Mark Gibbs writes about PhoneGnome
Mark Gibbs, over at Network World reviewed PhoneGnome and includes a brief report in his recent article: Connecting existing phones to VoIP
At $120 PhoneGnome provides an interesting, sophisticated and powerful single-line, standards-based VoIP service.
Overall, Mark’s comments are extremently positive. The one statement that concerns me is where he says “One disappointment: the PhoneGnome won’t initialize without a POTS line!” This complaint is somewhat baffling. Unlike the countless rabble of me-too VoIP products and services, PhoneGnome is specifically designed to be different. It is specifically designed for those that want to meld the best of a traditional POTS line with the best of VoIP. PhoneGnome works with both a customer’s landline and VoIP at the same time, seamlessly bringing VoIP and POTS together on the same phone. And, unlike any other product, PhoneGnome brings VoIP features to that landline (like voicemail-to-email, call forwarding to VoIP phones, and other features that work on calls to your plain POTS line).
There are lot’s of good reasons for having landlines. Mark’s article even hints at one of them as a teaser to a future article where he talks about problems when your broadband connection stinks. With PhoneGnome, one always has at the ready a traditional landline when they are having “a bad broadband day.” In fact, PhoneGnome will automatically use the landline when the broadband connection goes down (or use broadband when the landline is down, something people in New Orleans know about). These are just some of the many reasons why many people want to retain a landline, and why Consumer Reports suggests doing so (See “Internet Phoning” in the Feb. 2005 issue). As a simple practical matter, broadband is required for VoIP and a large percentage of broadband users are on DSL where they must retain a landline. With PhoneGmome, DSL users can now obtain the cost savings and feature benefits of VoIP on their old landline!
Maybe that’s why this statement about disappointment struck a chord. It means we failed to make our point with Mark clearly enough, which means we aren’t making the point, generally, as well as we could be.
Anyway, I thank Mark for taking the time to review PhoneGnome and we’re very pleased to see his generally highly favorable assessment.
November 1st, 2005 at 12:12 pm
“The one statement that concerns me is where he says ‘One disappointment: the PhoneGnome won’t initialize without a POTS line!’ This complaint is somewhat baffling. This complaint is somewhat baffling. Unlike the countless rabble of me-too VoIP products and services, PhoneGnome is (snip, snip, snip)”
PG is indeed pitched differently but it is still part of the VoIP market and not so different that you can afford to miss a trick. My office is wired so that I only have VoIP to my desk and getting access to a POTS line required running a 100′ cable from the nearest jack. Sure, I still have a landline but that’s backup — both my house and office numbers were transferred to VoIP — and the POTS line is only available in the comms cupboard until I get the switchboard installed.
I like the fact that the PG can fall back to VoIP or POTS — it is a very clever feature which is exactly why having to set up with a working POTS line doesn’t make sense to me. Associating a POTS line should be optional. In fact given PG’s pricing I would have thought there was a strong market in replacing and adding extensions in SMEs and SOHOs where a POTS line may not be relevant or available.
I like the product (although that call screening feature turns out to be unacceptable to lots of non-sales callers who just seem to loose their minds and hang up … who knew?).
Cheers,
Mark Gibbs.
November 4th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
If POTS is a REQUIREMENT, that is unfortunate. There is nothing wrong with making POTS an OPTION and if it exists and can be detected, it provides extra features. Should take that much extra coding to do a detection pass for POTS and if it exists use it.
Too many items on the market today dictate how users MUST use the product. By doing so, they often limit the scope of their sales needlessly.
It is your companies decision to do so, but I can’t say I understand the reasoning.
Is it possible this could be fixed with a software update of some sort?
November 17th, 2005 at 12:47 am
The issue is, without the POTS line, it becomes a so-called “replacement” service. Without the POTS line, where does the user get the phone number? And where do they get 911? And how do they place phone calls?
What does a PhoneGnome-like product look like without the landline? What does it do? What is it used for?