fewer monthly bills = single point of failure

[l2trade]

Ooma = Fired my monthly landline bill
Roku/Netflix = Fired my monthly cable TV bill
Prepaid Emergency Only Cell = Fired my monthly cell phone bill
_______________________________________________________

And I was feeling so smart, BUT...

ISP really slow service outage tonight = Lost (no phone, no TV and painfully slow internet)

I am past the point where my internet connection is as important as electricity and running water. I can not work from home tonight. I can barely surf TUG. Now, I must decide whether or not to drive 20 miles to work or go AWOL for my evening meetings.

 

[dioxide45]

Ooma = Fired my monthly landline bill
Roku/Netflix = Fired my monthly cable TV bill
Prepaid Emergency Only Cell = Fired my monthly cell phone bill

We have considered number one, but I am concerned about connecting our DirecTV DVR boxes to it and having the phone connection work properly. I have read about problems with these. If we picked up Ooma it would pay for itself in about four and a half months.

Don't think we can give up our DirecTV. We don't have Netflix, so I don't know what they offer online, but there is a tonne of stuff we watch every day and I don't think we would make it on downloaded content only.

We already do item 3. Only a prepaid cell phone that we load up once a year with $100. That usually lasts us the whole year. Far better than the $50 monthly cell phone bill we dropped several years ago.

 

[YeongWoo]

DirecTV doesn't require a phone

My DVR works fine without one. I think if you are doing the pay per view stuff you might need a phone. I got fed up with AT&T and cut off the phone months ago.

 

[PigsDad]

My DVR works fine without one. I think if you are doing the pay per view stuff you might need a phone. I got fed up with AT&T and cut off the phone months ago.

Yes, a DirecTV DVR does not need a phone connection. You can hook it up to your home network, and then (depending on the model) you may have access to the video-on-demand feature. Also, having it hooked up to your network will allow you to purchase pay-per-view items.

Kurt

 

[l2trade]

Cox fixed the problem late last night. I'm glad I fired them for cable TV because their high speed internet services are no where near as reliable as I think they should be.

I found this URL which was useful to test my service before & after the outage. Packet loss > 30% is what caused my voice to break apart on the phone. Now it is at: 0.5ms average jitter & 0.0% packet loss. So, I am back to loving my Ooma again.

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/speed_test/ppspeed.html

Lesson here is single point of failure with Cox services, which are no where near as reliable as the local electricity, gas and water companies. If this happens a couple more times, I may be forced to sign back up for another cell phone plan or basic landline as work backup. I don't want to give the phone companies back my business. I also don't want to find myself regularly burning prepaid minutes on 2+ hour phone conferences. Driving back to work late at night really stinks too. Hmm... I'm going to risk it again and change nothing.

 

[pittle]

l2trade -

You must live in CA, AZ, or NV. A cable got cut somewhere and internet was painfully slow last night. I did the speed tests too and when checking the Rowland Speed Test site, there was a blog and folks were discussing the problem - including someone (had the little Cox guy for his avatar) who works at Cox was posting regularly that they were working on it. That was one of the first times that we have had a problem with Cox since signing up with them nearly 3 years ago. Our TV worked fine, just problems with internet speed. Cox is better than the Charter service we had for 5 years in another location.

 

[Talent312]

Lesson here is single point of failure with Cox services, which are no where near as reliable as the local electricity, gas and water companies. If this happens a couple more times... I'm going to risk it again and change nothing.

I've been a Cox customer since the 70's. Back then, a mere drizzle would cause a cable outage for hours. Their service may have improved since then, but there's no way that I'd ever trust 'em to hold all the cards.

By contrast, BellSouth-ATT has provided me with 100%-consistently reliable land-line and DSL service. I may be behind-the-times, but I say that trumps the convenience of bundled-service and the possiblity of bundled-failure.

Besides, with these bills paid by charging a credit card automatically, its not like separate billing is even an issue.

 

[l2trade]

Cool. Thanks for the background info.

I thought it was a local service area issue. I understand that is the most common problem for where we live. I get an outage or painful slowness too often (maybe once per month). I cancelled my landline just last month. This was my first phone outage.