[IMC-Tech] Re: [RFU] Phone usage

[Stephane Alnet]

Gary,

> Has any thought been given to swithing to a VoIP phone serivce such  
> as Vonage or MCI VoiP? For residential use it's $25-30/month with  
> unlimited calls to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.

I'd suppose one of the issues with this kind of service is that it  
may be difficult to obtain a local phone number for people to call-in.
I'm not sure there ever was a serious discussion about subscribing to  
this kind of service for WRFU. I would vote against it for the IMC  
because of the need to have a phone for emergency (911) access, which  
VoIP companies have a hard time to reliably provide.

> I don't know how much it would be for nonresidential and how many  
> lines would be needed, but 7cents a minute for a local call seems  
> like robbery to me.

It's nothing new: the RBOCs had quasi-monopoly over most of the  
nation's local access until very recently, and the only area of  
competition was long-distance. Local and local-toll calls have always  
been a cow that the telecom companies know how to milk. The '96  
Telecommunication act was supposed to address this, but as we can see  
with the recent merger of SBC and AT&T, things are going to be worse  
before they get better.

By the way, the Vonage and other VoIP packages aren't also as good as  
they seem (these guys aren't losing money, mind you!). You can get  
inbound+outbound service for about $7 a month at retail prices, with  
at most 2 cents a minute to the US, Canada, most of Europe, etc., so  
$25/month is only a good deal if you use over 900 minutes of talk  
time (15 hours) every month. If you buy "bulk" access (which a  
cooperative could do), things get even more interesting. Also, for  
most people (over 50% of the population in the US do not have  
broadband), this is simply not a feasible solution because of the  
high entry costs of broadband ("the digital divide starts at home").

S. (who do voice stuff for a living :] )