Bill,

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 08:35:22 -0700, William "Chops" Westfield wrote:

> 
> On Aug 30, 2005, at 3:19 AM, Howard Winter wrote:
> 
> > Currently standalone VoIP phones cost about three times the
> > budget that Russell stated ...
> 
> But a VoIP phone is fundamentally simpler than a cell phone, for
> instance, and cell phones are routinely 'free' here.  

That's only because they're tied-in to a contract - you try buying them without a contract and you'll find 
they're darned expensive ($hundreds).

> And you don't need a VoIP "phone" to do a VoIP based phone system.
> You can do translation at the "central office" where there used
> to be a phone switch...

But most of the telephone network is digital nowadays anyway - maybe not IP but the local loop is the only 
thing that's guaranteed to be analogue, so if you leave that as it is there isn't much advantage to going VoIP 
for the rest, swapping one digital system for another.

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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