say what?

I've been using VOIP at home now for about 3 months. I chose Voicepulse instead of Vonage because I had heard the additional fees Vonage sticks you with makes the whole affair not so economical. Not saying they do or don't. I also felt like Vonage was becoming so well known for VOIP that there would be no competition if none of the other services had subcribers. And Voicepulse also let's me go month to month. No annual contract if I think the service sucks.

My impressions so far are that there are some real benefits to the service and one frustrating problem. The economic benefit should be real for most people. Although for me I rarely make long distance calls on my home phone preferring to use my cell phone instead. So on a VOIP to land line comparison I don't save much if anything. What I do like about it though are the capabilities for having the voice stream encoded. I love having my voicemail sent to my inbox. But I'm more excited about what applications could be added to as a result of having everything digitized. Recording conversations is one thing I'd like though I doubt they'll ever do it. I'd especially like to use that whenever I call as a customer and they announce they may be recording for quality purposes. Perhaps they could add I am recording for quality purposes too. Namely that the company is actually going to help me with my problem. I'd love to somehow link my incoming calls to my computer as well. Perhaps open the mail/contact program or allow me to send audio from my computer onto the phone line (e.g., play music for a friend).

The one downside is the quality. Not from my perspective but from the listeners. And that is a benefit for the VOIP companies. Because in general I don't hear any degradation of sound quality. But my wife clearly knows when I'm not paying attention and looking at websites while I'm talking to her. The is decidedly not a feature.