I ditched my landline about five or six years ago and went with Vonage. I have no complaints. Back then, phone numbers weren’t so portable, so we had to get a different phone number.
We initially had cable internet service, but a couple of years ago we switched to Verizon Fios and that works well too. I am paying $35 a month to Verizon for internet, $25 to Vonage, and $15 to Time Warner for TV cable.
I think I could go down to the cheaper Vonage plan, but I haven’t looked into it yet.
Overall, I’m very satisfied. I realize that my satisfaction is dependent on the reliability of my internet connection, but I’m in a location where my internet service almost never goes down.
We have had Vonage over DSL for several months now, and we’re generally pleased with it. One thing I have noticed, however, is that whenever one of our computers is doing streaming downloads or anything that requires a lot of bandwidth, and we try to use the phone at the same time the signal will break up, and we can’t carry on a conversation.
I’ve tried configuring the Vonage modem both on one of the router ports, and also in front of the router, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.
I didn’t quit cable, I quit Vonage, still got cable. My issue with Vonage is as follows. When I signed up I got the $14.99 plan for 500 minutes. The first few months I was charge a total of $16.94 (with tax) but as they added taxes and other surcharges it eventually creeped up to $19.28 even though I was still on the $14.99 plan. Recently they announced that the $14.99 plan was changing to a $17.99 plan which means that very least I would be getting charged $22.28 each month. I did the math and realized that in a little over three years the price went up by over 30% which I don’t really consider fair. And since I we only used it for about 10 minutes a month at this point we decided to get rid of it.
We’ve been using Vonage for our business line for several years now, and have virtually no complaints. (Both of us (me and Mrs. Dvl) run a full time consultancy[sup]*[/sup] out of the home and send/receive lots of national and international calls and faxes. It’s a full-time business, so reliability is extraordinarily important.)
We’re still chained to a $30.00 per month land-line charge. Yes, we have e-911, but we also have a house fire/burglar alarm that calls in over the phones. It can technically connect via the Vonage line, but if cable or power goes out (regardless of our in-house UPS), the alarm can’t call out.
They do offer cell service backup (in case the phone line goes out), which in theory and a bit of time should make a difference. However, the switch from phone to cell connection works by detecting the voltage coming from the land line. If it drops out, the alarm switches to the cell connection (located in the attic, not tied to our regular cells). The Vonage box (and other VOIPs AFAIK) does not send a continual voltage to the phone, they send signal only when a call comes in. Therefore, the switch wouldn’t know when to be activated. At the time, the possibility of a cell-only alarm was not an option.
I even tried searching for a device that would have bridge the two. That is, a box between the alarm and the VOIP that would send constant voltage to the alarm and port calls through the VOIP on one end, and on the other end a regular ping routine determining if the Internet connection was active. If it detected a lack of ping replies, it would cut the voltage triggering the switch. No dice. Is such a box just not technically feasible? Beats me.
Anyway, that was our consideration. If not for the alarm, we’d have moved all over to Vonage without any concerns given how successful it has been.
[sup]*Oh shit… does that mean we’re slated for Ark B?[/sup]
Just surfed a little and already am finding some big time complaints about phone quality, pricing ripoffs, etc.
For starters…
I realize that a company of Vonage;s size will have its share of detractors.
To those of you who posted nice things about Vonage, please don’t be angry with me. I’m an old, low tech man and need to get a glitch free, low cost system.
Here’s a site of Top 10 Providers. Vonage is included.
Here’s is my charge for each month. Keep in mind after the inital setup I never added or removed any features and never had more then about 30 minutes or so. Also, even as of the last bill my plan was still billed as $14.99 per month. I canceled just last month when it was going up to $17.99. It was creeping up way to fast. My guess is that 3 years from now my $14.99 plan would probably be closer to $30 dollars or so. For how little I use it and how relible my cell phone now is, it just wasn’t worth it. BUT ignoring the cost, it did work just fine and I had no other issues with it.
This is hardly a new thing, but definitely a plus.
But I might add that this is why my local cable carrier (Cablevision) shoots itself in the foot. They have the nerve to charge $125 to bring your phone number over to their internet phone service. (Vonage does it for free). This charge negates the savings they give you for a year by choosing their so-called triple-play package (cable TV/internet/VOIP). I use them for cable/internet only and use Vonage for phone. If I switched to all Cablevision I’d actually pay more because after the lost savings (due to keeping my number charge) I’d be paying more for their three services because they charge more for their VOIP than Vonage.
Lesson from this: read contacts carefully and do your math .
This took some research but I found it. First, federal law requires that 911 service still be available to VOIP users as of November 28, 2005. Details here. Comcast and Vonage are examples of interconnected VOIP service. What was more difficult to find was how but it is very simple. When the power goes out, a couple of things happen. The first thing is in your modem, the phone jack switches over to a direct connection with the input coax cable. At the other end of the coax cable at the phone company it switches over from digital voice to a regular analog connection. In other words, the coax cables replace the regular solid strand copper wire as the method of provide phone service to your house. Besides the required 911 service, most will also find their phone still works for other calls. In most cases if you cannot make a phone call with VOIP service with the power out, your provider is in violation of the law.
I assume this means that you would have to go and plug the Vonage box directly into the modem as your router wouldn’t work during the outage. Also, I assume cordless phones that use the box as a base wouldn’t work either. But I could be wrong.
What about Skype’s outgoing service? I see boxes at Wally’s World and other places that will allow you to connect Skype to a regular phone.
The site is a little confusing, but apparently I can get a plan (unlimited to the USA) with an online phone number for $2.95 per month. Is this right? If so, I’m dumping my home phone today.
Your link talks about 911 access and capabilities, but nothing about a power outage situation. The problem in the past was that a call to 911 from Vonage wouldn’t go to your local emergency operator, and wouldn’t transmit information about your location. So if you called 911 from home because you were choking and couldn’t clearly describe your location, they had no idea where you were. That’s what that voip911.gov website is talking about.
And the solution you describe makes no sense. If you’ve got Comcast for your internet over coax, but Vonage phone - how does Comcast know to turn it’s coax connection to you into an analog phone connection? Are you suggesting they do it for all their customers? Cite?
I think you have two things mixed up. The fact that Vonage etc. are required to provide 911 service (and, if possible, E911) through their networks has no bearing on their obligations during power outages, and your cite provides no indication that this is the case. VOIP works on all broadband technologies, including wireless.
I have a hard time making sense of this. As far as I can tell, this would put an obligation on your Internet provider (not Vonage) to provide sufficient power to run the line termination equipment, no matter what technology they use. (Tough for the wireless services!) Plus, of course, quite often the Vonage equipment isn’t connected directly to the line termination anyway.
I think someone may have given you bogus information.
I heard that they’re offering TV everywhere but no one I know could get it. So, in your area, what does AT&T provide in the way of TV, please? And how do they compare in price to Cable? (If you don’t mind answering.)
I just have the $9.99 a month plan with 500 minutes. Without looking it up, I think the unlimited plan is maybe double that at $19.99?
Something to think about is that you can choose any area code you want. So if you wanted to, you could pick your wife’s sisters area code and she could call you guys.