VOIP - how good is it?

 I have had my Internet phone for a week.  Here is the conclusion.

Over a six day period I made 37 calls. 

• on one of them, the line broke after a few minutes,
• on one other the person on the other end couldn't hear me, 
• on two calls the quaity was not up to scratch.  (One of those calls I was doing a database dump over our broadband line so it was pretty heavily loaded.) 
• On a further call, no-one answered (I heard the ringing tone) when I called on the BT phone I got a recorded message that the phone number was changed.

So about 10-15% of the calls were unsatisfactory. 

We have BT Business 500 shared among about 4-5 people so the load is not exactly excessive when you think that voice only needs about 20k.  I listen to radio over the Internet regularly with few breaks.

Conclusion.

This is great for personal calls if you are going to make a big cost saving.  I would definitely use it for personal calls where the odd break-up can be tolerated.  However if I am cold-calling a new prospect there is no way I want the phone dying on me.  In fact one of the unsatisfactory calls was just about the point that a prospect said "sure - come and show me what you have to offer bluble blurble ... " 

The idea that anyone would switch to VOIP for a marginal benefit in cost is laughable.  The business models currently on offer in the UK will not work. There are major IPOs in the US based on this technology, but do not put your money into a UK company unless they have a radically different business model to the other UK operations.  US companies such as 8x8 are offering big big savings on peoples phone bills, UK companies are behaving like any other third party phone company and pricing to be 'better than BT' only.  In fact they have to be significantly better than One-Tel.

My unalloyed enthusiasm for this technology has taken a big hit.  Our US sales guy cut his phone bill from $700 per month to $50 so obviously he is willing to take a few knocks.  However I am only using it for calls to people that I know well enough so they don't mind the odd hiccup.

Boy that hurt - me wrong?  It does not compute.

Bob
Textor