William Lurie wrote:

Anyway, Vang, your analysis is complete and thorough and I believe it is
entirely correct. I will probably go back to DSL. But here's another
wrinkle: I have a 4-in-one Lexmark machine. On the same VOIP line, I
seem to be able to send a FAX. If I can find that reliable, I can go
that route for FAXing. And thanks a lot!

Whether or not fax will work seems to depend on the device used. Some
modems (whether as daughtercards or in the motherboard chipset in a
computer or the modem inside a fax machine) are better at doing fax over
VOIP than others. That's why you will see some users of analog data/fax
modems say they can't do fax-over-VOIP but others say it works for them.

Unless you find the fluff features are really necessary that are
included with the VOIP telephony service, there's no reason to include
it unless your ISP is sticking it to you by claiming they will force you
to use it and also pay for it to also get their Internet service. My
ISP has VOIP service but it is far more expensive than MagicJack (but on
the flip side my ISP's VOIP service is more reliable than MagicJack but
not enough to compensate for the infrequent need to use my cellphone
when MJ doesn't work). Personally I believe you should never rely
solely on VOIP as your only telephony service. If you've used broadband
Internet long enough, you know there are outages. I'm not talking about
power outages (because a battery is usually included to keep the VOIP
service alive). I'm talking about the ISP going down which means so
does your VOIP service. Plus that battery won't last forever whereas
the telco has to provide their own reliable power with their POTS
service (on which DSL rides).