Vonage

Im looking into Vonage, the online phone company. Does anyone here have any experience with them or their services and if so, how do you like them. It appears the only downside is that if your internet goes down, so does your phone. Difficult to get phone service to more than just one phone, and possibly quality of service with voice dropouts. Im tired of paying $45 / months for one phone line where 1/2 of it is taxes, not to mention that the phone companies are now free to jump their rates up to 10% a year to get them "more in line" with the market costs.
Thanks....

DwArFlOrD

 

I've been using Vonage for some time. It's great! They claim you can use the service with a 128k pipe but I've found it to be a minimum. 256k (either direction) is better. Get 512k (or better) if you want more than one phone line and want to do some surfing at the same time. Or get a router that supports QoS. I haven't had any problems with dropouts and I'm not sure what you mean by "difficult to get phone service to more than just one phone." You can either hardwire it to your house or use an expandable wireless phone. Most of my family is now on Vonage so I'm even thinking of dropping to the $15/mo plan since calls to other Vonage users don't count against the 500min. for that plan. As for ISP outages, I have two pipes (iDSL and Adelphia HSI) so I have a backup should Adelphia drop. Plus with 2 cell phones in my house it's not an issue. My only complaint is that we can't transfer our 858-xxxx line yet so I still keep a Verizon land line.

__________________________________________________________
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1

 

Thats good to hear. We have the 4000/512 plan with Adelphia, which is more like 5000/570 and their service has been rock solid for quite some time for us, so I would feel comfortable going to vonage (with cells as backup). Ive done some more reading on it and appears that the problem with getting service to all the phones in the house was an old problem, but not so anymore. It also seems that the service appears to work with faxing and directv hookups as well. The only show stopper now is that they are currently sold out of the 703 area code. If I get a different area code it would be long distance for everyone to call us......Ill have to wait till they get another pool of 703 numbers...:/ Oh well...

DwArFlOrD

 

Vonage is pretty spensive compared to the rest... I would check out this forum:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/voip

I have broadvoice on the $9.95 in-state plan and love it... for $19.95 you get unlimited US, Canada, and alot of europe. their proxy server is in DCA so i get nice ping times too. I totally disconnected VZ from the house and have VOIP running to all my lines. Works fine since feb or so
with few problems...

 

It looks like they only have 3 area codes for virginia. 703, 804 and 757. 804 is southern Va., and 757 is near Va. Beach/Norfolk. If I had either of those 2 area codes, Im pretty sure that someone calling from 703 (our area) would have to pay long distance. I could be wrong, im not a real phone guy. But I think for ease of use, it would also be a good idea to have a 703 # as well. I have asked them to email me when a 703 block opens up. I think they are getting more customers than they expected to with this new advertising campaign they have going. May be good that there are no more 703 #s for now, that way all the growing pains are over by the time I sign up....

DwArFlOrD

 

Looks like we posted at about the same time. That is a great price!! Does customer service or quality compensate for that low of a price? The site seems to show that there are more features than what Vonage offers.

DwArFlOrD

 

you can also choose your own number with broadvoice..... since you most likely can't port numbers around here..... i can't believe we live in such a high tech area and we can port nummbers, get dsl, etc!

 

Slashdot had a thing on VoIP yesterday... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/16/1612220&tid=126

They link to a review in PC Mag (not that I put a lot of faith in that rag). Broadvox recieved their lowest rating. Broadvoice wasn't rated.

__________________________________________________________
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1

 

Drives me crazy too....[}]

DwArFlOrD

 

What about 571 ? I thought that was an overlay for 703.

 

Vonage isn't offering 571... yet.

__________________________________________________________
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1

 

Boomer,
Looks like Broadvoice (http://www.broadvoice.com/index.html) offers about everything Vonage does at a less cost. If I go with them, did you want me to put you down as a referrer? Just gimme your info so I can put that in when I order. Thx for pointing them out to me. They have 703 #s available.... . Ill probably be ordering in the next 1-2 days. I have to research what kind of PA or router combo I would want.

DwArFlOrD

 

Sure, sounds good.. I PMed you my info.

The only downside to broadvoice is a higher-than average startup cost, but you make that back quick with their low monthly rates. good luck! let us know if you have any quirks, etc!

 

Ill check your email tonight when I get home, cant get msn from work (Damn firewalls). What Phone adapter did you go with. Was it just a PA, or was it a router/PA. I am looking into getting a router/PA with QOS. Voxilla has a special for the sipura 2100 which is a pa / router with QoS for $90, but with that I pay no activation fees ($40 + $15 shipping) and one free month of service ($20) so it only really costs me $15 for startup. Let me know which PA you have and how you like it.
Thanks,

DwArFlOrD

 

One downside to broadvoice that I see is that they do not have very good 911 support, (atleast from some of the reviews). You may not want to give up your phone line.

check http://www.cnet.com for some reviews. Just 'search' for "VoIP".

Boomer,

What's your take on the 911 support?


Sri.

 

yeah no 911 support that i've heard of yet... kind of a bummer, but i don't care much.. I have 3 cell phones that can do it...

I've heard the suggestion that you can 'alias' 911 to the police department's local emergency phone number to get around it... that still doesn't solve the location info problem, but it'll do until 911 goes live.

http://www.broadvoice.com/features_comesoon.html

another nice feature i like about bv is that you can set voicemails to be sent to an email address as well as coll notify emails which will give you the callerid info in an email as a sort of log.

 

Anyone heard about AOL's Voip service? Suppose to be the only voip service offering true e911 service (interfaces your PBX/VoIP Network with your local PSAP (Public Safety Answer Point) to provide Automatic Number Identification and Automatic Location Identification) and a computer interface dashborad to view incoming/outgoing/favorite phone numbers and allows the dashboard to transfer any call to any existing phone number. Also shows phone usage information in real time and listen to voicemail through the computer. Sounds pretty cool but unfortunately I am stuck with OpenBand for phone service since its included in our HOA.

 

Still in Beta so it's hard to say when it will have when it's available. Vonage is also working on e911 but from the reports the AOL Voice mail features may be much better.

__________________________________________________________
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1

 

packet8 does have a true e911 working as well, but not in all areas as of yet. I would go with them, but they do not offer e911 in Va. yet. What I am doing is getting broadvoice $10 package, pay .04 per call outside Va. (hardly make any) and keep the bare minimum verizon phone line (at $5/mo) for the 911 calls if needed or use my cellphone. In any case, $15+/mo beats the $45+ im paying to verizon right now. It also appears to be a good idea that when you do get an ATA / router combo, to get something that will provide QoS. It seems to solve many problems for those folks who have small upload bandwidth and use internet at the same time. I may have this working by this weekend, I just ordered the Sipura 2100 this morning. Ill let you guys know how it goes.

DwArFlOrD