ymhee. Things to consider. Actual customers who also spend time on forums are quite low. Any forum; whether it's voip, PC's, cars, sports, guns, etc... usually make up less than 5% of users. I.e. The voipo forum has 27,006 members. How many of them are somewhat regular members? Very few. Also; there's probably a considerable amount more voipo customers than 27,006. Next; when it comes to forums, the majority of posts are either by regulars who are hobbiests and are really into the subject, (Geeks); or it's an individual looking for the answer to a specific question or problem. Once found, they go generally go away again until the next problem. Same with any type of forum. Bottom line, forums are a poor source to determine good/bad of a subject. Rarely do users search out a forum to say what a wonderful product or service it is.

Also, the majority of voip users, whether it's voipo, vonage, or whomever, have the most basic of home network setups, and experience little to no problems. Most have a combo dsl/cable modem/router/wireless. Some have a separate wireless router. They have maybe 1 hardwired PC and possibly a wireless laptop. The average user isn't streaming heavy data, aren't worried about QOS, don't have a need for static IP's, aren't downloading torrents, etc...

The best management tool VoipO can use to determine their product/service is to look at their trouble logs. Compare total number of users with total number of trouble tickets. I.e. If Tim or another VoipO member tells us they have 100,000 voipo customers, and that their call center receives approximately 100 trouble tickets per day (Not related to HOW DO I type questions); then they can judge the quality of their availability and reliability. They can also determine if certain problems are consistent with all technologies or ISP's or if it's random. I know you think that a company like voipo should strive to increase their product/service compatibility with individual's networks, ISP, etc..., but too many things affect that. When I run into people with problems with their voip, the first thing I have them do is to run only their voip. No computers, no netflix, no printers, no wifi, etc... Just their internet, modem, and voip. Then, they can at least narrow the problem to Voip/WAN/ISP or Voip/Network/Lan. There are too many different manufacturers of routers, modems, PC's, operating systems, ISP, etc... to try and make a product like Voip work with every single one of them. Now, if we could ever get rid of "Net Neutrality" or find other ways to sector off and channel real time traffic like voip and video conferencing, then we'd probably no longer have most of these problems.

Greenlatern: My home phone system is VoipO and I use a PAP2 with about 10 analog phones in the house. At work, I have my own telephone network with a few thousand lines. It is made up of approximately 15 PBX/gateways scattered around the state. It's a combination of digital, analog, and voip phones. It combines DID's from Ma'Bell, PRI T1 lines, local CO trunk lines, Interconnectivity between them all using DSL, Point to Point T1 lines, Metro Ethernet, and my own Statewide Microwave network. It is the ultimate hybrid. But even with it being my own network with just DID/CO Trunk to go off-net, I still have issues occasionally. Sometimes the voip calls sound choppy to customers. Sometimes digitized. It is not uncommon for one of my phone calls to go digital/analog/VOIP, converted to voip, over a T1, back to a gateway, over my own microwave network, to my main-brain PBX, routed over a DSL or Metro-Ethernet, to another gateway, converted back to non-voip/digital, off load to a PRI or CO trunk to Ma-Bell, to a private phone. Overall, my work phone system is very reliable and most customers are happy with it. We have a lot of backup routing if something goes down. But there are still customers who complain. Some have old monitoring equipment and must have an analog line so they can still use a dialup modem. Some prefer using digial pbx style phones. Believe it or not, very few actually like using the VOIP phones.