I run a small business. I have 6 voice lines and internet through Comcast. I thought the monthly $500 bill was a bit high. Service is incredibly lousy. My business was out of voice and internet all day yesterday, and the phones and internet was out for about half a day today. Every couple of months there is a service outage. Can you imagine running a health care practice with the phones down and patients unable to reach you?
Years ago I used AT&T. It was virtually impossible to talk to humans to get billing issues resolved. But the service was reliable. I swore I would never use AT&T again.
But with Comcast’s abysmal service, I thought I would talk to AT&T again. Their pitch was astounding! Only 4 voice lines + internet would cost me $1100 a month, more than double what the unreliable Comcast has been charging me for SIX lines. PLUS AT&T said I would probably have to buy or rent and new VOIP phone system!
Can you believe how unreliable and expensive business phone service is now compared to 20 years ago??? Seems like the phone companies and post office have both deteriorated markedly in service!
No Doc I cannot imagine. Suggest you check with Lavarock on VoIP stuff – there has surely got to be some better rates. Note that on VoIP you must have solid internet to run it on, and Commie Cast has provided solid most of the time here…
While you may think that phone service is improving, it has decreased in quality in several areas.
The majority of “business phone lines” today are run through VoIP systems using the same internet backbone, so if your broadband goes down, your phone service will go down with it. As a result, service outages today create a more severe impact on businesses than 20 years ago. The increased prices for telephone services are due largely to bundled services — support, contracts, and equipment — which do not have the reliability to support the cost of service. The typical price quote from AT&T reflects this trend of added costs for equipment and VoIP systems.
Some practical solutions include separating the internet and telephone services by using different providers, including a backup internet line (5G is available), and ensuring that customers can transfer their calls to their mobile phones when their regular telephone services are down. Although these solutions may take more effort and resources from the user, redundancy has become a necessity for business telephone services.
No, I never thought phone service has been improving. It is a far cry from when I was a kid and it was utterly reliable. I could not imagine 1 day completely without phone and 2 days with it working and then not working. Comcast is a complete joke. The only two options I apparently have in my building is AT&T and Comcast.
VOIP is a rotten invention. Copper wire was much more reliable!
Two essential services were utterly reliable 20 years ago, but cannot be depended upon now- phone companies and the US Post Office. The latter now employs idiots and thieves in great number.