Sticking It To The Telco Man!

On January 26th, 2008, I sent the following e-mail to friends and family:

Hi everyone,

This is just to let you know that I can now be reached at 416-883-9507. Kindly discard all other numbers you may have for me. For those of you on Skype and VBuzzer, my user name under those systems is: "dave-the-volleyball-guy". As always, it is extremely unlikely I will answer these live unless I am expecting your call. As such, be prepared to leave a voicemail or better yet please just send me an e-mail if it is not urgent.

Going with these Internet telephony systems basically gives me phone service every bit as good as Bell or Rogers for less than $65 U.S. per year. With my cell phone, I was paying upwards of $500 a year! Actually, the VOIP route is better because I can call anywhere in Canada and the U.S. for nothing. If you're interested in the full story, then please visit my Web page at: {this page}.

This page will serve to expand upon what was said for the purpose of educating others interested in breaking free of the Bell, Telus, Rogers, etc. monopoly. Although it's just a drop in the ocean, I have denied further profits to the automotive and fossil fuel industries by doing my part for the environment and taking transit instead. Just as I have chosen not to worship at the altar of the mighty automobile, so am I now breaking free of the big telecommunications companies. Yes, I could have gone with Vonage and other services which allow you to connect your phone to the Internet. The thing is that they also charge around $40 per month ... So what would be the point exactly?

Basically, I use Skype Pro for my outgoing calls ($36 U.S. per year) and VBuzzer's " BuzzMe " service ($25 U.S. per year) for my incoming calls just like this guy here. I would like to use Skype for both but the company has taken the bizarre position of not offering incoming service to Canadian customers. They claim this is because the CRTC won't let them offer the service since they don't include 911 capabilities. This is a pack of lies because other companies like VBuzzer are able to sell numbers (also known as Direct Inbound Dialing or DIDs) with Canadian area codes and without 911. Some people might consider these shortcomings to be showstoppers. I think not. For a yearly savings of over $400, I don't mind using a PC headset to make/take my calls and running to my security gatehouse (which is something I would have to do anyway) if I ever need them to call 911.

After all this, I know there will still be many cyberphobic people out there crossing their arms, shaking their heads and saying, " No, I don't want to use a computer as my telephone and I am willing to pay over $500 a year to avoid doing that. ". I can respect that but if you ever visit my house and need to make a call then you won't have much of a choice unless you have a cell phone.

Actually, in the future you might not have a choice at all. New technology replaces old. That's just a basic fact of life. Don't believe me? How many people do you know still use beta VCRs? Vinyl record albums? Around the turn of the century, I predicted digital photography would completely supplant film photography within about five years. I was laughed and scoffed at. Nowadays, if you go into a camera store and try to buy a film camera, YOU will be the one laughed and scoffed at. I agree that the telephone issue will be a much tougher nut to crack but I can assure you the genie is already out of the bottle. Personally, I look forward to that wonderful day when all voice communications will be conducted by Internet and telephones are relegated to mere footnotes in history. Let's see what happens in five years! Until then, have fun paying almost 10 times what I am paying ...

P.S.: Speaking of footnotes in history, here is where I was 3 years ago. I say good riddance to the stupid cellphone. I get (at most) about a half dozen calls per month! $40 for 6 calls? Ridiculous. In my opinion, cell phones (and phones in general, for that matter) are for people who don't know how to use e-mail properly.

Reactions

Here are a couple of comments I received as replies to the above e-mail which you may find interesting. The first is from my cousin's son who is a Bell employee:

"You can't be serious that it's every bit as good as Bell home phone service in terms of quality and reliability..."

My response:
{edit} Granted, perhaps the phrasing " every bit as good " was a slight exaggeration. However, for my purposes I think 80 to 90% as good is just about fine for me. Don't forget, I do 90 to 95 percent of my communicating by e-mail. Earlier this decade as the Internet became more prevalent in our lives, I began to use my landline less and less until it got to the point where a thick layer of dust was accumulating upon it.

At the end of the day, here are my two choices:
1) Pay $500 a year for " clear and reliable " Bell service and be pestered by telemarketers. Without a word of a lie, four out of five calls I would get would be from these time wasters.
2) Pay $61 a year for VOIP services that are 80 to 90% as good for the maybe half-dozen times during the course of a month that I need to use the phone. Even then, most of those calls take less than a minute.

For many people, traditional phone service with a major telecommunications company like Bell is a necessity. I AM NOT ONE OF THESE PEOPLE! Like I said on my web page, I know your company offers VOIP service but if it is not going to be significantly cheaper then who cares?

Sorry dude, but the writing is on the wall and has been for some time as more and more people say to hell with long distance charges. You might want to take my comments to your marketing people as a wake-up call ... no pun intended! Bye for now ...

This from a friend of mine:
"Hey Dave!

Yeah, I have been looking at going VOIP but they keep telling me they can't give me my old number,. and I have to have high-speed internet at at least 1.5 MB/sec... which then causes me to have to upgrade my internet and then all savings are lost...

and you are using SKYPE? I tried using that and even bought a SKYPE capable phone but it just doesn't seem to connect... although I am on Rogers Ultra Lite highspeed... figuring maybe its too slow... (256 K)

My response:
{Edit} I have been putting off doing the VOIP thing for a while but since my cell is expiring next month I figured it was time to get my ass in gear. From the research I did (a couple of hours on Friday night and a couple more yesterday morning), you only need about 80 K of bandwidth for most of the services. I did see one piece of hardware you can buy which sits between your cable modem and router which basically reserves just enough bandwith for the service to operate properly. Sorry, I forget the website but you can do your own research if you're interested.

I tried Skype for the first time yesterday. I called Rogers to (ironically) cancel my cell plan. OK, the representative and I had to repeat a couple of things due to dropped packets but for $36 per year, who cares? I am wondering why you bought a Skype phone. Why not just use a PC Headset? You can usually get these for as low as $5 in most computer stores.

By the way, there is a good chance HP will be packing up shop and moving to Spectrum Way just south of the airport in late April. Obviously I have my fingers crossed that this won't happen but if it does then we should get together sometime. Tell the boys I said hi and remind them that people who don't use e-mail are invisible to me!