Jewish World Review Sept. 3, 2004 / 17 Elul 5764
Promise of VoIP not yet total
By Mark Kellner
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Last Sunday wasn't a good day for me, tech-wise. During the afternoon, the
high-tech computer-cum-entertainment system in my car hiccupped: the next
thing I knew, my electrical system was shot. A jump to the battery got
things going again, but now I fear for my alternator, battery - and of
course the audio system, which is part of a device built around Microsoft's
AutoPC design.
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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here.
When ideas and policy collide at work
That evening, I decided to try my hand, again, at Voice over Internet
Protocol, or VoIP . As you will doubtless hear often in the coming
months, VoIP is the "hot" technology now, what with AT&T making a big push
in the space, as is Verizon Corp., which wants to sell you broadband and
VoIP in a nice little package.
My first experience with VoIP, a few months ago, was with Vonage, and it was
rather enjoyable. Now, a McLean, Virginia-based firm, Primus
Telecommunications, is really shaking things up with its offer to consumers
of a $19.95 monthly service that includes free long distance in the U.S.,
Canada and most of Western Europe. It promises a 2-cents-per-minute rate to
Israel, and equally low rates to Australia, South Korea and much of the rest
of the world. The firm is marketing its VoIP under the name "Lingo," and
details are available online at http://www.lingo.com.
How can one say no to an offer like that? I didn't - although I kept my
regular Verizon Corp. phone service as a backup, and a good thing, it turns
out.
Within less than a week, a package of hardware and cables arrived from the
Primus office, ready for setup. VoIP service requires you to supply your own
phone and broadband Internet service; the provider, in this case, Lingo,
will give you a connector box that sits between your phone and the broadband
network. The box establishes your phone connection and converts voice into
data bits and bits into voice.
Things start to get technical here, but bear with me: there are two ways to
connect a phone to the broadband network. One is more-or-less directly, by
hooking the connector box to the cable or DSL modem, and then go from the
connector box to the computer. In that mode, I had no problems: I was able
to get a dial tone on the phone and all was well.
Unfortunately, I'm not the only computer user in La Casa Kellner, so I need
to include others in my home network. That means a router and also a
wireless access point. In short, that's a lot of chances for things to go
wrong.
The Primus/Lingo folks anticipated this and offer rather explicit
instructions on setting things up if one has a router and so forth. The only
problem is that, on following the instructions, I still had no dial tone. A
call to customer service was in order.
Perhaps Sunday evening isn't the prime customer service time, but a recorded
message saying I'd have to wait "five minutes or longer" was entirely
correct: my wait was 32 minutes before I spoke with a live person. The
fellow, who shall remain nameless for the purposes of this article, was
helpful enough, but admitted he was a bit stymied when it came to using a
Mac (which I was) to try and configure various devices through their
Internet Protocol, or IP , addresses. His best advice? Find out from
the router maker how to make things work.
Hmmm. I shall try that, I suppose, and I might even try a different brand of
router, just to see if it'll work better. But unlike the ease I had with
another VoIP service, Vonage, a few months back, my lack of getting the
"lingo" of dealing with Primus/Lingo is not a happy experience. You could
say that's life on the cutting, or even "bleeding," edge of technology, and
you would be correct. For companies to succeed in the marketplace, however,
their products have to be accessible and usable by the masses. How
successful Primus ultimately is in this quest could tell a lot about the
future of VoIP from non-Bell providers.
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