WiFi VOIP

victor2

I'm trying to help an elderly person looking at going into a care home. Her telephone is her lifeline to friends and relatives.
A potential car home has free WiFi but no provision for corded phones in the rooms. Does anyone have any experience with WiFi enabled VOIP phones? It wants to be self contained (or with a dedicated base unit) so a computer is not required, with it's own capability to connect to a VOIP provider. Does anyone provide the complete package and service?

AJXX

There are plenty of self contained Wi-Fi VOIP phones, although generally will be pricy at £100-£200 for a decent model.

My concern would be running VOIP over what essentially sounds like a free public Wi-Fi hotspot, primarily bandwidth availability if there are several users.

As a general guide, personally I wouldn't bother with VOIP unless you can get a bare minimum upload speed of at least 1.5 Mbps and download speed of 3 Mbps - those figures are a bare minimum, ideally you'll want to see higher numbers for improved performance. You'll get people saying it'll work fine on lower figures, but believe me you'll see regular deterioration of call quality and drop outs/sync issues.

My advise if you're going to go down this route is to visit the care home and run some speed tests before buying any equipment, you can get android/ios mobile speed tests that'll give you a good idea of speeds. It might be with testing the speeds throughout the day if you can, as they may decrease during the evening etc...

My concern would be if they have a shared broadband connection with a poor speed to begin with, all it takes is another resident or staff member in the home watching youtube, netflix, even just using a computer unknowingly downloading a software update in the background and your VOIP phone is next to useless - unless of course they have a router that can prioritise VOIP traffic, but I suspect you maybe asking too much.

In a nutshell, visit the home and do a speed test, if you get at least 1.5 upload and 3 download you'll stand a good chance of it working fine, anything less any you'll have problems down the line (no pun intended).

victor2

AJXX wrote: »

...As a general guide, personally I wouldn't bother with VOIP unless you can get a bare minimum upload speed of at least 1.5 Mbps and download speed of 3 Mbps - those figures are a bare minimum,...

Thanks for those thoughts. Even if the home has fibre, a decent upload speed could become the issue. At least she'll be happy with just voice calls, not video, so I would guess those requirements are more applicable to video calls?
Either way, if more residents start using the WiFi, which is possible with smart TVs, there could always be a bandwidth problem.
Maybe an investigation into which mobile signals are the strongest would be more appropriate and then get her an easy to use mobile with big buttons...

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Simple, PAYG mobile.

RumRat

I'd second the mobile route. In that situation it would be far more reliable.
Doro (http://www.doro.co.uk/mobile-devices.html) make phones especially for the elderly in both smart and dumb formats.
We bought my father one and despite being technically cobbled, he gets on fine with it.

PiratePete

Or you could go down the cell route with one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0084D59TW/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=569136327&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B006W74TIE&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=03XQKQSA27M2QFY5NNYJ

victor2

PiratePete wrote: »

Or you could go down the cell route with one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0084D59TW/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=569136327&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B006W74TIE&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=03XQKQSA27M2QFY5NNYJ

Must admit, the more I consider VOIP, the more a good old mobile sounds like the better solution. Particularly like the one above, which looks like it would be familiar to an elderly person, and easier to use for someone with poor eyesight and hearing.
Just need to find out what good mobile signals there are in the place!

Lube

Mobile route can be cheap we use a payg hand me down phone and 3 3-2-1 tarrif and its cheaper than landline unless you have a call package which we dont.

tronator

AJXX wrote: »

As a general guide, personally I wouldn't bother with VOIP unless you can get a bare minimum upload speed of at least 1.5 Mbps and download speed of 3 Mbps - those figures are a bare minimum, ideally you'll want to see higher numbers for improved performance. You'll get people saying it'll work fine on lower figures, but believe me you'll see regular deterioration of call quality and drop outs/sync issues.

Rubb*sh. I use VOIP for years and "only" have an upload of ~800kbit/s. It all depends on the codec used. The standard here in Europe is alaw, which uses 64kbit/s for each up- and download per call.

Of course, if you do heavy up-/downloads at the same time and your router doesn't prioritise VOIP packets, then you might get drop outs. And that will be the problem with the shared wifi. Firstly it is the signal strength and secondly you'll share the bandwidth with other people.

esuhl

I'd also go down the mobile phone route. I imagine trying to troubleshoot connectivity problems when you don't have access to the router might be tricky.

How much are you going to spend on a wi-fi phone? You can get basic phones for £10 from High Street shops. And my Vodafone subscription works out at £10.50 a month (after cashback). For that I get unlimited UK calls and texts.

forgotmyname

We got the FIL a DORO phone with the emergency 1 button press to call me, even though it was designed tobe easy to use for an older person he somehow kept changing the address book and stored numbers.

I would quite often find new phonebook entries with just numbers and find names deleted and replaced with blank spaces or numbers.

He did like it though and used it a fair bit.