I have been using some VoIP and it works very well - can't speak for vonage but I suggest you check out some of the newsgroups, there are usually always threads happening. http://www.vonage-forum.com is the actual forum for it; another good site is http://www.voipreview.org/news.details.aspx?nid=10 for reviews ( link is for vonage )... Just remember - google is your friend
I have been using Vonage VoIP since last year and have found the quality of the calls to be on par with land lines. My only complaint is the telephone numbers they assign are recycled from other telephone subscribers (land line or VoIP) too quickly and you might get a lot of calls from people you do not know. I solved that issue by requesting a new telephone number - I wish they'd let you pick a number from the available pool though. Overall, if you are using the cable system for Internet access you can eliminate a dedicated land line with VoIP and keep your telephone number forever and at a much lower cost especially if you make a lot of long distance calls within North America.
I've used Vonage for ~ 2 years and have no complaints for the most part. In my experience, if you have a broadband internet connection, the service is on-par with a standard land-line phone.
While services liike Vonage fall into the general category of "Internet telephony," it's wrong to refer to them using the phrase "Internet phone" simply because that phrase usually refers to software products that run on one's PC and allow voice chatting. Vonage -- and its competitors -- is Voice-over-IP (VoIP). There's a difference. Vonage, and its competitors ship a special device which connects only to high-speed (DSL, T1, cable modem, etc.) connections; and into which one may plug a normal telephone and begin using it just like any other telephone... except that the service utilizes the Internet instead of the normal, decades-old nationwide/worldwide telephony infrastructure. Actually, that's either a bit of an overstatement... either that, or the land lines you're used to are really poor quality. Even with today's improvements, the difference in overall sound quality is non-trivial, with VoIP sounding worse. There are also, sometimes, some duplex problems which cause people to be unable to easily interrupt one another. It also suffers from digital drop outs which, unlike analog drop outs which result in silence during said drop out, cause the data surrounding the missing data to be compressed together into a garble. If you've ever been on a cell phone with someone who traveled, briefly into a tunnel or, simply, into a bad signal area for a moment, you have experienced this digital drop out phenomena. There can also be good, old-fashioned distortion issues -- of the type with which audio engineers are well acquainted -- and the sound, overall, can be "thinner," and have less of a full-bodied resonance to it (compared with traditional land lines). None of this is to say that it doesn't still sound pretty darned good; or that it's unreliable. I'm just saying that it's not -- by a long shot -- as good as a land line. But it's certainly good enough to use instead of a land line... with that, I'd agree. Oh, there's a lot more to complain about than that... as you'll learn in the forums to which I'm going to be referring you, further down in this post. And the problem of reassigning numbers too quickly is now a problem for the land line telecos, too. I remember a day -- not all that long ago, actually -- when telcos would let a disconnected number sit for up to three years to reduce the likelihood that its new owners would be pestered by calls intended for its old ones. No longer. Three weeks is more common now. It pays, when one orders any new telephone number, to ask for a supervisor and to place the order with him/her. S/he can often see how long ago a given number was disconnected and for how long it's been sitting in the hopper, waiting to be assigned. Ask him her to sort the list on his/her computer screen by date -- longest-ago to most-recent -- and have him/her assign you the oldest number s/he's got! Any high-speed connection -- as long as it's more than just a little bit faster than dialup -- will do. Remarkably, a decent, full-duplex (or onw with such a fast turnaround that it seems like it's full-duplex) VoIP call only requires about 64K of reliable bandwidth. Most VoIP providers recommend 96K to play it safe. So, for example, if I had a 384K fractional T1 data circuit going into my office, and I wanted to use Vonage for one phone number, I'd ask the T1 provider to give me the 384K circuit in two channels: One at 128K for the VoIP, and one at 256K for my Internet access. That way, no matter what I'm doing on the Internet (downloading streaming data, etc.) which normally slows-down all other traffic on the circuit, it would not interfere with my VoIP calls. Being so anally-retentive about it is not necessary, however. I mean, one could just let it all travel through the same 384K data pipe and it would be fine. I'm just saying how I'd do it if I really intended to rely on my VoIP for business purposes. Of course, DSL and cable modem connections can be channeled like that... nor should any home user fred that