Vonage Introduces 3 New Handset Solutions

Vonage is aiming to make it easier for people to convert from traditional landline phone service to the Vonage VoIP service. At CES 2008, Vonage introduced several affordable hardware solutions that eliminate some of the guesswork in setting up telephone handsets throughout your house. At the most basic level, new customers can now get a V-Portal box with easy configuration and helpful feedback for troubleshooting any service issues they may have. If you need several phones throughout your house, my landline to voip conversion hack still works, but there are a couple of more elegant solutions to getting handsets around your home. Vonage now offers a bundle with 3 handsets all working wirelessly from the same base station or you can use a networking over power line solution to get your phones to the rooms you need them.

Callwave Mobile Visual Voicemail

The name Callwave brings me fond memories of desktop software for managing phone calls through a voice modem. As the POTS voice business gradually erodes to cell phone and voice over IP, the company is re-inventing itself with a service to replace your existing cell phone voicemail service with something more useful. If you switch to the Callwave voicemail, instead of having to listen to voice messages on your phone you get them delivered to your inbox, which is similar to the GotVoice service I wrote about in 2005. By getting the voicemails in your inbox, Callwave also makes it possible to either automatically dial your phone to connect with the caller or respond to the voicemail via email, which might save you additional time over playing phone tag. Another cool feature of the Callwave service is call screening, so you can accept a call, send it to voice mail, or listen in on the voicemail to see if you really want to take the call. I recently switched my own voicemail to Callwave to try it out and everythings working so far. The service is currently in a free beta period - rumor has it if you sign up before the end of the beta, you'll never have to pay a subscription fee.

UPDATE from 8 January 2008: After living with Callwave Visual Voicemail for a couple of days I'm not impressed. I've received several complaints about the message quality from people attempting to call me, so I'm switching back to my core service. The voice to text feature that sends me SMS messages is also less than impressive - it does a lousy job of recognizing words and converting them to meaningful text. I'm still on a quest to find something more interesting to make it easier to work with my voicemail.

VoIP Disaster Recovery Planning

Len asks, I have just converted to cable phone service : Is there away to hook up a battery back up; connected to a land line in case of a power failure?

One of the many things that get shoved under the carpet when VoIP providers talk up great features like no long distance costs is disaster planning. In the landline world of simple phones, the power could go out and your phone would still work. When the power goes out for a VoIP customer, it takes out the cable modem, which kills the Internet connection, which effectively makes the phone useless. For brief outages this might not be a big deal, but what happens when your power is out for several hours? You need a backup plan.

SightSpeed

Cross-platform video conferencing is one of those things that never worked well outside enterprise class software. Apples iChat AV made video conferencing for the masses seem like a reality and AIM made strides to try and offer a video component, but everything in the consumer space tends to fall short in communicating between Mac and Windows computers. SightSpeed changes that with PC to PC and Mac to PC video communication. The app also records video for video blogging. Video mail messages of 30 seconds in length allow people to leave messages. If you prefer to only use audio, that's supported too. Think of this as the Skype of video communication, with outstanding image quality and convenient conferencing between your Mac and PC friends. The basic version is free. If you want to communicate with multiple people simultaneously, SightSpeed Pro is available for $49.95 per year and includes a free Webcam. I doubt SightSpeed will replace Skype as the favorite app for online communication but it certainly raises the bar for everyone else trying to break into the space. If you have relatives who live a long way off or need to communicate with remote business partners, this is the most affordable solution for long distance face-to-face communication. [Windows 2k/XP Mac OS X 10.3.9 $0.00]

Skype Cordless Phones

Pete writes, Is there any way of making Skype into a cordless phone? Specifically, the computer is in the home office attached to the broadband jack, but we'd like to be able to respond to incoming calls from Europe from the bedroom, since they tend to be late at night.

Making Skype more like a plain-ole telephone used to be a tricky matter, but not anymore. Skype is doing a handful of things to make it easier to get Skype calls away from the PC. My personal favorite is integration with cell phones, because that allows me to take Skype and all my other calls anywhere, but inside your home, you're likely to get better call quality and burn fewer minutes using one of the VoIP and landline integration tools.

