I am having problems with my business phone, right now I have a small company for business and Verizon for home, both are located in my house. The problems with the business have been going on for awhile and I think it's time to switch companies since I can't run a business without a phone. My question is this: do the small companies use the same lines as Verizon? So if I switch to Verizon I might have the same problems? It seems to be in their system, not my house. Does anybody have the service Metrocast offers? Is it reliable?
phone company options?
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I could be wrong, but lke the power grid, the telephone lines are shared (and by lines I mean switching gear). A lot of the smaller phone companies basically lease large blocks from Ma Bell and resell. Equipment on your side of the wall might be different from Verizon but once it hits the network they all travel through pretty much the same wires. At some point your carrier might have a switch that might route your calls to another network based on destination.
VoIP isn't all that different, at some point Metrocast puts your call onto a nation wide grid were it is directed to the local telephone company.
If you feel you are having a problem locally, from your handset out to say the local switch, then moving to Metrocast might help. That's the only way to get off the local verizon network.
VoIP isn't all that different, at some point Metrocast puts your call onto a nation wide grid were it is directed to the local telephone company.
If you feel you are having a problem locally, from your handset out to say the local switch, then moving to Metrocast might help. That's the only way to get off the local verizon network.
I've had Broadview Networks for my company's voice and data for probably 8 years now and I've been very satisifed with the reliability and Broadview's response to any problems that did arise. It is on Verizon infrastructure, of course, because there is no other infrastructure. My office is very much in the 'boonies' too, not in the LP area.
One time, a couple years ago, we had a persistent but intermittent problem with the system going out. That was a real PITA for either party to troubleshoot and was the only time that they ever got to pointing fingers at each other instead of getting the problem resolved. It turned out to be a fading/failing connection in some of Verizon's copper cabling between my office and the nearest copper-fiber junction box.
FWIW.
One time, a couple years ago, we had a persistent but intermittent problem with the system going out. That was a real PITA for either party to troubleshoot and was the only time that they ever got to pointing fingers at each other instead of getting the problem resolved. It turned out to be a fading/failing connection in some of Verizon's copper cabling between my office and the nearest copper-fiber junction box.
FWIW.
sockgirl77
Well-Known Member
My office has the MetroCast business multi-line phone setup. It is great. Their business services team is wonderful. A few government agencies switched to them last year and are praising them. 
NattyLight1128
New Member
Go with Vonage
We had nothing but problems with our Verizon line and it always took them forever to fix it. We switched to Vonage and haven't had an issue since (and it's a LOT less expensive).
We had nothing but problems with our Verizon line and it always took them forever to fix it. We switched to Vonage and haven't had an issue since (and it's a LOT less expensive).
If you use a landline (a twirled wire coming into your home from the power pole), indeed the 'last mile' is owned by the same company. At the local switch, a number of telecom providers then connect with ma-bells hardwired connection into your home. Those telecom providers (e.g. broadview) will then lease out that connection to a multitude of providers including VOIP outfits like vonage or magic-jack. So if your problem is indeed related to that 'last mile' wiring between your house and the local office, you are not going to gain anything by switching providers. If the problems are above that (and they often are), changing providers will change things.
DSLs structures basically follow the phone layout with only one provider owning the wire into your house, 3 or 4 providers at the level of the local switch and a bunch of re-sellers that piggyback on those existing connections.
If you have a stable internet connection, you can use VoIP. In that case, the modem in your house converts the voice into a data stream that then uses your internet connection to travel to the central server run by your VoIP provider. From there, it then gets routed back via the telecom network to your local switch to be fed back into the network somewhere local to you (so phonecalls made to your local number show up as local tolling calls). So with VoIP your local phonecall will probably make a round-trip to Kansas City or LA before it goes 3 houses over.
Used to have Verizon business and nothing ever worked. Then used a number of Vonage boxes (terminal adaptors in telcom lingo) for a couple of years. Now I have switched to a multi-line business system from a company called Nuvio that uses actual VoIP phones and something called a 'hosted PBX'. The advantage of using that setup is that if the internet connection goes down, the customers dont get a 'this line is disconnected' or 'call cannot be completed as dialed' but rather they talk to our auto-attendant and the calls can be re-routed to cellphones or other land lines.
DSLs structures basically follow the phone layout with only one provider owning the wire into your house, 3 or 4 providers at the level of the local switch and a bunch of re-sellers that piggyback on those existing connections.
If you have a stable internet connection, you can use VoIP. In that case, the modem in your house converts the voice into a data stream that then uses your internet connection to travel to the central server run by your VoIP provider. From there, it then gets routed back via the telecom network to your local switch to be fed back into the network somewhere local to you (so phonecalls made to your local number show up as local tolling calls). So with VoIP your local phonecall will probably make a round-trip to Kansas City or LA before it goes 3 houses over.
Used to have Verizon business and nothing ever worked. Then used a number of Vonage boxes (terminal adaptors in telcom lingo) for a couple of years. Now I have switched to a multi-line business system from a company called Nuvio that uses actual VoIP phones and something called a 'hosted PBX'. The advantage of using that setup is that if the internet connection goes down, the customers dont get a 'this line is disconnected' or 'call cannot be completed as dialed' but rather they talk to our auto-attendant and the calls can be re-routed to cellphones or other land lines.