they can't. As far as substituting VoIP in the home for a regular land line... be careful. One's telephone could be one's lifeline in an emergency when 911 needs to be called. VoIP is only as reliable as one's Internet connection. However often one's DSL or cable modem drops out, slows down or just stops working for a while, is how often one would have no telephone if one adopts VoIP as one's only telephony in the home. Of course, a cellphone as backup can be adequate parachute in such cases. Also, with many VoIP providers, 911 doesn't work... or at least not like it does with a regular land line. Of course one could resolve that problem by inserting a programmable device into the circuit that can be programmed so that whenever any phone on the circuit goes offhook and dials the "911" chracter string, the device takes control of the call, hangs-up, goes off-hook again, and dials the seven digit number for the local police department's radio room (which is a number any citizen can request from his/her local police department). I'm old enough to remember days before 911, when we had a stick on the phone giving the number for police, fire and ambulance. VoIP customers whose providers don't provide proper 911 service may have to revert to that. Another thing to remember about VoIP is that it doesn't do modem traffic very well... or at all, with some providers. That means that one should just about never try to use it to dial-in to another computer or to the Internet; and one will have very disappointing results when trying to use it for fax traffic... which is yet another reason to hang-on to one's regular land line, even if one decides to start using VoIP as one's primary phone service in the home. The forums you linked us to are interesting, but they're Vonage biased. There are several good VoIP providers now, vying for a piece of what is now largely Vonage's market. You can get a more balanced view/opinion of them over on the Broadband Reports web site. Your two big players, now, are probably Vonage and Packet8... and I'm liking Packet8 a little better, generally. But as you'll see in the link just provided, there are many from which to choose. Stay away from the ones that utilize the older-fashioned method of using one's PC as the telephone device. To learn more about VoIP, generally, read the Broadband Reports VoIP FAQ. And there's an entire VoIP forum there, too... the main page of which has some interesting and, in some cases, highly useful "Forum Links" along its left edge. VoIP is interesting, but still rough around the edges. Be sure your eyes are wide open before embracing it too tightly.
DesElms, your comments as always are salient and on-point. In my experience, which I was recounting, VoIP service has been on par with the high-quality land-line service I have in the area. As for 9-1-1 Service you are absolutely correct to point out that at the moment VoIP 9-1-1 is NOT guaranteed to actually route to a 9-1-1 Centre but might instead be routed to another call centre. Since most people have cellular telephones they have a back-up. Except they must know where they are instead of relying on the 9-1-1 operator being able to determine the physical location.
The above commentary offered by Des Elms is a perfect rendition of my personal experience with Vonage. While it may work for some, it was a very bad experience for me. I tried a lot of suggestions and spent a lot of time with Vonage "tech support", however none of it ever resolved the quality problems I experienced. It was bad....really bad.
This is the first "bad...really bad" comment I've heard of Vonage, althought I haven't gone out of my way to find people's opinions on the service. Was the voice quality low? Poor overall service? Just curious.
One VoIP provider Gregg mentions is Packet8 - I have, thus far, only heard positive feedback from users (downside to me is that I'm in .ca and they're not here yet). E911 and 911 are available - I have not looked into that topic deep enough but I would hope that a call placed to 911 will be routed to the closest 911 center - if not a lawsuit seems imminent - since every second can count. I have not yet made the switch to VoIP but the cost savings over traditional telephony is stark - I pay $80/m for local calling and unlimited province-wide calling, then $0.05/m for the rest of .ca and .us. VoIP would be $29.95+tax a month for unlimited calling - US and Canada - nearly $50/month in savings - heck, that's a car payment a year And since the local cableco is now offering 10Mbps lines, I may switch from DSL to cable and hitup VoIP at the same time - as was mentioned by sentinel - a cellphone is a must, so I'll always have that. BM
I would have to agree, I have Broadvox now and the quality is definitely poor! We live in a somewhat rural area, hence, the throughput is excellent; however, I never realized how often the connection drops out for one reason or another. In addition, there is static, dropped calls, and many complaints from friends and family on not being able to get through, even while there is a connection. A monthly bill of twenty bucks seemed great, but it's not the value it appeared to be, for now, I do not even think it's worth the twenty.
