Any good ones out there? Please don't include Vonage. Thanks.

They're all somewhat r-e-l-i-a-b-l-e, but after trying a couple of
providers, I'm sticking with my landline for now. Too much hiss and
high-pitched tone in the background from these services.

zcarenow@yahoo.com wrote:

Thus spaketh Pat Coghlan:

I get perfect sound, crystal clear, as good and better than a top-notch
landline.

People comment how clear the sound is.

Pat Coghlan writes:

I believe you, but that shouldn't be. True end-to-end voip between a
pair of voip phones will be much cleaner than any POTS conversation.
After all the phone is doing the ulaw encoding in the phone a mere 3
or so feet away from the phone's microphone. You don't have 14kft of
wires to pick up stray signals before the ulaw conversion is done at
the telco.

For the best sound you do need to check that whatever service you are
using is using ulaw encoding. If they are sending compressed data,
you are going to get lower quality than pots.

-wolfgang

I'm talking about noise when calling to the PSTN from a VoIP phone.

The remote (PSTN) party's complaints are that my voice muffled/distant.
On my end, I hear hiss and a high pitched tone when there should be dead
air. I've tried 2 different providers so far, including Vonage.

Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:

Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:

Rick Merrill wrote:

Me, too. :>)

Lena

I've had good luck with

www.sipdiscount.com
www.voicestick.com
www.exgn.net (they really changed their name but that link should still
work)
www.voipjet.com

Good luck!

Thus spaketh Jonathan Roberts:

I use one of their sister services VoIP Stunt, has more free countries,
countries that I do from time to time call.

Any of these hardware independent? Basically, do i have to use
specifically their equipment or can i get any router with phone ports.