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AT&T VoIP called a breakthrough

By MIKE LANGBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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AT&T's new CallVantage service for making unlimited phone calls through the Internet is nothing less than a breakthrough.

CallVantage is priced lower than similar all-you-can-eat packages from local phone companies such as SBC and Verizon, yet offers exciting features and appears — at least in my weeklong test at home — to be reliable.

What has been a trickle of consumers shifting from regular home phone lines to voice-over-the-Internet, or VoIP, should quickly become a flood as people begin to recognize the superiority of CallVantage and competing VoIP services.

What is VoIP? In computerspeak Voice Over Internet Protocol. In English Making phone calls over the Internet

AT&T is now rolling out CallVantage (www.callvantage.com) nationwide. The service was launched in late March.

For $39.99 a month, CallVantage provides unlimited local and long distance calling throughout the United States; there's a discount to $19.99 a month for the first six months, available until May 31.

Here's the catch. CallVantage works through a home broadband connection — typically a cable modem or DSL line that costs $30 to $50 a month. So the combined cost would be $60 to $80 month, while SBC now charges only $50 a month for a wired phone line with unlimited and local and long distance.

But if you've already got broadband, VoIP is starting to look like one of the best perks for making the leap to broadband because of what AT&T calls "advanced features," tricks no wired or mobile phone can perform today.

Advantages of VoIP Unlimited local and long-distance calls for one monthly fee. Basic features include call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding and three-way calling. Receive your voice mail on your computer as small digital sound files. You can arrange for several of your phone numbers — such as home, office and cell — to ring simultaneously or in sequence when there's an incoming call. You can set a specific time of day for your line to automatically go into "Do Not Disturb" mode. You can arrange conference calls bringing together as many as 10 people. Disadvantages of VoIP Phones won't function during power failures. Phones don't give the caller's location to 911 emergency operators.

With CallVantage you can, for example, receive your voice mail as small digital sound files attached to electronic-mail messages. You can arrange for several of your phone numbers — such as home, office and cell — to ring simultaneously or in sequence when there's an incoming call.

You can set a specific time of day for your line to automatically go into "Do Not Disturb" mode, where all incoming calls are sent to voice mail instead of ringing the phone. And you can arrange conference calls bringing together as many as ten people.

This comes on top of a full set of basic features, including call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding and three-way calling.

Tips on getting started

VoIP for the home is so new that getting started with CallVantage can be confusing. Let me walk you through the process.

• You start by signing up for service at CallVantage's Web site. In most cases, you have the option of transferring your existing home number to CallVantage.

Alternatively, you can select a new number in the same area code or — here's where it gets interesting — in a completely different area code. If you moved to San Jose from Boston, for example, you can order a CallVantage line with a 617 area code. Friends from Boston can then make local calls to your phone in San Jose.

• AT&T next sends you a silver and gray box, the size of a large paperback book, called a Telephone Adapter, or TA. Delivery is usually within five days.

You unpack the TA and plug the unit into your cable or DSL modem. You then plug your computer into the TA. Or, if you have a home network, you plug the router into the TA. This is where things can get hairy, as I'll explain below.

• The final step is connecting any standard phone to a jack on the TA. You go to an activation page on CallVantage's Web site and get a dial tone in less than two minutes.

The phone connected to the TA works the same way as a regular wired line for placing and receiving calls. The only difference is that you must dial 1 and the area code for all calls, even local.

From CallVantage's Web site, you can easily control the advanced features and view call logs going back 60 days, showing the phone number, date and time for both received and dialed calls. There's also a phone number to call for retrieving voice mail and other basic tasks, to use when you're away from home and can't get to a computer.

Pioneer territory

In my weeklong test, conducting in my home office using a Comcast cable modem, the advanced features were easy to understand and worked as advertised. Thanks to the call log, I know that I placed 58 calls and received 23 calls — proving I spend too much time on the phone.

Call quality was consistently good. There was never sudden disconnects or fade outs, as can happen with computer-to-computer voice calls, and people on the other end of the line didn't know I was using VoIP until I told them. Nor did my computer network run any slower whenever I committed the increasingly common sin of talking on the phone while checking e-mail.

However, as I said, VoIP is still pioneer territory with pitfalls to trap the unwary.

In many cases, home networks may not initially talk to the TA. That's what happened to me, and the solution required an hourlong call to AT&T's tech support line for CallVantage. A friendly, patient and knowledgeable technician walked me through a process called MAC cloning that isn't detailed in CallVantage's slender installation manual.

CallVantage and other VoIP phones won't function during power failures, because both TAs and broadband modems need electricity. For that reason, I'd recommend anyone shifting to VoIP retain either one wired phone line or keep a fully charged mobile phone handy.

VoIP phones also don't give the caller's location to 911 emergency operators, another reason for retaining a wired line. If you're a DSL customer, you might not have a choice — you can't get DSL service in California without at least one wired phone line.

CallVantage or other VoIP services can't guarantee you won't encounter occasional hiccups, because the providers don't control every step of a phone call routed through the Internet.

Still, I have no hesitation in recommending CallVantage as a second home phone line. The price is right, and almost everyone should find something to like in the roster of advanced features.

Increased competition

Best of all, there's intense competition emerging in the home VoIP market — a stark contrast to the sluggish local phone companies coasting into their second century of monopoly service.

A number of aggressive startup companies set up shop ahead of AT&T. The biggest and best-known is Vonage (www.vonage.com), which has an unlimited calling plan to $29.99 from $34.99. I tried Vonage in March 2003 and was disappointed with the call quality, but the company has since improved its TA hardware and customer support.

Vonage is now ahead of CallVantage in some areas, offering free calls to Canada, lower rates for international calls and a "soft phone" that allows Vonage calls to be placed and received using a computer instead of a phone.

All of which is nothing but good news for consumers. The struggles between AT&T, Vonage and the other VoIP providers will quickly give us better call quality, even more new features and lower prices. Regular wired phones suddenly seem very tired.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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