Switching over to VoIP

Looks like we are going to need to switch over to VoIP. Our ISP, from whom we are getting a consistent 50 down/5 up Internet service, has provided us with an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) into which we connect our basic cordless phone. The other end connects to a RJ45 socket on the router. Our sound quality is very poor. It could be that both our - very well reviewed - ~$50 AT&T cordless phones are mediocre. Maybe.

I understand that we could purchase a VoIP phone, which would also plug into the ATA, and likely have much better performance. I’d love some guidance and product recommendations. I am open to further troubleshooting too.

Where are you located?

FYI a NY friend got a Vonage account around 18 years ago, moved to Israel, and plugged in his Vonage box when he got there, and has had a Brooklyn phone number there ever since.

Interesting and I do not fully understand the Vonage ecosystem. I am in Oakland CA. Thanks @bowline

If your cordless phone sounded good on a normal line then it’s probably not the culprit. VoIP lines can sound either very good or very bad depending on the codec that’s selected. There is a codec negotiation process that takes place when your ATA registers on the system and the best available codec should be selected but it can also be forced by the system. Your provider is only interested in you using the least amount of bandwidth as possible. You could try asking for better quality but I think the chances are very slim that they will do anything for you.

Also bear in mind that the bad quality could also be the other side, if you find that calls to certain numbers sound better than others.

It’s pretty clear to me that traditional calling methods (landline/pseudo landline/cellular) are all sounding like crap nowadays as companies are no longer incentivised to keep those services. This is why I call almost every time with FaceTime or Whatsap and use traditional dialling only when I have to.

Nothing special about it. It’s like most consumer home VOIPs: you get a box you plug into your router, then plug a phone into the VOIP box and you get a dial tone. There’s a lot of competition these days so I don’t know how Vonage stacks up - I’ve heard good things about Ooma, which I now see was top-rated by Consumer Reports (followed by Magic Jack and then Vonage) when tested in 2018.

I had Vonage two decades ago for a couple of years. Now, I just have Google Voice on iOS as a 2nd line (I’ve had it for over a decade), and I have a couple of temporary VOIP phone# apps on iOS, Burner and Hushed, which I’ve only used once apiece, I think.

My parents have used Magicjack for years (maybe 6? and some other VOIP service 4 years prior to that) and day-to-day it’s totally useable. Call quality is as least as good as regular phone lines. They often will take it when they travel for extended periods and just plug it into ethernet wherever they are. There are occasional glitches (probably less than 5% of the time) where you can’t hear the other person or it’s garbled, but usually hanging up and redoing the call fixes it. So it’s slightly less stable than traditional landlines but given how much cheaper it is and it’s usually easy to “fix” the occasional glitch, the trade-off is worth it. At least it has been for them.

This, but also cordless phones on the other hand, seem to have gone downhill for years now. I don’t know how many times they had to replace them.