Section 5.3. Before You Sign Up
5.3. Before You Sign UpIf you're sold on the idea of going with a broadband phone provider, you're almost ready to take the plunge. The next few sections will get you the rest of the way there. 5.3.1. What You NeedWhat are the equipment and service requirements you need to provide in order to sign up for a broadband phone service? Not many, because the service provider will send you the correct router or telephone adapter for your situation. Your requirements are:
Notice that even these requirements aren't that onerous or binding. The slowest broadband service available today, entry-level DSL, provides at least 128 kbps upstream bandwidth. That will support one broadband phone call with excellent voice quality, although heavy Internet activity at the same time may cause some degradation. Could you sign up a child who's living at college and have your credit card billed? Certainly. Can you use any old telephone to make broadband phone calls? Absolutely. There's one more requirement: the desire to save money or increase the number of features your phone has by switching from a traditional telephone line to a broadband phone. But that's an easy requirement to meet. 5.3.2. What It CostsHow much a service costs is always an important question. The fast answer about broadband phones? Less than you're paying for a traditional telephone line. Sometimes way less than you're currently paying per month for your traditional telephone. Prices will change (drop) over time as the competition heats up and more people start switching to broadband phones. For this reason, I'm hesitant to list prices here, a book that can't change after printing to reflect dropping prices. However, the value of comparison shopping outweighs my nervousness about pricing changes. But let me list some caveats:
Hesitation aside, take a look at Table 5-3 for an indication of which service sets their prices at which levels.
Notice who rates their service worth more than the other providers? The old telephone company (AT&T) and one of the major cable companies (Time Warner). I wonder how they get customers. Just another reason you should always comparison shop. The majority of the broadband phone providers offer comparable rates (so close they may be setting their prices based on competitor rates rather than their real costs, but that's a subject for a business book). If the services you like charge about the same, decide whether you want any of the optional features. If so, take a look at Table 5-4 to make sure your favorite provider offers the services you want at a reasonable price.
You can see that providers do offer some choices with their special packages, although it's hard to say with a straight face that some services provide anything "special." Again, the new entrants into the market offer the best services and best pricing, and Vonage leads the way in both (or it's darn close). Some broadband phone providers are starting to offer unlimited calling plans to certain parts of the world. Check your provider to see whether they add an unlimited calling plan to an area you wish to include in your calling plan. For example:
More unlimited calling to countries in Europe and Asia will be the trend as the supporting connections between the broadband phone services and local telephone networks in those countries increase with time. Sad to say, but the idea of a special "long distance" telephone company doing nothing but long distance call routing died when SBC bought AT&T in February 2005. Before long, a call will just be a call, no matter which countries are involved. This is good for consumers, of course, unless they had a lot of retirement money in long distance phone company stocks. Currently, there is only a small amount of federal tax on broadband phone service. Most plans include less than $2 of taxes and fees assessed by various governments, although some states charge sales tax on these services. While your traditional telephone line providers double the cost of your monthly payments through assorted taxes, fees, and surcharges, you won't see that on your broadband phone bill. 5.3.3. Decision Checklist for New UsersSwitching to a new phone service provider can be a bit nerve-racking. Remembering all the features you want to get on your new phone service can be tough when you keep getting distracted by this price and that price and by feature pages from competitors that look far too similar to be an accident. Let me help you define what's important for your new broadband phone service. Go through the following table and choose Very Important, Somewhat Important, or Not Important for each item. When you finish, keep that list beside you when comparing broadband phone providers. The order doesn't really matter. The weight you give to each feature will be different than what your neighbor gives, and that's okay. Your goal is a phone service that fits what you need. This is not a test. There are no grades. No one else will see your answers. The more honest you are with yourself about what you really want from your phone service, the better service selection you will make. You might want to use a pencil so you can change your mind and your answers. For all of the following statements, assign criteria of Very Important, Somewhat Important, or Not Important:
How can these answers help you choose your broadband phone service provider? There are two steps needed before we can answer that question together. First, prioritize the items you marked as Very Important. You may have marked contradictory items, such as asking for the lowest price but also for a well-established provider with live telephone support. (I want a car with 400 horsepower and room for 5 adults that gets 40 miles per gallon and costs under $15,000. I am perpetually disappointed, but I don't want you to be disappointed when you switch your telephone service.) Go through and put numbers from 1 through 5 by the items you feel most strongly about and checked Very Important, ranking them from most important to least important (least important of the important items, but you know what I mean). Second, decide whether any one item is absolutely a deal breaker. If you must keep your current phone number, for instance, that requirement must be Number 1 and will be at the top of your list. Or, if you need to keep your listing in the phone book, you should know that broadband phones don't get listedalthough if you keep your current phone number, it will stay listed for a year or two. It doesn't matter what your requirement is, but if there is one item that you must have, be honest and mark that item. If there's no deal breaker, then don't worry about it. Now take your Top 5 list and compare the items to provider web sites. Start with Vonage, because they are the focus of this chapter, but continue on through the other providers that meet your requirements. If you're having trouble getting the match you want, don't limit yourself to the few listed here in the book. Go to any search engine, type in "broadband phone service provider," and you will see scores to hundreds of results. Or check out a portal like www.broadbandreports.com/isplist?t=voip, or my web site at www.gaskin.com/talk for this information. |
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