Computer Phone

Computer Phones

Computer phones are taking hold in the US market today and the competition for better service, quality of calls and price has really taken off. As a consumer this computer phone competition is a great relief, because it will only create a better product at a better price for everyone. There are only a few major competitors at this point that actually offer a service based on their own hardware, however there are hundreds of "Soft Services" out there that will allow anybody with a computer that has a microphone and a speaker to make phone calls from their computer. The big names so far are Vonnage, Magic Jack and OOMA. These three companies offer a wide variety of telecom services at a very reasonable price compared to the old standard "land line" phone systems.

Problems With Computer Phones?

So, the idea of a computer phone sounds great, but what are the drawbacks that we should be aware of? Well, there are not many to mention to be honest. Just like any service there are always questions of customer service, downtime and other normal issues that consumers should consider, however there are very little downtime, of course this may depend more on your internet service provider than on the VIOP service which you choose to use. If you live in the country and use a flaky satellite internet provider, computer phone service may not be for you.

One of the only downsides that comes to mind that will hold true to most any voice over ip phone service is that you will need to get a new phone number. Many people do not like this, but soon enough these companies will be able to allow you to carry over you old number and this will no longer be an issue.

Now customer service is a really hard question to answer as well, if a company gets big enough you are sure to hear negative things about them from somebody. It always seems that when a new product hits the market people will be more likely to praise them, then once they get a few hundred thousand customers the "few" that have had a bad experience will flame the internet with negativity. I have only used the Magic Jack VOIP Service and I have been nothing but happy with their customer service, call quality and have had 100% uptime any time I tried to use it. However, read some reviews online and you would think there is no reason to even try it, even though it only costs $40 for the device and one year of phone service.

Vonnage gets a bad rap from their pricing scheme, I mean really how much do you save? Well if you make a lot of long distance phone calls you can save some good hard earned cash with these guys, but compared to Magic Jack at $20/Year service their $24.95/Month plan does not seem like much of a deal.

OOMA is very new and there is not a lot of reviews out about them yet, but they will trump all competitors on price, because there is NO MONTHLY FEES! There strategy is to sell the hardware at a higher rate and simply forget about the monthly fees altogether. This marketing strategy may not be the most sound upfront, but once they get enough units in place they may have many other services to up sell to their customers. After all the internet's largest retailer Amazon.com is backing them, so I would say it's safe to say that they have a solid marketing strategy and will be able to keep up with the free service for some time now.