Hello? VoIP's dial tone mystery

I was talking to ITJourno's Simon Sharwood yesterday when I got the feeling he wasn't listening to my eloquent musings any more. Turns out he wasn't being rude. The VoIP phone he uses at his office had gone dead and the line was silent. No "beep beep" to say that the line had been lost. All the more strange because our office is not on VoIP.

That's a real shortcoming, and proves that while VoIP is the great PSTN killer, it's still a long way from offering all the basic service elements. Is this a widespread problem? First time it's happened to me.

Comments

[robirwin]

Yep, I've had that a few times in the past. So have colleagues. A royal PITA.

[Simon Sharwood]

I used My NetFone to begin with. It dropped out occasionally and had poor sound quality.
Now I am with iiNet and wonder how to get out of the contract.
Half the calls expire. With no warning.
iiNet blames it on hardware they do not support. But even people with hardware iiNet resells and supports have the same issues.
Even if you buy the stuff iiNet resells, if there's a problem they pass you on to the vendor.
Silly old me for thinking the bleeding edge was a safe place for a sole trader's business to be ...