It’s been about 3 months since we switched full time from Cincinnati Bell Telephone to ViaTalk. I have to admit that I have been quite pleased with the service. Obviously, the biggest benefit has been the cost. After the sunk cost of $199 for two years, the service is only costing me $2.50 a month (for e911). Even if the $199 is spread out over the two years, the cost is still $10.79 a month. Much better than the close to $40 / month I was paying for the same services!
After we get beyond the financials, the service has been quite reliable. Maybe not as reliable as POTS and its 99.99% uptime, but certainly reliable enough for our needs. About the only time that the phone system has been down has been when my router was having hiccups and needed to be rebooted. That probably does happen more than I would like, but it still doesn’t happen that often. The auto-forward feature does account for those few times that the phone is down. If ViaTalk is down (on their end or mine), the call is automatically routed to my mobile phone. It can be setup to route to any other number that you would want, it just happens that I set it up to forward to my mobile phone since it is almost always with me.
As for call quality, again – the calls may not be as high of quality as those with a POTS system. But the quality has been damn close! I have only experienced the "echoes" occasionally, and even then the echoes have been minimal. For all I remember, I may have been downloading something like Orcas (Visual Studio 2008) at the same time as a phone call! Regardless, the echoes have been so minute that I did not find them distracting at all. And, I have only heard them from calling out from the system, never calling in. In fact, calling in has always seemed like I have been calling a POTS phone. That is an important fact, since I wouldn’t want any family members or friends to have a poor experience talking to us over the phone.
Other features such as voice mail, caller ID, call block, etc. work as well as, or even better than, the same features offered by POTS. I love the fact that all of these features can be managed by the website. Caller ID, for instance, can be accessed via the website. Not only that, but custom caller ID can be setup. For instance, traditional POTS caller ID will simply list a phone number for a mobile phone. However, with the custom caller ID feature, I can change the system to show "Jon Mobile" when I call home with my mobile. That is much better than simply having to recognize the phone number.
Overall, I am quite happy with the decision to use ViaTalk. I don’t know if they are the best VoIP service out there, but they do have to be one of the best values. For anyone who is looking at VoIP as a reasonable alternative to POTS, I would suggest you give them a try!