Yes I am very happy that I am now running at full speed on my Internet.
Also, yes, you do need a decent amount of bandwidth to host a VoIP server (Voice over IP). However, when I was running my server I was easily able to have 4 people on the VoIP and have a dedicated 3 person game server ALL running on a 384x128 DSL.
The nice thing about GameVoice is you are able to adjust how much bandwith the server will use and how many people will be alowed on it. What I did was setup the VoIP server to Mixing Mode (combine all outgoing traffic into a single transmit) instead of Forwarding Mode (get a stream; send a stream) and set my bandwidth limitation at High Compression (4Kb streams). Other stream settings are LAN mode (32Kb), Low Compression (8Kb), and Very High Compression (1.4Kb). With using the Mixing Mode and Medium Compression (4Kb) options, my old pathetic DSL was able to handle at least 4 people with only about 1 second delays between sends and recieves.
One last thing, it was free
Like I said before, its about time Microsoft started doing something right. Other than that, I probably share your feelings on the whole MS situation. This was just simple, quick, and works.
Also, having a separate line for Voice Chat from the Game server gets more bandwidth to each server and user.
You do have 384K upstream, dont you? That should be more than enough for an 8 person chat server.