ebayfreak said:
doesnt it sound different? does it time out, leave skips, or delay? it seems to me like it wouldn't work quite right, but i guess since the sound quality is very very low it would be ok.
also- does it take up a lot of bandwidth?
It sounds a little different, in my case it sounds better than a regular phone line, for some people it is better (depending on your setup), for most it is about the same, and for some if you have bad networking equipment or a weird ISP then it will sound worse.
It doesn't skip, delay, or any of that crap for me.
No, the sound quality is not very very low, it is excellent for me.
It takes up 90 kilabits per second each way at the highest quality setting. There is also a medium call quality setting at 60kb/s, and a low quality setting at 30 each way.
All you need to have a got VoIP phone is the right equipment. If you have crappy equipment then you won't have very good quality. I have a good ISP where the connection never fails and I get good solid bandwidth. I also have good networking equipment. I have a Linksys Cable Modem, a Linksys WRT54G Wireless G Router, and a Linksys PAP2 Phone Adapter. I personally have never had any problems with any of my Linksys products. Most of the complaints about VoIP are coming from people with bad equipment. I also have a really nice Uniden 5ghz cordless phone from which I get no echoes of any sort.
Anyway, hope I cleared up some things about that. It's really becoming a lot more mainstream these days and almost nearly as reliable as a POTS line (Plain Old Telephone Service).