VoIP Review

VoIP phone service for saving money on phone bills

VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) is digital phone service that uses a high-speed Internet connection to bypass your normal local telephone company. A VoIP service can supplement your regular landline phone, saving money on long-distance calls. Some VoIP users eliminate their landlines entirely. Currently you can get VoIP service (commonly referred to as digital phone) through your cable company, from a dedicated VoIP provider such as Vonage, or by downloading software, such as Skype. Often you can use your own phone, although sometimes an adapter is required. A phone using VoIP service rings and has a dial tone just like any other telephone, although some VoIP services work through your computer or even your cell phone. Depending on your phone usage, VoIP may offer significant cost savings.

We found a number of comparative reviews based on thorough testing as well as a few large surveys rating VoIP services. ConsumerReports.org is known for its scientific, unbiased methods, and its VoIP ratings are based on a nationwide survey of 69,000 readers, who rate their experiences. PCMag.com also provides reliable guidance on both cable and traditional VoIP, based on its own 20,000-reader survey and its editors' expert VoIP tests. We also checked customer complaints at the Better Business Bureau and found a few VoIP providers -- notably Wow! and Cablevision -- with stainless reputations.

J.D. Power and Associates' 2010 survey of more than 21,000 customers concentrates particularly on cable VoIP providers. We found the best summaries of user-written reviews and ratings of VoIP providers at DSLReports.com (also known as BroadbandReports.com). This site updates its chart of average VoIP-provider ratings weekly, tracking reviews for months so its awards are based on recent, consistent high ratings. We also analyzed user-written reviews and ratings of VoIP services at many other sites, including VoIPReview.org, NextAdvisor.com and Amazon.com.

There are good comparison tests of traditional VoIP providers at SpotCoolStuff.com and The New York Times. Single-product reviews at CNET, MSNBC.com, The Wall Street Journal, PC World and ComputerWorld.com are also helpful.

Consistent call quality is a big factor in nearly all the VoIP reviews we read. Cable VoIP (*Est. $12 to $60 per month, depending on package) traditionally has the edge here, since cable companies route calls over their own networks. Non-cable VoIP uses public Internet and is more subject to problems from crowded bandwidth. International calls and calls during peak hours can have glitches like echoes and dropped calls. A major consumer survey shows that these problems plague Skype, a free service, more than the paid Vonage (*Est. $10 to $35 per month) service.

Vonage is arguably the most well known hardware-based VoIP service, but it is losing subscribers -- down from 2.6 million in 2008 to 2.4 million in 2010. By contrast, cable giant Comcast now has 7.6 million voice customers. Cable VoIP, in general, is growing faster than traditional VoIP. Software-based Skype (free) remains the most popular VoIP service of all, with 560 million registered users worldwide (124 million of whom actively use Skype each month).

However, the two big news items in VoIP are that you can now use it to make calls on your smartphone (via mobile apps), and directly from Gmail on your computer. "Why is this such a big deal?" writes David Pogue of The New York Times. "Because it's increasingly clear that one day, the Internet, not the outrageous cellphone companies, will connect our calls."

Smartphone carriers like Verizon and AT&T have blocked VoIP for years: If people could make mobile phone calls over the Internet for free, why would they buy an expensive minutes contract? But in recent months, carriers did an about-face and welcomed free VoIP apps from Vonage, Skype, iCall, Fring and others onto the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and other phones.

"The carriers' old thinking was: 'Mobile VOIP could threaten our voice business,' " says Wired. "Their new thinking: 'Who cares when there's so much money to be made on data?' " There are still some catches, though. Some mobile VoIP services charge for calls. Some only let you call certain types of phones.

With Google's new Voice Calls from Gmail feature, launched in August 2010, you can place free calls to any phone in the U.S. and Canada, but currently only from Gmail on your computer -- not from Gmail on your smartphone. (There is a Google Voice app for smartphones, but it sends calls over your carrier's voice network, not over the Internet.) Calls from Gmail are free through 2010, Google says, but with no promise that they will be free after that.

"The ultimate, of course, would be free calls from a phone," to any phone, Pogue says. "We're tantalizingly close."