Digital phone service through cable providers compared to traditional (Anolog) phone service. Any difference?

Question

I understand the TECHNOLGY differences (electronic pulses vs. binary series), I want opinions or experiences from those that have switched from thier phone company to digital phone provided by their local cable provider. Which do you prefer, are they equal in reliability, and any other information or recommendations?

Answer 1

By and large, they are the same in terms of call quality.  I've not noticed any dropoff in the ease of making calls or audio quality from a VOIP (cable, vonage or skype) service compared to an analog phone line.  

The digital phone service will give you several advantages, however.  First, you will get a high-speed internet connection of minimum 5 Mbit per sec. download speed (or faster if you want) . Second, you will get other phone features like Caller ID, 3 Way Calling and Voicemail for free.  Third, you'll pay a flat rate for all domestic calls, so you won't need a long distance plan anymore.  Third, the VOIP service is almost always much cheaper (usually $25 - $30 per mo.) and if you have cable, internet & phone services through 1 company you usually get a discount or a promo rate for several months.

The only drawback I can think of is if you use a lot of operator services (person to person calls or operator assisted 3-way calls, for example) the cable company is not a phone company, so customer service might be lacking.  I've heard customer complaints from that angle, on occasion (especially about Comcast).  But that doesn't apply to most people.

I personally use Vonage and a MagicJack for my home phones and would never go back to using an analog phone.

Answer 2

The biggest difference that you may notice right away is that modems don't work as well.

Modems may include more than you realize.  I'll lump in fax machines, but it also may include your satellite box that hooks to a phone line, your tivo if you use one and aren't using the network option, your house alarm, other alarms that may call out, some medical devices that hook to a phone line, and probably many other things I'm forgetting.

Most of these devices if the modem can be slowed down, will work OK.  For example, many alarm panels only work at 300 or 1200 bps, and generally will work, but a tivo tries to use 56,000 (56k), and won't work over that type of line.  Most devices, like the tivo, there is a trick to slowing the modem down and you can sometimes get them to work.