Long Distance Podcasting

Si writes, My friend and I want to record some podcasts to make available for people to download for nothing. The only problem is, I live in Devon, and he lives on the Isle of Man. If you don't know the geography - that's quite a way away! We both have half decent PC's etc, so I just wanted your advice on how we might record a podcast live with each other as if in the same room?

There's currently no perfect solution for recording a conversation remotely. If you have the budget, installing a digital phone line on both ends will make the conversation sound amazing. Since it doesn't sound like your podcast endeavor is currently backed by a wealthy sponsor, you probably need to consider one of two more affordable options. You either need to have the conversation in real time over a traditional phone line or voice over IP solution, recording each part of the conversation separately (called a double-ender for reasons I'll explain below) and then piece the resulting audio files together or you compromise audio quality somewhat and go for the simplicity of using a VoIP solution for both talking and recording.

GotVoice

People who know me well are aware that I never check the voicemail on my cell phone. The recordings stack up and gradually drop off after the expiration date because I hate not being able to skip to the end of 30 seconds of um, yeah, I just called, to say, um, can you call me back, um talk to you later..." If I see your number in my missed calls, I'll assume you called for a reason, call back and get the details in less time than it takes to dial. Contrast this with my Vonage service, which takes messages and emails them to my inbox. I love getting voicemail in my inbox. I can listen. When I realize there's nothing important beyond, call me back, I'll call back. Every once in awhile, I'll get a meaningful message providing details and the service pays off, but the email option puts me in control. Today, I saw a new service featured on Download Squad that does exactly this for any voicemail account. GotVoice is configurable to turn any voicemail service into an email deliverable or via their online interface. A scheduling feature checks messages twice daily or on your own custom schedule, cleaning out your inbox automatically. For the time being the accounts are free, which makes it even more valuable as an improvement to any voice mail service. This actually makes the voicemail on my cell phone useful again. The asking for some vague demographic information at the end, which is presumably for marketing purposes to support the service and are answered with the same honesty that any perpetually 29-year-old woman might convey. Current availability is limited to North America.

Cell Phone to Landline Converter

Tom writes, "I just cancelled my land line and am now pure cellular. I read about a gadget somewhere that acts like a router for your cell phone in your home, using the existing wiring. When you come home at night you plug your cell phone into the gadget and all of your house phones are now ports to your cell phone. It's the best of both worlds - you get the cheap cell phone service and can still use all of those land line phones scattered around your home. Have you heard about this? If so can you point me toward a vendor?"

There are a number of solutions that link cell phones to landline connections. Most of the current batch of options perform a hand-off from an active cell phone account to an active landline service provider, effectively forwarding the call to the landline so that you aren't subject to the issues associated with poor connectivity and dead spots in the home. There are two solutions I found that truly pass the phone call to a landline handset.

Will VoIP work with DSL?

Michael writes: "I have been thinking about going VoIP at home, but we have a DSL connection. So, my question is this: Would I save any money doing going VoIP? Would I not still have to pay for a LAN line on top of my DSL connection and the VONAGE or whatever service fees? I mean VoIP seems to be more tailored to those who have broadband Cable, or am I just mis-informed?"

The short answer to this question is yes, VoIP works with DSL. Many of the phone companies currently providing DSL and landline phone services are in the process of unbundling DSL and phone services. Depending on who your DSL provider is, you may now choose to get only DSL service instead of needing to pay for phone services to get DSL service. The rate for DSL service unbundled from phone service is fairly competitive with cable Internet rates. There is no special LAN connection required for VoIP. The VoIP phone adapter I use connects into my router just like another PC would. The key is to compare costs of local service to costs of VoIP service before making the connection. You also need to look at what other services you need to connect over your phone lines, like satellite television, for instance. Read on for a more indepth look at VoIP vs. tranditional phone service.

VoIP over Phone Wiring

VoIP creates a few minor frustrations for those of us already comfortable with the way landline phones behave in the house. If you subscribe to satellite television, for instance, how does your satellite box make the required phone connection using VoIP? If you want to have phones in several rooms of the house all tied into the same VoIP line (just like you would with a landline phone) how can you make it work when the phone adapter for your VoIP service only has one jack? I found the simple solution. Connect all your home phone wiring to the VoIP service. It's easier than you think. Read on to see how I did it.