring the call when the home phone has not rung, but it’s very rare, and not really a big deal.
VoIP *IS* ready for primetime, you just chose a bad provider, which is going to suffer further from the bad publicity they’re getting through you. I wonder if you even considered Vonage when you went VoIP?
Note: Comcast in my area has had some connectivity issues in the past few months which has caused my iChat to drop out for 10 seconds occasionally, and the Vonage also blacks out, but I can’t blame them. I am working with Comcast to find the problem.
Mike,
Why not just use your wireless phone for back-up? You can probably set you Sunrocket ring that phone at the same time as you VoIP. Except of course, if their whole system was down.
With my provider, I’ve only had one instance where the WHOLE system was down. Frankly, it wasn’t worth the cost to have the landline as a backup… as I have reduced my home telephone expenses by nearly 75 - 80%.
Finally… the issue I am watching is 911 and e911 integration into VoIP - and how that will impact cost. Will it loose it’s advantage?
I have been using Vonage since the big “move to Florida.” One of the things that sold me on their service, was the fact that if there was a network problem, your calls could be re-routed to another number — so I use my cell phone.
Plus, you can do thins like “simul-ring” which will ring a second number at the same time it rings your home number. (Also it can forward to a second number after so many seconds if not answered.) This is handy when I am away, and want my home calls to ring to my cell as well.
Hate to say this Mike, but I must agree, you just picked the wrong VoIP provider!
Dittto the vonage comments. All of my business linees start with vonage. I’ve not had one outage that was caused by vonage. One router freeze after a thunderstorm and one dropout of the t1 line to the building caused by the landlord mistiming changing ip providers for the t1 lines. Both times, the alternate worked just fine.
Speak of the devil.. here’s a cnet article stating that Vonage came out on top in a comprehensive study of 6 major VOIP providers (of which SunRocket is not included).
The conclusion? Vonage rated highest at 80/100 in comparison to landline service. AT&T came out on top in terms of call quality.
I think they key to VOIP’s success is setting up a better distributed network of servers, similar to what Akamai does. With phones, people have come to expect that things will “just work.” Outages and dropped calls are the biggest complaint and will need to be addressed for voip to replace landlines.
Broadvision (www.broadvision.com) is also a very good VOIP provider. $24.95 a month gets you unlimited local, long distance, and about 30 countries outside of the US (including Ireland and Australia) unlimited calling. I think it’s wonderful service. I see now that you can buy telephone adapters without having to get vonage, which irritated me when i wanted to just buy a plain old adapter, not one that I had to use with a certain provider.
Welcome back to SBC. The problem with VOIP technology is that it relys on your internet connection. What people dont relize is why a 1.5 MPS T1 line costs over $500 a month vs a 3-5 MBS cable/DSL connection. The reason they can offer that much speed for such a small price on the Cable/DSL front is that it is NOT a guarenteed connection. Your T1 is monitored and maintained and guarenteed to be up 99.99% of the time. So internet connection is problem 1. Add to that a slew of router/backbone/server issues with the internet in general and you have created a service that stands the chance of not being there when you need it. When I need to contact 911, I want to hear a dialtone and not dead air. I am a technology buff but VOIP just isnt there yet.
Some things need to be reliable and your land line is just that.
I think IM meant BroadVoice.com and not Broadvision - which is a software site. Well, stay FAAAAAR away from Broadvoice. All you have to do is go to the Broadvoice user group at Voxilla.com and if you think the 8 hour outage at Sunrocket was bad - then consider how bad a 2 WEEK outage would have been - and thats what happened with BV last month. All the while the call quality with Broadvoice sucked and their customer support was painful and sometimes non-existent.
I got flak too from my wife and now I have switched to VoxBy.com - which has E911 and LNP. The call quality has been pretty good so far. More comments on other providers at Voxilla.com
I always tell people that VOIP connections are as good as Mobile phone connections with dropped calls and static - dont replace your land line unless you have a backup.
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Mike, I’ve had Vonage for over a year and love it, but in an effort to reduce costs, I tried transfering to sunrocket. Nothing but problems. Dropped calls, echoes, voip taking down my internet connection…etc. I’m going back to vonage and begging for my old number back. Although I may take their 500 minute package instead of the unlimited, because I’m typically right around 500 minutes, so I’ll still save $5-$10 per month over the unlimted, even if I go a little over. SunRocket was just a bad choice for a provider.