As I mentioned before Bend Broadband does sponsor this blog. They have an ad right up there on the top right of this page (which is now linked to the service I’m going to talk about). Part of my agreement with putting up their ads was that I reserve the right to post commentary about their services and products, and this is going to be one of those times.
BendBroadband has introduced a new home phone service. Starting at $40/month (assuming you already have cable TV and high-speed internet with them, otherwise the price goes up), you get unlimited local and long distance phone calls in the lower 48 states, caller ID, voice mail, and a whole slew of additional features.
But $40? Yes, it’s a pile of great features, and since it’s the cable company they can probably give traffic priority to your voice calls and there’s always the convenience of having it everything on one bill (which is Qwest’s big pitch). But it just doesn’t seem worth it to me unless you make a lot of long-distance calls (which I don’t) and even then you can get services like Vonage that are quite a bit cheaper and provide just as many features. Talking to the folks at BendBroadband, they’re considering a “lite” option for folks who don’t need long distance access, but it’ll still probably be too expensive for me. I spend a grand total (including all stupid fees) of $25/month on my phone service from Qwest. I don’t need any of that fancy additional services crap — I just want a phone that will work all the time at a cheap rate. Heck, even if you wanted all those features that BendBroadband provides, there are other local phone companies like BendTel that provide all those services over your regular phone line — no special equipment required — at a very decent price.
So for now, this will be a service of theirs I’m going to avoid, mostly because of the cost, but if anybody else has any input or has tried it (they’re currently rolling out in the Redmond/Terrebone area with Bend coming next month), let me know! I told them I’d be a beta tester if they wanted a review, but haven’t heard back on that one yet (not holding my breath).
Comments
Make sure they provide free 911 calling… dont want another Houston(where i live) fiasco happening again.
what happened in houston?
I’m curious, too….
Unicom offers residential phone service too and DSL that’s pretty cheap.
basically if i remember correctly this was a few months ago where the broadband company vonage provided service and neglected to mention you have to pay extra for 911 calls, it is not included, so then this
happened and that opened the eyes of people didnt even know and the texas AG sued vonage and by that time i think the article mentioned at least 100,000 people were signed up and werent getting 911 service.
I think the FCC requires them to provide 911 service. I do remember hearing stories like this as well though, with the FCC rule being the result.
As an aside, recently my brother tried calling 911 from his cell phone. His service provider had it ring into Phoenix over 150 miles away from Flagstaff were he called from.
BendBroadband Phone does support 911 service and has a battery backup included in the event of a power outage–unlike Vonage.
If you call 9-1-1 on your Bend Broadband phone system, will your address automatically appear on the enhanced 9-1-1 screen at dispatch? Many of these VOIP systems do not allow that, and so you must be able to tell the dispatcher your address, something that can’t always occur (fires, domestic violence assaults, kids that don’t know their address, etc).
According to their specs, Eric, the address does get sent to the dispatcher.
Yes, our E911 feature will automatically display the address where your BendBroadband phone service is located. If you are at a different address you need to notify the dispatcher and it is important to keep your account information up to date with BendBroadband as well.
The Vonage E911 service is rolling out changes that will allow your calls to be routed with address info as well.
I have 0 complaints about my Vonage service, and the price is great. I looked at Comcast to provide phone, but the cost was similar, and Vonage is $25/month for everything.
I also do use my router to prioritize the port that the voice service is on. I haven’t noticed any degradation in quality, no matter what I’m doing…
When you are talking about a battery backup, do you mean at the customer’s home? I cant see how a $50 piece of equipment justifies an extra $15 monthly, at least for more than a few months……