faz68 wrote:So the real question becomes, is this just a service for the young folks who also carry around a cell phone, the people who are so cash strapped that this is their best alternative or is this the "real deal", the "game changer" as per the Toronto Star article that got me interested.
This is my opinion, so take it for what it's worth. I believe that it is completely irresponsible from a safety standpoint to rely on freephoneline (or fongo/Dell Voice or any other VoIP system, including the Vonages of the world) as your only communication option. Here's why. Voice over IP systems rely on a number of existing networks, each one a point of failure. In order for a VoIP phone to work, you need (at a minimum) power, access to the internet and functioning VoIP equipment. Here's the problem: power goes out often enough. Internet goes down even more often. Complicated VoIP equipment, which often includes routers, ATAs and possibly PBX systems that also fails every once in a while and your phone will not work until you identify that you have a problem and fix it.
Compare that to a good old Bell phone line. That service will work without power (it provides its own and has generators in case of widespread power outages, such as the 2004 blackout) and certainly without access to internet. In fact, Bell DSL will go down first when something is wrong with Bell's system, the phones will go down absolutely last. I had Bell service for the entire duration of the 2004 blackout. No VoIP service can provide that. Even if you have uninterruptable power supplies or generators, that still doesn't solve your internet problem.
You can avoid most of these problems by having a cell phone. Cell phones are on different systems and are not related to your VoIP equipment, power or access to the internet.
So to answer your question, yes, in my opinion, FPL
is for people who have cell phones as backup (I don't see why they have to be young, my 85 year old grandfather has a cell phone). This is not because there is anything wrong with FPL/Fongo, but because the VoIP system has way too many fault points. I just set up my FPL line to forward to my cell phone when my own system is down. My own system goes down, whether due to an internet screwup or a power failure for about an hour every 3-4 months on average. The FPL system went down twice in the two and a half years that I've been using the service, for a total time of about 20 hours including yesterday. If you do the math over two years, that's 99.89% uptime for FPL. That's pretty good. But you still need a backup phone if you don't want to miss calls or if you have to dial 911.
I haven't had a Bell line in years. I have been using a combination of VoIP (FPL right now, another provider before that) and a cell phone. If all cell phones were rendered unusable and networks fried, my combination would be VoIP + Bell line. Either way, never rely on VoIP alone.
Again, just my $0.02.
