More VoIP Problems
from the hold-onto-that-POTS dept
More evidence that VoIP systems aren't quite as reliable as your traditional phone service. It turns out that AT&T CallVantage customers can't call VoIP users on certain other cable VoIP systems from companies like Adelphia and Frontier. AT&T insists it's a glitch that they're fixing, but it certainly brings up questions of network neutrality. The fear has been that cable providers would harm calls on other VoIP systems in order to make their own VoIP look better -- though, everyone insists that's not the case here. Still, it seems suspicious that the blocked calls involve competing cable companies. Meanwhile, Broadband Reports notes that Vonage is down again, which seems to be happening a lot lately.
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More VoIP Problems - try Skype
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Outage vs. Blocking
First an outage, no matter how small or large is a problem. Port blocking is an issue.
The outage effects customers who actually have working service. The blocking issue, which has far deeper implications than people imagine is clearly a major issue that, if unaddressed, can be an even more significant danger.
Losing service due to an outage that is up and running is no different than having your local cell tower go down (something I recently experienced).
Having Port 69 prevent your ability to connect to the VoIP network is equal to cellular service not being available in your area. That means in reality, you're not a customer.
While both matters need to be corrected, and like everything involving IP, they will, we need to not lump outages and blocked ports into the same general category as the uninformed reader does not discern the difference.
P.S. Cox's High Speed Internet service does not block 69 and my AT&T CallVantage works just fine, as does VoicePulse, Packet8, Vonage (when they don't go down which until two weeks or so ago never noticably happened)
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AT&T VOIP & COX CABLE
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