[Cialug]voip

[Zachary Kotlarek]

On Dec 9, 2007, at 12:37 PM, Jeffrey Ollie wrote:

> On 12/5/07, Zachary Kotlarek <zach at kotlarek.com> wrote:
>>
>> But let's
>> not pretend that the phone company provides some magically  
>> reliability
>> that you couldn't emulate with your own equipment.
>
> If the telco or the cable company lose power there's nothing that you
> can install at your home that's going to make your phone calls go
> through.

Well, for one thing I could have a link from each. The cheapest naked  
DSL plan cable plan is comparable to what you're paying for dial tone  
service (keep in mind that naked DSL saves about $10/month in taxes  
and fees), so it's not out of the question as a backup link, even for  
residential use. Plus it provides redundancy for your data connection,  
which may have some value in and of itself.

And if you're willing to spend the money there are satellite and other  
wireless Internet links available. The latency would be high, but if  
someone positions a backhoe in your satellite line-of-site you've  
probably got bigger problems than a lack of connectivity.

> The quesion is then, who are you going to trust to keep
> their systems up and running when the power goes out?  My bet is on
> the telco - they've been in the business longer and their systems are
> structured in such a way that makes it easier for them.

And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice. I'm just saying that  
while the telco might be better than the cable co, they aren't doing  
anything particularly special, and paying them $30/month to get a dial  
tone isn't the only way to get economical, fault-tolerant voice links.

	Zach
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 1682 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://cialug.org/pipermail/cialug/attachments/20071209/3e2fccfe/smime.bin