We are thinking of getting VoIP for our home service. We don’t have a landline now, nor did we at the last place we lived, because we use our cell phones all the time. However, here we have poor cell phone reception. I hate the way the traditional phone companies just nickel and dime you to death, so I want to do VoIP. We are willing to pay for it. I want something that allows you to use a regular phone handset (not the computer). I looked at MagicJack and Vonage so far. Vonage is too expensive IMO — $24.95 per month. With MagicJack ($40 for the device and then $20 for two years), your computer has to be on to receive calls. I know I can keep researching, but I wanted to know if any Dopers have actually used any of the VoIP services as their home service and hear about their experiences. Quality, pricing, convenience, etc. Thanks in advance.
I’ve been using Vonage for about four years now, and I’m quite happy with it. I admit there were some rough spots when I first got started, but I don’t have any complaints now.
IME sound quality has been good, and since I make quite a few long distance (including international) calls each month, the price is a bargain for me.
Are your international calls free?
I have the Optimum Online Triple Play which gives the VOIP. I stopped using it because mainly I use my cell phone, but it’s not a bad service. Free long distance is nice. It also displays on the television when you’re getting a call.
I generally only call four countries. Ireland, England, and Italy are free. I pay four cents a minute for Germany.
I have questions. How does the hook up work? We have five phones in various places in the house, will we be able to keep them?
What happens when the power goes out?
I use Vonage and am content with it. International calls to landlines in Europe are free (calls to Cel phones in Europe are not.) I have had no major complaints with it.
I used Packet8 when it first came out. It was hideously bad (echo, etc). I switched to Vonage 4-5 years ago & it has been fantastic.
I have a soft-phone from work that is Cisco-based. I never use it because it reminds me of Packet8.
I do comcast VOIP, and so far it’s great. All they do is install a box near a phone jack, plug the box in to the electrical outlet, plug the box into the phone jack, and the signal will spread to all the other jacks you have in the house.
We didn’t have call waiting/caller id/multiparty/free long distance before, but we do now, and I love it. There’s also an option to get your messages over the net, but I haven’t done that yet. So far, it’s a great deal for me.
If power goes out, there’s a battery that will power the box for a while. If the internet goes out, you’re SOL.
I have Charter for Internet, cable TV and phones. They install an interface box where the cable comes in to the house, severing the line from the old phone company. The box Charter supplies must be in a heated area (above freezing, I believe), and it is powered by AC. No changes were made in my phones in the house – all lines are the same, all wireless ones, wired ones, etc. – there is no way to tell that the service is no longer POTS just by picking up the phone.
But the system is not powered thru the lines like POTS. So if the power goes off to the house, your phones are dead, too. The solution is to get an interface box with a rechargeable backup battery. In keeping with their typical level of customer service, Charter will hookup your box and tell you the model of battery you need, but they will not supply or install it.
In my case, they told me the wrong model, but that’s another story.
I recommend that you see if the interface box you get has a choice of battery sizes, and get the largest one. Also prepare to replace the old battery after a few years, since like all rechargables, it doesn’t last forever, and you’ll find that out just when you rely on it most. There’s no meter or battery tester on the box I have.
Other than poor reliability (the entire state’s Charter customer base was without phone service twice this year, both for 4 hours during the day), the system works, and I save a bundle in phone charges. My service is unlimited local and long distance calling plus a package of caller ID, voice mail, etc., etc., and that’s just the basic service.
Note: all the interface boxes I’ve seen handle one or two lines, but if you need more, you will probably have to pay extra.
The only difference in making phone calls I’ve noticed is that Charter (vs. AT&T) seems to have a different sensitivity to when you need to dial “1” before some calls. Messages will tell you, and at least Charter’s error detection and notification is better than AT&Ts was. With AT&T, if I didn’t dial a “1”+area code before some local numbers, it sounded like it was ringing forever, but it wasn’t actually ringing on the other end. Only after not being able to contact people who swore they had been home for days did I figure out I had to dial a “1” and/or the area code first. Stupid phone software.
If Vonage wasn’t so cheap, I’d go back to a regular land line. It’s not entirely their fault, it’s more Comcast’s fault, but I’m sick of losing my phone when I lose internet. And I lose internet more that most, because I’m in the city, and all the cable lines are strung up in the air, exposed to the elements and nefarious squirrels instead of buried neatly in the ground.
Our sound quality is also quite often crap. Everyone I’ve talked to says it shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t change what is. The only thing that (temporarily) fixes it is restarting the computer.
My sister and BIL, who I currently live with, have Vonage. We like it well enough. My BIL runs a business from the house, so we have two work lines and the internet through the same wires. If someone is streaming a video online or talking on the phone on one line, you can’t use the other phone, which is annoying. We use our cell phones around the house a lot if someone is doing something heavy duty online or he’s on a business call. It gets annoying sometimes, but it isn’t too bad.
I think we are talking about two slightly different systems here. Yours is connected to the outside world thru your computer, mine is not. AFAIK, both are using IP, so technically I guess they can be said to be the same underlying technology, but they differ in the implementation. Resetting my computer(s) has no effect on my phone(s), and vice-versa.
If we have an outage, it may affect one, some, or all three services (TV, Internet, phone). The most recent major one we had knocked out all, including digital TV but excluded analog TV, but more typically the Internet is the only one affected, and the phones still work.
In my system, I cannot see any cross-effect between my Internet and phones, even if all phone lines are in use and 2 computers are maxing out the single Internet pipe. For all practical purposes, they are separate.
I was using Vonage but with how little I used my phone it was not cost effective. I now use a combination of Gizmoproject and Grand Central for my VOIP needs