One of the complexities of life

In the gym today there were two guys discussing the annoyance of some internet services. I've recently gone to a VOIP phone system in my office which allows me to use an extension in my home which looks, feels and acts like another office phone.

With the right set-up one can operate an office almost anywhere. But we began to talk about alternatives. One guy said he was having trouble with AT&T in getting a static IP address. Getting the techs to make things right is tough, even if you know something about it.

A few months ago we dropped Vonage and switched to Comcast for our phone service. Both are VOIP, both are less than traditional phone lines. Both use some out sourced help desks. But Vonage relies almost exclusively on a call center in India. I found in working with their people that their English was not entirely up to par and more importantly they could not communicate effectively about how to fix a problem. When we switched to Comcast, we got better phone service but more importantly we also got a tech who could come to the house and fix stuff when the phone support did not work. That is certainly worth a lot more than the few bucks a month one pays more than Vonage.