Mainly echo, occasional garbled voice tones, sometimes a duplex problem. Complaints from those I called of static and hum. Just wasn't worth the savings for me.
We successfully use Vonage over a satellite ISP. We have experienced very few issues, and our Mean Opinion Score is above 4.
Well... Swapping the dish for cable tomorrow; that gets rid of the dish; with the cable comes a 10Mbps line and Primus Talkbroadband is ordered... in 10 days I should be totally "pots"less - cancelling the landline/DLS and going VoIP (with Cell as backup). I'll be saving ~$30/month, so a car payment a year I'll let ya'll know the ins and outs once I'm on it. Reason for going with Primus rather than Vonage - $29.95/month vs $39.99/month...
I've been with Vonage for a while and I like it. It's cheaper than Qwest and has been as reliable as my cable company (if they go down, so does the telephone service). I got to transfer my old number, so there was no break in service at all. And I like that I can check my voice mail over the web. So far, so good.
I had vonage for about 3-4 weeks. The failed to be able to transfer two different phone numbers that I wanted. One in Virgina (where they are headquartered) and the other in Texas. They claimed in both cases it was area's they didn't offer service. I find this quite humorous since two of my friends have vonage in the area code in Texas that I had one of the numbers in. I ended up going with TWC's VOIP service. I love it. Only had a few problems, but they have been fixed. As for 911 service, my Police department has the latest and greatest technology (I should know i just finished my Citizens Police Academy training) The only thing they can't do is pinpoint a 911 call from a cell phone. According to the officer in charge of communications E911 is a few glitches but most of those have been worked out. He apparently was a betatester for the e911 system. So tired... Learning Vegas 6 at the moment. OK, i've been screwing with it since 10am CST and its now 3:30am CST
I thought I'd add my own nightmare experience with Vonage. I've had this service for a little more than a year. While the actual service has been fine (to me - there have been times when service has been interrupted, the interruption was brief & resolved itself, and didn't bother me as much as other members of my family), I've got much bigger fish to fry than poor service. This company has been double charging me for the entire time I've been with them. I didn't notice the extra charges for quite a few months (I KNOW what you are thinking - in my defense, I've had the year from hell - boyfriend had an aneurysm, the operation was JUST in time, and his recovery was long - life in general was extremely stressful. So I just didn't look at the bank statement for something like, forever.) Contacted Vonage right away. After endless phone calls with people who cannot understand me, (outsourced jobs, of course), I was told that the problem was solved. I was credited the overcharges. I didn't realize it until last week that they continued to withdraw the extra charge (for some bogus acct. that doesn't exist - my original attempts to rectify this revealed that no phone calls were ever made from the number they assigned me.) My bank (lovely Bank of America... ) refuses to block the automatic pmts without a letter from Vonage. Vonage refuses to do anything... I am so livid I cannot even write about my latest frustrating phone calls with this company. I am sending in a complaint to my Attorney General's office. My problem is what company to turn to at this point - before I turned to this company I had horrible, bogus charges (so-called reverse charges from some country in Africa!!) from AT&T - two bills were over $500 ea. I am seriously considering some tin cans and string. Seems to be my best option...
I tried a few I tried vonage, packet8, lingo and broadvoice. I had concerns with them all but broadvoice seems to be the best for my needs. It has several rate plans, calls to most places in Western Europe are included. I can also get an alternate number in the UK or NI (which is much cheaper for my relatives in Ireland than calling the States). Broadvoice also offers bring your own device service from about $8.75 per month with unlimited US calling if I recall. My brother has Vonage and is pleased for the almost two years he has had it. It pays to explore the different companies. Excellent VoIP sources are Pulver.com and dslreports.com I hope this helps. Skype is also an option.
Had a similar situation (Netzero - $15 a month), could not contact anyone. I simply shut down my bank account and opened a new one. Problem solved.
