Digital Trends

What is VoIP

VoIP is one of those mysterious acronyms that almost everyone has seen by now. If you've read or watched TV ads for Vonage or any of the other mushrooming broadband telephone services, or read about eBay's acquisition of Skype, you're familiar with it. You might have experienced it without even knowing it.

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, a way of having a phone conversation over the Internet by sending packets of data rather than impulses, making it very different from the traditional telephone method. It became possible with the advent of high-speed broadband connections, and nowadays it's pretty much a fact of life—one that can, and will, significantly lower your phone bills.

VoIP Services

I'd read about it, but first became aware of the possibilities about 18 months ago when I saw an ad for a new company, Lingo. They offered unlimited calls all over the U.S. and to Western Europe for $19.99 a month—a hell of a deal to someone who spent a lot on international calls, especially considering that the first month was free.

The service appeared to have plenty of advantages. I could keep my number, use my regular phone, and have call waiting, call forwarding and all the other services I liked. I called them (an irony, perhaps, calling a broadband phone company rather than ordering online), and received their router.

That was where things began to go wrong. Setup per their instructions, it wouldn't work. A call to technical support wasn't exactly fruitful (from the sound of it, tech support had been outsourced to India). The person on the other end of the line wasn't familiar with my DSL modem, and every suggestion he offered didn't work. I hung up after a frustrating hour and continued working alone, but to no avail.

The next day I called and cancelled, only to be informed that I should have talked to a higher level of tech support. Now, I wondered, when the first person I talked to couldn't help me, shouldn't I have been switched automatically to someone more knowledgeable? Another mark against the service, and I decided that letting them go was a good idea.

It may be they were too ambitious too early, and didn't have a back line properly set up. They still offer the same service for the same price. But they appear to have scaled back their ads and possibly their ambitions.