Home Forums Discussions Problems Cable companies providing phone service (NOT VOIP)

We are moving our office next mth and found out that building has cable connection already. The local cable company will give the same set of telephone services (and extra- unlimited calls) and cable internet for 1/2 the price of local phone company. This is not VOIP. This is phone service by cable company.

Any feedback about this setup? My concern is dropped calls for incoming calls. No concern about outgoing calls at all as it would be at our convenience mostly.

Not very many people seem to have this as this is a new endeavor by cable company. Because this is not VOIP I am leaning towards this.

Any feedback will be appreciated.

Regards.

Joseph,

No advice for you on the telephone but, make sure you have already started your paperwork for Medicare. After my move I was 8 weeks without a Medicare check because of their ineptitude.
On the topic, my cable company here was not able to give me enough lines or I would have done it all with them.

Leslie

Sounds interesting Joseph. I can't help either. Please let us know how it turns out. It sounds like you don't like VoIP. Can you tell me why? We considered it, but it didn't work out.

Thank you lstrouse for the tips.

Bert: Re: VOIP: I read this thread here: VOIP does not appear to be ready for prime time in business settings primarily due to the concern, if internet goes down, VOIP goes down too. We want to keep internet and phone system separate.
http://www.emrupdate.com/forums/p/2048/61889.aspx#61889

Regards.

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.

joseph,

Thanks for the link. There is some good information there. There is also a lot of doctors there that have a very poor understanding of Business-grade VoIP. Cable phone systems, as you know, are not necessarily VoIP. I would recommend for anyone considering VoIP that they talk with a representative (in their office) from a privately-owned, busines VoIP company and not Vonage. These would be the companies that would have you purchase special routers and switches and VoIP phones by Cisco, Toshiba, et. al. And, a hybrid VoIP would be the way to go if you can afford it. A land fax line (you need one regular phone line anyway from what I understand) and a another dedicated POTS type line where it switches automatically during a Internet issue. And, there are always cell phones to dial out with. As one person stated, you do need QoS, which allows the special router/VoIP interface (for lack of a better word) to make phone calls priority over data.

It kind of cracked me up, though, when one person said, "We had (past tense)...that is kid of the definition of the word, "had."

I'm with you, though, once again. I can't wait until the pricing comes down with more providers in the market. One day, most ISPs will provide VoIP. The things you can do with VoIP are unbelievable, not the least of which is taking your phone from Bangor, Maine to a conference in San Francisco and plugging the ethernet cable into an Internet cable jack and having a phone which is just like at the office and calling everywhere at local charges.

One can also host his or her own VoIP in his or her own office, but it can get pricey. That's the problem overall with VoIP -- it is rather expensive. Unlike regular phone server where you pay by line connecting as many telephones as you wish at no extra charge, the VoIP phones connect to existing Internet data jacks; and each are referred to as "Seats." Each phone or seat costs per month. So, say a seat is $30 per month, if you have six phones, that would be $180 per month so you have to look at the overall cost.

Finally, and many may disagree with me here, but I believe strongly in the risk/benefit theory. Seroquel works great for Bipolar et al, but you have the risk of dystonic reactions and TD, etc. The patient has to decide. Well, with any technology you have to decide if there is a confidentiality risk. I personally can't worry incessantly about hackers listening in on my phone conversations. I really don't see Aetna, Cigna or BC/BS hiring hackers to listen in one conversations (even if possible) to try to determine if Mr. Smith is on Lipitor or has an MRI tomorrow especially when they already know he is on Lipitor and has an MRI scheduled. Besides the fact they can legally screw up and our patients, so why take the risk of getting caught and being the next Enron?

Remember folks, when the power goes down so does the cable. Our local power company is now owned by a multi-nation (no CCHIT, they many be British, but still, the power grid in foreign hands, tell me that's not crazy, national security???) so we have a lot of outages. Niagara Mohawk is now Nation Grid (I write National Greed on my checks every month). I can't tell you how many times the power has gone out, both by their stupidity or a real storm issue. And everytime, the cable is down, but the good old fashioned hardline phone lines were always up and running. And in such times cell service is spotty too. Most towers have some amount of back-up, but not for too long. During the very small local outages, we still had cell service most times, but during the real bad storms and that summer black out a few summers ago it was real hit or miss....

