networkingpipeline.com — Cable companies in the U.S. and Canada may be moving to squash one of the biggest threats to their future expansion --- VoIP. A Canadian cable company is already charging customers a premium for using competing VoIP products, and users are complaining that Comcast is purposely degrading the quality of Vonage connections.
Mar 13, 2006 View in Crawl 4
lockedoutMar 14, 2006
I hope she forgives you when she gets charged with a federal crime.**Yes, I know for the most part no one will find out, especially when soo many people "share" their wifi unknowingly because of lack of knowledge, but it is a possibility. :P
aztechclanMar 14, 2006
I'm extremely happy with Comcast here in Portland, OR. Actually, I switched away from Qwest DSL a long time ago when they couldn't keep their DNS servers online for much of the time.ALSO, If I were a dumb user, say a family with kids and a couple computers.. with little or no networking knowledge, it'd be a smart thing to buy the QoS package so that I could use Vonage at the same time the kids torrented the crap outta my connection. This is not an EZ feat for mortal users, and Vonage should be happy that an ISP would offer this.Yeah, Vonage says their router does QoS, but I've never had much luck with it.. Mostly it screws up the rest of my network.
kefsMar 14, 2006
Well.. acuse away henrysmith1.. but a difference in opinion from your own does not equal 'astrosturfing'. Quite a sad way to think actually.
lockedoutMar 14, 2006
Or we could complain about you having a 4 bedroom house to yourself, and not allowing homeless people to live with you. You know, because insuring quality should be free. Try to put yourself in their shoes, why should they "upgrade" their system, because your 3rd party hardware/software, isn't working correctly, and then give it to you for free? Not trying to throw out a personal attack, just trying to show things in a diffrent point of view.
andr3yMar 14, 2006
that is why i am switching to smaller DSL provider
synthetikMar 16, 2006
Looks like you're right. I remember that it used to be something like 3 down 1 up a month. I don't have Xtreme so I only have 60GB. Still it'd be hard to crack that limit.Shaw High-Speed Lite - 10 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed - 60 GigaByte; Shaw High-Speed (with Xtreme-I) - 100 GigaByte; SOHO - 90 GigaByte; SOHO (with Xtreme-I) - 130; Professional - 110 GigaByte; Professional (with Xtreme-I) - 150 GigaByte; Business - 175 GigaByte; Business (with Xtreme-I) - 225 GigaByte (combined download and upload)
seflMar 16, 2006
One note about the VoIP packet prioritization:I have a very good friend who's an acting Tier 2 rep (he just got promoted last week) for Primus TalkBroadband. This has been going on for a couple of months with Shaw, and based on their tests, the packet prioritization service makes very little difference, if any, to the VoIP service...or for that matter, any of the cable services.
lockedoutMar 22, 2006
I guess I'm bad at explaining things, let me make it as simple as possible, so I wont confuse you, or myself. The " quality of service" you'd be paying for is an upgrade that you would get for free if you went for the cable companies service. If you don't pay for it while using 3rd party stuff, then your connection stays the same aka not geared for VoIP. It's not like they actually sabotage your connection once they see a VoIP router / hardware connected to your modem. That would be stupid, and I'm guessing illegal.You don't get anything for free in this world, is what I'm trying to say. And if you expect anyone to pour millions into upgrading their equipment to make way for VoIP and then give you this upgrade for free, you've got to be kidding yourself. In a realistic world, that just isn't going to happen. Again, I ask you to put yourself in their shoes. Let's say you have a High speed connection and were supplying your 4 roommates a wifi connection, and you all share the monthly bill. Now VoIP comes into the picture and roommate #1 Vonage isn't working very well, and he demands that you upgrade your equipment ( which would cost you more money ) without him adding in for the upgrade. In other words you foot the cost for the upgrade while your other roommates share stays the same. Would you honestly think that's fair? That's as simple as I can put it. If you don't see where I'm coming from, then let's just agree to disagree.
reginhildJul 18, 2007
Independent VoIP like Vonage still provides a niche that cable companies can't fill so independent VoIP can't be crushed. 1. There are people who don't own cable. 2. There are people who primarily access the internet through free wireless access points. 3. There are people who travel a lot and use VoIP without tie down to a home system. Independent VoIP will always as a result offer competition to Cable VoIP. If cable were the only source in town their prices would skyrocket just as they did with TV service. Answer to previous comment: No you don't need phone service to get DSL - I did that at my last home.
bluesapphireMar 23, 2008
VoIP is here to stay. Just switch to DSL internet.