The New York Times’ Roy Furchgott has this good recap and review of the VoIP phones that have hit the market over the past year. One of the biggest drawbacks to widepsread acceptance of stand-alone VoIP services such as Skype and Vonage is the inability to use the services much as you would traditional landline voice options.
With Skype, in particular, being tethered to a computer was just a non-starter for all but the techies.
But as modern as the service seems, the VoIP phone gear has been as fashion-oriented as an avocado-green rotary phone — and about four times as large. Until recently, the best you could hope for was an “operators standing by” headset and microphone, which had to be tethered to a computer, which was itself tethered to a router.
Furchgott takes a look at two models in particular: Netgear SPH101 for Skype ( and the UT Starcom F1000 series for Vonage. He likes them both, although he notes their limitations — relatively high prices, failure to work during power outages and complications with e911.
His bottom-line is that because of the power and e911 issues, they make great second phone lines. In a recommendation bound to drive the incumbent telcos up the wall, Furchgott advises consumers to get rid of all their traditional phone line add-ons such as voice mail, call waiting and so forth to pay for these VoIP services and phones.
If you stripped frills from your landline, like message service, caller ID, call forwarding and other features, the savings may be far greater than the cost of VoIP service. VoIP offers all of those frills and more at no additional cost.
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:44 AM|Comments(0)
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