I like to know what type of experices others have had Charter phone service and Charter High-Speed internet. We are going to leave SBC due to fact that the can not fix cross wire in theier system. BTW we are in Saint Louis
Thanks for all the help
jim
Jim
Be aware that cable phone service is dependent on electric power for continuity of service. When you loose electric power you will be without telephone service. If you put your home equipment on an Uninterruptible Power Supply, or UPS, then your phone will work for as long as the UPS battery and the batteries in your cable companies line amplifiers hold out. Once the line amplifiers' batteries go dead then there is nothing that you can do to keep your telephone service working. You should plan to have some sort of back up telephone service. Cell phones may serve if the cell sites near your home have long duration batteries or emergency generators. Keeping one telephone line with the baby bell carrier is another way to assure service. POTS, or plain old telephone service, is powered by battery current over the copper wires from the exchange. Even if there is a controlled environment vault (CEV) between you and the exchange those vaults have seventy two hours of battery capacity and they are equipped with a portable generator connection. The baby bells are pretty good at maintaining service continuity under power failure conditions. For POTS service to work for you under power failure conditions you must have at least one phone in your home that does not require electrical power. A cordless phone will not work without electric power at your home.
In the aftermath of hurricane Isabelle we were without power for eight days. Our neighbors who had cable telephone service lost their phone service after the first full day without power. My Verizon service never faltered. Even my DSL service worked when I powered the modem from an inverter and connected in my lap top with the battery charged from a car adapter.
-- Tom H
Someone named ECKHARDT Proclaimed on Sat, 02 Oct 2004 14:00:12 GMT,
If you have a monitored security system it may *not* be able to dial out with that service.
-Graham
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Why not? To everything downstream from the modem, the service looks exactly like a regular telephone service.
Someone named "JerryMouse" Proclaimed on Sat, 2 Oct 2004 16:08:32 -0500,
Because it is VoIP service. The tones that are generated by ContactID and SIA (alarm transmission protocols) are in a frequency range that VoIP can sometimes not reproduce faithfully. The VoIP is designed for voice transmission. We're running into the same problem with services like Vonage too.
-Graham
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Why wouldn't a monitored security system be able to dial out with internet phone service? The systems provided by the cable companies look like just a regular phone line from the phones in the house and the numbers are dialed the same way.
The whole internet vs telco phone service issue is really not understood by most people. They think there is some big technology break through that leads to the cost savings. Like the internet is magically more efficient at moving bits around. The reality is, it's simply a tarrif avoidance issue. If internet calls were to be tarrifed like regular calls, most of the cost savings would disappear.
For the average person today, I don't think it's worth it for several reasons. One is call quality. Internet calls get routed like all internet traffic, so you can't be sure what kind of quality you'll get on a given call. With telco calls you have a dedicated connection with guaranteed real-time delivery. There is the power outage issue. There is the issue of having to install a box that goes between your phone lines and the cable and one more piece of eqpt to go bad or to figure who's going to come fix it and for how much. And there is the issue of giving more business to cable companies, which most people don't like very much, one issue being customer service.
I can see internet phone service being worthwhile if you do a lot of calls, especially international, but that's about it.
I think some responders are confused. My cable company Comcast offers phone service but it is separate from the internet service and not VOIP.
It works well and you can dial out using a modem etc.. with VOIP most systems cannot handle a fax call or modem.
Wayne
That is a big issue. When power goes out, you usually still have phone service. It does not depend on just one wire from your house to the cable company. Phone lines can route themselves around trouble spots. My phone is much more reliable than my cable.
Someone named snipped-for-privacy@optonline.net (Chet Hayes) Proclaimed on 2 Oct
2004 16:24:49 -0700,
Taken from the Ademco website FAQ:
Can I use Voice over IP to report alarm signals? FAQ 23890466 While Voice Over IP (VOIP) has it's place in the world of communications, it is not yet suitable for traditional Alarm Industry reporting. ADEMCO's alarm controls are not designed to work on VOIP whether it's 3+1, 4+2, Contact ID, or any other format our panels might use. Any attempt to do so is to be taken at your own risk. We cannot support this mode of communication on our equipment at this time. The symptoms you might experience would be transmission errors and/or slow-sounding TouchTones as well as timing errors during dialing and/or during the message itself.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the time of this FAQ (5/21/2004) we are working with many cable companies to help insure that their VOIP implementations are capable of working correctly.
