After receiving my bill from Bellsouth today, I started looking into VoIP’s. Vonage is the only one I’d heard of until I started searching the Internet. (Bellsouth also provides my DSL connection for $32.95 a month.)
I found one site that compared VoIP’s but did it didn’t include Vonage. The cheapeast was via:talk. I don’t want to go with the cheapest just because it’s cheap. I found a couple of negative comments about Vonage. So I’d like to hear about your experiences with VoIP’s, and if you’d recommend any of them.
I have vonnage and so far have no complaints. I have nothing to compare it to however.
It is annoying when you are talking and the power goes out and lose the connection. But that has only happened to me once during a thunderstorm.
Hmmm…well that is something to consider. We get quite a few thunder storms here in northeast Florida (not to mention the occasional hurricane). But we have cell phones, so if we absolutely had to call someone, we could do so. Thanks.
Have had Vonage & Packet8. Vonage wins hands down.
I’ve been using Skype’s free national calling lately, that’s mostly worked well.
Remember that if you get VoIP and are planning on porting your number over from BellSouth to PLEASE get a new phone line and install the DSL on THAT line! I can’t begin to tell you the number of calls I got because people had transferred their phone number to Vonage, and didn’t take the time to get a new line at the house to carry the DSL signal. Unless you live in a rare area of the US with a service called “Naked DSL”, you must pay for both the phone line and the DSL addition.
That being said, Vonage is decent. I hear CallVantage and Voicewing are ok. Packet8 and SunRocket still have network issues, not due to the service, but to the infrastructre around them. Oh, and for those of you out there thinking of getting OptimumVoice from Cablevision, it’s Vonage with a different skin. For anybody else on the OptOnline network, that means Vonage works better for you than for the rest of the country.
I’ve had Vonage for about 18 months and am pretty happy with it- $15/mo for 500 minutes, which is more than I need. I got around the power outage problem by hooking up a $50 UPS; I plugged the phone router and cable modem into that. If the power goes out, the UPS kicks on, and I still have phone service.
I don’t know if I’d sign up for Vonage at this point if I didn’t already have it though- I read about a month ago that they’re having serious financial issues, and analysts are predicting they have a tough road ahead. They’re losing money at quite a clip. Can’t find a cite, sorry.
As far as the service though, I’m very happy with it.