flynn23 wrote:
] "why would you want VoIP?"

Because I don't want to pay a metered rate for long distance. I want to pay a flat rate. And I already am. Its my internet connection. I just can't use it this way, because no one seems to...

] First, VoIP is alive and thriving.

In terms of POTS interconnection yes... But I'm a different market. I want to talk to my friends in the states. I may not be as interesting a market...

] There are several companies that offer clients and gateways.
] Google around. www.net2phone.com comes to mind. I have also

Net2Phone wants your money upfront for metered rate service to the POTs network. They claim you can make PC to PC calls, but there is no discussion of how this works, if its free, etc.... They focus you on their metered rate long distance pots stuff.

] Finally, RBOCs will never have any incentive to deploy VoIP or
] any other advanced technologies because it fucks up the
] revenue models. Why use VoIP or VoDSL when you can sell over
] priced T1? Why deploy ANYTHING if you don't have to?
] Everything is already paid for. Everytime someone makes a
] call, it's almost pure profit.

We're thinking on two different layers...

What I want, as a consumer, is flat rate reasonable quality.

Its not really important to me what the infrastructure is like on the back end. It just seems silly to me that when I want to send one kind of data I have a nice flat rate reasonable quality system in my house, and then when I want to talk voice I moved to a metered rate high quality system, which I pay for in addition to the flat rate I already pay.

RE: Why don't I have VoIP?