-Graham
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Someone named "wayne" Proclaimed on Sat, 02 Oct
2004 23:34:04 GMT,
So you're saying Comcast in your area offers *analog* phone service?
-Graham
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Actually it is "digital" phone service but not VOIP they have a box that goes from the telephone junction box to the cable box and the signal is converted there.
Someone named "wayne" Proclaimed on Sun, 03 Oct
2004 02:51:23 GMT,
Sir, I do believe the "cable box" is essentially a cable modem. And the signal is digitized and sent over an IP network, using the VoIP protocol.
-Graham
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nope different technology you do not even have to have cable service to have the telephone service the VOIP requires a SIP box that is inside your house that gives you one POTS line Fax and alarm systems do not work with VOIP neither do regular modems. they all work fine with the Comcast system. Caller ID and 911 also work fine. VOIP usually has very low prices for long distance packages as well as international the Comcast system is comparable to the regular phone company here
here is a blurb about it, it is called circuit switched?
full article here
Wayne
Someone named "wayne" Proclaimed on Sun, 03 Oct
2004 03:33:52 GMT,
Ahhhhh.. I see what you're talking about now. That is the service the article you cited was "aquired", from AT&T Broadband. I didn't know about that. That is on it's way out now - as evidenced in this article in Cable World, March 10,2003:
According to Comcast they are going to maintain the CBR clients, but seek no new ones. Everything is going VoIP my friend. The good news is with high-speed access already in the house, you won't need that old 56k modem. The bad news is systems that rely on constant connection (no packets) like security system dialers, and FAX machines will suffer hit-and-miss operation due to timing (frequency) issues.
Regards,
-Graham
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That about covers it whereas VOIP from home can be a bit shaky as far as voice quality and the fact that you have to backfeed the signal to have it work with all the jacks the CBR service works very well with great quality and very good dialup connection rates. I configure laptops at home as part of my job as all the phones at work are digital on a pbx. I take them home get them configured then make sure everything works before I give them out I always get great connection rates on dialup. I just wish they did not charge so much. I would change to voip in a heartbeat though for how much I use my phone except that DishNetwork requires a phone line for their box or pay 5 bucks more/month that is about what my savings would be so I am still waiting hoping they come out with an internet based connection for the boxes would make a lot more sense and save them from having a huge modem bank for phone lines.
Wayne
But they are not - they are digital after they move from the phone through the adaptor and not analog again until they are transmitted to the receiving phone.
Hating to be the one to burst your balloon, but what you are describing is VoIP - just like my Vonage that is plugged into my TWC cable modem.
My DISH is connect through my VoIP (Telephone results reflect the Company's focus on profitability, not unit growth, of the acquired circuit-switched telephone business as it begins to transition to VoIP phone service.(Vonage) Actually the same reason why you can connect using a power line telephone jack applies to the VoIP connection - DISH's internal modem is slow enough to allow it to operate on a VoIP line.
I have Charter broadband, and have had 4 outages since last Christmas. The first time, when I finally got thru to the (two?) folks at the helpdesk, they said that they could come out and take a look in about 10 days. (???!!!) the 2nd, the estimate was far better only 6 days. do you really want to be without phone service for that long? When's the last time you lost dial tone with SBC?
Thanks for that info, it's interesting. I was thinking of it primarily from the alarm getting access to the phone line and dialing the monitoring station, which should be transparent. However, I forgot they also have to send some brie info, like what zone, who's calling, etc. I guess that info is trasmitted either via tones or some type of modem technology. So, it would make sense that there could be issues with VOIP.
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