[asterisk-users] Phone routing - curious what others are doing?

[John Novack]

Doug Crompton wrote:
<snip>
>  when I called Verizon to change (lower) my service it was a
> bewildering spider web of rates structures just in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. 
>   
And absolutely NO guarantee that the information was correct.
Perhaps if you called 5 times and averaged the answers . . .
> It made me wonder why I send any of my calls to
> Verizon!
Same here. We are in an area where pretty much every call is either 
local toll or toll, no detail billing and 5 bands of local toll.
We use the 500 minute Vonage plan, for better or worse. Quality and 
reliability is as good as VeriZon, and also Stanaphone and Gizmo.
I find Gizmo a little on the strange side. They send ringback during 
their rather lengthy call set up time, sometimes up to 3 rings, then far 
end ring or busy. Other than that it is also good.
>  I was able to cut my Verizon cost down by about half.
>
>   
We now have Verizon down to $14 bucks per month including taxes and fees.
> I wonder if any others are splitting calls like this or just biting the bullet and going 100% voip???
>   
No. I prefer to keep one ILEC line, as it is still more reliable. Even 
though our HSIA is 99%, it still is not 99.99%
all it takes is some geek 80 miles away to screw with the DNS, and 
everything is out for 10-20 minutes.
The modern computer industry still isn't up to the reliability standards 
of the telcos.


John Novack