joseph,
Thanks. I remember when I first started here, since I was setting things up the way I wanted, I was excited about VoIP. I had spoken with a local (commission only) sales guy for two years on and off. We were looking that way and even bought the special LinkSys switch you have to have with POE ($900). You also need a different firewall/router, which is quite pricey, but I never got that far.
We were reaching our deadline and my practice consultant was pushing for conventional phones. We would use the fax line to use if the Internet went down, but we would only have one line then. In retrospect, Internet has gone down twice, once for two hours but once for 24 hours. And, they never tell you it's down with a fax or something. And, of course, you need good bandwidth up, too.
So, of course, as the very same time I was talking to the Hosted VoIP guy in Portlan, Maine; the local commission-only person quit. I am not sure with you, but I had like two questions with regular phone (the cost and when are you setting up). But, with VoIP, since I was new to it, I had about 1,000 questions, literally. It's just that different. But, you can do so many things with it.
But, the final straw was when the President/Owner/CEO of the company (fairly small) had to be in labor with his wife (understandably) but couldn't talk with me. He actually told me this wasn't a good time for me to buy anything from him. Well, that was the end of that.
But, you are right. I don't think it is ready for prime time just yet.
