Almost two years ago, I wrote about moving our telephone service to a Voice Over IP (VOIP) system. Getting into the system was a challenge, but for 17 of the past 23 months, we have had a mostly successful experience. The last six months have been terrible.
Our Internet Service Provider (ISP), from whom we contract two DSL lines with 10 MB service, had been fine. We would sometimes have slowdowns or interruptions of service, but for the most part it was OK. About six months ago that changed. We started getting disconnects regularly. Our Internet speed would slow to a crawl. Our callers or those we were calling would experience lots of breaking up of our voices or our call would never connect. In short, the service got unbearable.
Unfortunately, we are located in a place where we have no options for ISPs. The cable companies won’t drop cable to us even if we pay for it. Verizon’s new LTE service does not do the job. We have only one telephone company from whom we can purchase DSL service. We are going back to telephone land lines, with that same telephone company.
I feel like we are going backward. Unless we just went forward too soon when the infrastructure did not really exist to support our move. In either case, this has not been a good experience in adoption of new technology. And I do not have much patience with technology that does not work well, easily and quickly!
Do any of you use VOIP? What has your experience been? Are you in urban areas or rural communities? I hope we have not disconnected any of you. If we have, please accept my apologies. We should have better service later this week.
Please share your comments below.