The IT Nerd

I ended my Rogers Home Phone Trial today and I’d thought I’d wrap up a few things. First, I got some e-mails from customers asking me if this was a Voice over IP (VoIP) service. The answer according to Wikipedia is that it is a VoIP type service using Packetcable technology. Not that it matters much as the call quality is impressive. It’s as good as my Bell line for local calls, and surprisingly BETTER in some long distance calls that my wife and I made. The bottom line is that call quality is a non issue. When it comes to price, my wife and I did the math and we could save about $10 a month by switching to Rogers Home Phone vs. keeping our Bell service. Plus we could get more services for our money. That is a VERY good thing from our standpoint. Feature wise, Rogers beats Bell with things like TV Call Display which are very innovative.

So where does Rogers fall apart? The only downside to Rogers Home Phone is that it requires a battery that lasts up to 6 hours to ensure that phone still work in the event of a blackout. For some people, that may not be an issue. But for others it can be a major issue. I have a customer who jut got married to a diabetic and as they unify their lives, they made the decision to dump Rogers Home Phone and go with Bell. The reason being is that the male half of of this relationship and who is the diabetic had his blood sugar drop and got into a situation where he was able to dial 911, but he passed out before he could say anything. Because the phone was working, 911 services were able to trace the call and get help to him. In the end, he survived but had emergency services not arrived in time, he might have died. Their fear is that in the event of a power outage, their phone may not work and a cell phone won’t allow 911 services to find them in the event that they need help. Other people have e-mailed me and left comments in this blog with similar concerns. So if you get Rogers Home Phone, you may want take that into consideration.

So would I switch to Rogers Home Phone? I’d have to get dry loop DSL after I dump Bell (as my DSL comes from a non-Bell provider) and the fact that I am under contract from Bell for the next little while is a consideration. Then there’s the fact that Rogers Home Phone requires a battery to keep the phone service going in the event of a blackout, which is another consideration for me. But the price and call quality make it extremely tempting. Rogers has a winner here, and if they really press their price and call quality advantages, they’d steal a lot of customers from Bell easily. If they could do something about the battery thing, they could crush Bell. So if you’re considering home phone service, you should seriously consider Rogers Home Phone.

Bell should be afraid. Really Afraid.

This entry was posted on February 13, 2010 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.