Unless that can be resolved I will always want at least one good old fashioned hard line....

Thank you all folks for the excellent feedback. Still working on details.

Paul:
Re: Power, that is a very important issue. But if there is no power, we have to close the office anyway and go home. (may be go to nursing home/hospital to see patients- they always seem to have some auxillary power). If power does not come for extended periods of time, patients seem to understand. Even with old telephone line, we have a switch box, which needs power, the battery back UPS will last for say 10 mins and then the phones are dead anyway. Can't do anything. Patients have shown patience so far in those extenuating circumstances.

One close by office have this cable phone. I am waiting for email reply from technical person at that multi doc office.

Somebody suggested calling telephone company and see if they will match this new service charges from their competitor. I personally doubt it, as it is 1/2 of what they are charging. But I will give them a call. Phone companies seem to have Bank hours, whereas cable companies are 24/7/365.

Somebody suggested: if I sign up for cable phone, if it does not work out for whatever reason from Cable company's side, I am not obligated to pay severance fee if I leave half way through. That is an excellent suggestion. But they seem to have boiler plate contracts.

Somebody suggested asking the cable company for a business reference. Cable company says they are searching for doctors office. They seem to have a lot of Churches with cable phones. I always believe God will save us.

I am strongly leaning towards this. May be I can be a early adopter per Geoffrey Moore- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

We got phone service from cable company at home a week ago to try it before I tried at office. So far it seems to be ok. Of course I have ordered a Back UPS to the phone modem, this is not VOIP again, it is separate from internet, they are independent of one another.

Cable company sent a contract. Longer the contract, lesser the price by about 100$ per year. But I will go for 1 yr to try it out.

Friends, now wish me best of luck.

Best wishes.

Good luck Joseph.

Joe,
But with power still in the phonelines you can still at least forward your phone to the answering service like it's a holiday or weekend. Now we have our little phone system (The Panasonic 4 line, wirelss 4000 series) on double back up so we can still use them for a little while. The system itself has a back up for the main unit that lasts about 20 min. to 1/2 an hour, and that is plugged into a UPS that is for the frontdesk AIO's and the phones. Meanwhile all the extentions are battery cordless, so they can run for a good while without power until they drain away.

At least this allows us to run for a few hours in the dark and we have had to once or twice. At least you can try and call folks and let them know not to bother coming in if your main AC server like machine is on a back-up power source to quickly get today's schedule and some phone numbers from. And two of our clients are laptops with batteries of their own anyway and the wireless router in on another UPS that is for the P2P server and Rx printer in the back. We have done it once or twice. Just a thought....
Paul

Just got Charter phone services. Was busy moving last weekend. Closed friday noon and opened monday noon. They are cable company providing phone services with their own network. Amazing people. I wanted this on monday- Presidents day. They did it. Shame on those ....zon company the telephone company with 100 yr experience from Ma Bell. They would not release the number till so and so date. But upon insistence, they relented.

Charter sent an experienced project manager from a town 75 miles away to ensure smooth transition. He said in the end it is a kind of VOIP though the customer service people said otherwise. But it does not go on regular internet.

Working out fine. Faxes are going in and coming in fine. Best of all, this is 50% cost of what I was paying before for same set of services (still have not received the first bill yet. There will be installation fee of $50 per line and $100 for internet, I believe). UNLIMITED CALLS. No need to merge all outgoing faxes to pharmacies. Ring 1 at a time. No care there.

I would recommend this any AC user, take the plunge into the world of cable companies providing phone and fax services, save a bundle (till they catch up with phone companies I guess or till the phone companies like baby bells lowers their price. ....zon would not agree to match the price when I informed of competitor's price).