Recently, in course of upgrading to HD TV service, unbeknownst to me, I was switched over from Copper phone service (POTS) to VoIP. I had no idea as my spouse was at home. I never would have known except that I suddenly had Caller ID, and found a well beaten Arris TM-602 under the bed, hooked into an unused phone jack.
I don't consider myself to be a Luddite, but do I prefer copper service as it works (usually) when the internet goes down. As if to prove me right, 3 days later there was a cable outage in the area, and we were without phone service for 8 hours. When calling RCN, I requested that it be changed back, and was told that was impossible as within the year, all copper service would be switched over, whether you wanted it or not. Furthermore, the rep told me that this outage couldn't possibly have happened as the TM-602 had a back-up battery and failure like this could never happen since an outage had not been reported (not accepting that a cable failure will do this). (This sounds like what Verizon did on the New Jersey shore after Hurricane Sandy when they refused to reconstruct copper and put people on WiFi boxes instead>)
That said, looking at the condition of the TM-602, and given that I have a newer Netgear CMD-31-T (on the Bring Your Own Modem plan), if figured that since RCN uses the TM-822, and it is the fastest available, I would buy one. Using these (TM-822s) on Comcast and other cable systems is well-documented, and for Comcast will actually to self-activation.
This morning, I called RCN to provision this. The modem part provisioned without difficulty. The phone part did not. In the process of doing this, I was disconnected (switching to cell phone which I forgot to turn on). When I called back, I reached a different person who informed that the modem could not be SIP configured.
This I do not understand. Perhaps wrongly, I would have assumed that a widely used unit, the TM-822, could be configured on just about any provider. Certainly Comcast does it, with a configuration web-page. (And Comcast is the major competitor to RCN in the Boston market.) Given that the rep said it didn't have the appropriate "software" that it needed, I would assume the modem can be "flashed" from the head-end with firmware updates.
SIP is a well-established mechanism for setting up and tearing down "sessions".
I was also told that having this connected results in degradation of the modem data stream. This makes no sense as I assume the is controlled be connection differentiation associated with Quality of Service (QoS) implementation.
If I have to use an RCN-provided modem, I'm not sure I can even rent one. In a previous conversation, a rep was essentially providing a "take-it-or-leave-it" proposition, not something I was very pleased about being 14-year RCN subscriber.
Even so, RCN seems to forget that Boston is an area that does have competition, namely Comcast. Although I am not thrilled with Comcast in California (monopoly there), it does remain an option.
Helpful suggestions welcomed...
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