---

Will a VOIP phone be
on your desk soon?

The war for your next desktop phone is raging. Tempted by cost savings of making cheap phone calls, the general public is starting to consider voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) phone service. A growing number of companies now offer Internet calling.

To use it all you need is a broadband Internet connection such as cable or digital subscriber line. It can be used in Hawaii but not all of the companies that offer VOIP provide an 808 area code.

What's the big attraction with VOIP? In a word, value. Most companies sell the services for a flat rate in the $20 to $40 a month range. This includes unlimited local and long-distance domestic calls. If you figure that with caller ID, call waiting and call forwarding your Verizon bill is in the $40-45 a month range (not including long distance calls) VOIP represents a heck of deal. At this point there are approximately 1 million people around the nation using this service and some are discarding their existing conventional phones. Other than price point, there's a good reason for this. VOIP works very well.

For a few months I had a chance to road test one of the leading vendors, Vonage, and I must say it's very effective.

Setting it up was a breeze. All you do is attach your existing phone and your cable/DSL line to an adapter the size of a paperback book and you're in business. Pick up your handset and voila, you've got dial tone.

I found on the Vonage the voice quality was almost indistinguishable to my Verizon line. The main issue I had was the long wait to speak to the customer service operator.

Long distance calls to the mainland were excellent but international calls were not quite up to the same quality. It also depended on where you were calling or if you called a mobile phone or land line.

For example my phone calls to a friend in Portugal who used a landline, were as good as domestic service. On the other hand calls to Fiji, Tahiti or Thailand presented you with an unwanted echo effect or voice delay.

What are the other hang-ups?

Perhaps the major downside is that there's no service if there is a power failure or an Internet outage, but with cell phones being so available, a back up is almost always available. If you want to keep your existing phone numbers, not all VOIP providers in Hawaii offer that feature. Also, E911 operators may not be able to determine where a VOIP call is coming from, so callers have to announce their location during an emergency.

The good news is that you can take your adapter with you on the airplane and plug it into your cousin's cable modem in San Francisco or Wailuku and make local calls from anywhere in the world. If you have an overseas friend or relative, the savings in long distance are enormous.

Is VOIP is worth considering? Yes. Cost savings are tremendous and more often than not, quality is excellent. I believe it's only a matter of time before VOIP really takes off. Stay tuned.

---