Vonage

[Guest db99wj]

Well any experiences?

This isn't about to have a home phone or no home phone. I have Bellsouth err AT&T, I pay $55 per month, which I just found out that around $5 is for long distance minutes. So far this year, I have picked up the land line phone to make a call.......none, nada, zip, not once. Wife and kids do but I don't. I have been on that same phone for about a total of 15 minutes (answering the phone)

Anyway, Vonage, for $14.99 you get 500 minutes of local and long distance. You get voicemail, caller id, forwarding, some other stuff, Uses your interweb connection, you can get caller id on your computer I think, check voicemail online etc.

Total cost is about $24 (all the taxes and 911 fees etc) per month, about $60 to signup, the box that you need to hook up the phone to the computer modem is $49.99 but ends up being free. Makes perfect sense to change.

Is there anything to be careful about or should know?

[TGO David]

I have AT&T CallVantage which is very similar. There was no setup fee and I think my monthly bill is right at $30 with taxes. Unlimited domestic long distance and all of the other features.

[einnor1040]

I had Vonage. It was OK at first then I started having problems. Choppy conversations and such. It kept getting worse. I dropped it as soon as I could and went back to ATT.

My problems started right before Comcast rolled out their service that is similar to Vonage. I heard that Comcast got caught cutting back on bandwidth so it would cause problems.

Fax machines don't like Vonage either.

[saintsfanbrian]

I had Vonage. I HATED it. I would be in the middle of the call and it would drop. This was not an Internet Issue as I had Comcast and the Internet would be working fine.

It took them FOREVER to even think about porting my phone number over. I had to set up call forwarding on my existing AT&T account to forward all calls to the Virtual number. They never got it forwarded and I finally said chuck it.

When there was a problem with their router I would call and get some one in India named "Bob" and they would always say Reset the router and try again.

Fax machines don't like Vonage.

911 Does not work the same. My Alarm system did not work the same or make call ins.

Now I have AT&T LOCAL service only with DSL. My alarm works fine. My DirectTV works fine.

Personal opinion? Drop Vonage, Drop Long Distance and use your Cell Phone. We frequently have unused minutes on our. Keep a basic land line for your DirecTV, DSL, 911 access.

[Guest GT_Rat]

What's a land line?

<-- hasn't had a land line phone in the house for about 3 years now.

[strickj]

Im wondering how this thing works http://www.magicjack.com/1/index.asp

It says you talk on your phone not on you computer like with other services.

For 20 bucks a year it cant be all that great but for someone that really has no use for a land line it might just be worth it just for using 411

What's a land line?

<-- hasn't had a land line phone in the house for about 3 years now.

Thats me.

[HanSolo]

I had Vonage for 5 years. They were good at first and then went downhill on quality of service. I have the Charter cable phone now and like it a lot.

[analog_kidd]

I used Skype for a while. It's definitely not on the same level as Vonage, but it is $30 a year for unlimited outbound calls. I even bought a little gizmo that let me use my house phone with it, otherwise you use a microphone or headset. It was choppy most of the time, but it filled in the gaps when I didn't want to use my cell (like being on hold with the IRS last year).

Now I have Comcast VOIP. It works really well. The sound quality is very good. I can't tell the difference from a regular land line. I would have kept using Skype and my cell, but I called Comcast to complain about raising my bill, and they hooked me up with a package deal that was cheaper than my original bill and included the VOIP. So it was like I am getting it for free.

[Urse]

I have had it for 3(i guess?) years and it has been great. $34 a month.

[Guest clutepc]

We've used Vonage for our Business phone for more than 3 years with 2 Lines,

Bellsouth wanted $350.00 we pay roughly $66 after the taxes and whatnots..

You can also fax with their service but it does depend on the fax machines, some just will not work no matter what they tell you.

I think the big problem people run into with Vonage, Skype etc.. is not having something with a good upload and download speed..

We have the business Comcast service and I don't think we would have the same results running through a dsl connection.

I will say if you are running a file sharing program such as limewire or bittorret on your connection you can forget it, takes up too much of the bandwidth.

FTP programs aren't as bad but they will break the connection up a little.

We also have the Comcast service at home and I don't have any complaints about that one..

A good site to check the upload and download speeds is: http://speedtest.net

Edited May 1, 2008 by clutepc

[enfield]

I tried Vonage a couple of years ago. It was down more than it was up. I'm back to ATT now.

[Guest CrazyLincoln]

I have had Vonage business for 2 years with little problem. Then again I did take the quality down one notch from the highest and I have a QoS router......

One of these will prioritize phone traffic and make your P2P take a backseat when you are on the phone.

http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=446

Edited May 1, 2008 by CrazyLincoln