Optimum Phone Service - Spotty??? archived

I have Optimum for my Internet, TV, and phone. All's been basically OK (occasional outages in bad weather, but just occasional) until recently.

Internet is fine, TV seems to be fine, but my phone reception is abysmal. I'll be in the middle of a call, and I hear the person on the other end saying, "hello? hello?" and I realize they can't hear me. Also? My voice seems to be transformed. The other day, the person to whom I was speaking told me I sounded like a "robot".

I am not sure if it's really Optimum or my phones, although it happens on all three phones in the house (I use cordless; not sure if there is a correlation - and as mentioned, this only just begun).

Has anyone else experienced subpar phone service/reception with Optimum? And was Optimum able to do anything to remedy the situation? Or was it your phone?

TIA!

Phone service is the worst! We pay only 14.95 a month for it, but as a triple player we complained. We had optimum come out and replace wires outside last month. We were told the connections were rusted out. Service is better, but we continue to experience occasional outages.

Have had the service since August -- and I think its great. Quality fantastic, never a dropped line.

That said, Cablevision replaced the outside lines to the house, maybe 1 yr ago, because the internet service kept cutting out. Said it was squirrels chewing the cables... Since then no complaints.

It may have more to do with your internet connection and modem...

I have it also and have minimal issues until last week when unexpectedly, for no reason I lost all three services (with the exception of HBO oddly enough). They insisted it was an inside problem before sending someone out, and he never even stepped foot in the house. It is a problem with the lines and/or signal strength. Bottom line is it took almost 4 days to remedy the situation and I am annoyed.

I will continue to use the service but really make sure to email or call to make sure they know how often we have even minor issues, this way if and when another big problem arises there will be info on record about past problems.

I am trying to contact Optimum, but I can't via phone, and now the Internet is acting up as well.

Was talking on the phone with the Big Esses, and we got cut off in the midst of the conversation. They have Optimum as well; we were not sure if it was their phone or mine.

This stinks.

There are so many things to go wrong, many of them unregulated in quality, between "here" and "there" on the internet. With web browsing, it only slows things down, but with voice, it distorts or drops the audio. VOIP is nice because it's flexible and inexpensive, but these quality problems are part of the price we pay. I wish the VOIP providers were honest about this.

Ive never had a problem with Sunrocket or my current Provider Vonage. I bet the culprit is the speed of the internet. After work when everyone gets home cable internet speed usually plumets. I recommend Verizon Fios with Vonage.
Disclaimer: I'm a Verizon Employee.

Felix, this morning, for the first time, I thought about switching to Verizon. I went to turn on The Today Show - nothing. Picked up my phone - nothing. Logged on to Optimum, just to see if I missed a payment - and my payment wasn't even due yet.

No excuse for this.

So your internet was working but the phone and tv werent?? Strange cause it goes over the same lines.

No, I picked up wireless from elsewhere.

My internet has been ok as well as cable. The phone is ok, but the quality isn't the greatest. For a VoIP service I think Comcast had better phone.

I hear a faint background echo on my calls.

Mine is worse than just an echo. It's that robot effect after several minutes on the phone.

Rather unprofessional sounding on a work call.

Most of the time, the Internet and cable are fine. It's the phone that is problematic.

VOIP has different requirements than web surfing and email. Web surfing requires high speed but can forgive small breaks in transmission. If you have to wait for a page to load, it's no big deal. You don't even notice delays of a few hundred milliseconds. But this is a disaster with audio.

Have you told them of your problems? They ought to be able to find the problem.

If they can't find the problem within a reasonable amount of time, and if you use your phone for work, I suggest switching to another phone service. Since the problem could be in the wiring from your house to Cablevision's node, switching to another VOIP service won't be better. You'd have to go back to copper twisted pair with a local phone company or forward to FIOS.