Who Uses Vonage?
 

Do you like it? I'm thinking it might come in handy for me very soon.

heard some bad stuff about the service, so i don't.

I'm curious about this as well :thumbsup

I use timewarners version. It's pretty good, I bet vonage is too :)

I use it and it's ok.
Positives:

1) No telepmarketers

2)Very cheap.

3)Access to voicemail on the internet.

Negatives:

1)Phone doesn't work in the event of a power outage or if your internet service is down

2)Phone breaks up if your internet connection is being used heavy

3)Might be some issues if you used it to dial 911

Agree, if your internet is down, so is your "land line". But that's what cell phones are for.

I've used Vonage for two years and everything about them is excellent. I'd recommend them, but I may be making the move to skype, myself.

It's great as a secondary line but as kenny said there are definitely some drawbacks, like wanting to phone your ISP when your Internet connection is down. Oh and 911 is a complete joke since I tired to phone an accident in and was put on hold for 5 minutes. I hung up - still on hold - when I heard the ambulance comming.

I use it and have 911 dialing. Haven't had any troubles thus far.

I use it for my office line and fax line...Works great!

Works fantastic, price is fantastic, and their system has lots of cool features.

:thumbsup

Have used it in the past.

Not bad.

The ablity to travel around with it, is the only reason I would get it.

I use it and love it, however as said it isnt perfect. It is getting better and better though.

i like it, traveling with it is great.. & I was able to bring my montreal home # here to costa rica so friends/family can reach me at no extra charge & I can call wherever for not extra fees.. very sweet stuff.

Just bought a Vonage system tonight. Took about 5 minutes to signup (on their website) and get it wired up. I've called half/dozen people already - sounds crystal clear to me! Sweeeeet :drinkup

i have it at my home and its great. cant beat 25/mo for unlim. long distance

This is what is attractive to me. As well as having voicemail messages emailed to me. I like that idea.

If I'm reading things right, if I want to shoot in another town I can run an ad and use a local number in that town and have it ring to me anyway. Right?

Does anyone know: Can you have your phone calls forwarded to your cell phone?

Donny, I can't answer for Vonage, but every question so far has been "YES" for Packet8 service.

I use Packet8 instead, and here's why:

* Smaller packets/cleaner compression. You can run Packet8 off of a 56k modem, no shit. This means that it handles bandwidth drops really well
* Their system comes free (or at a very low charge) with no year/month/etc commitment.
* It costs you $5/mo for more numbers. I have a Nevada, a Montana, and a California number all routed to me, on the same line. I'm paying less than $40/mo for unlimited US calls, with three virtual numbers, all local to those locations.
* Their support is great, and quick. No waiting in queues.
* You can have it follow you after a timeout (multi number queued ring, direct ring, etc), go to voicemail, get notices via email, and even get the voicemail via email. This is all included free.

I've had them for 2 years now, and grown with them. I had one problem, once, and that was due to my own dipshittery (I forgot I had NAT turned on in two places.) I can't imagine not having them.

If you guys decide you want to try it, email me - webmaster (at) smutwire dot com - I'll get credit for referring you, and you'll get a free month and a cheaper price on the hardware. - edit (if you buy the hardware.)

if your internet is laggy, your phone is laggy.

a tip is to log into your vonage account and make the sound settings on lowest quality, that way it doesn't require too much bandwith.

but seriously, my friend has vonage and 25% of the time we talk we're both slightly lagging and it's impossible to hold a conversation.

voip companies honestly have a lot of work to do.

Love it!!

I have charters voip and have to say im impressed with it's sound , however I had/needed to buy a back up battery to connect to in case the net / outage was out. For something like 30.00 dollars you can get a 6hr battery backup for it and all is good. Dont know if Vonage has this feature but it wont hurt to look it to it.

I use splitinfinity.com voip service exclusively. It is excellent. :thumbsup

How the hell does VoIP work if the network is out? I assume you mean a UPS to put your cablemodem and box on, right?

Customer Service is the Pits. But we have had them 2.5 years, and never had to call them. But others have said that it sucks.

Charter claims that their UPS systems on their head end and distributed hardware are ok then again that's a lot iffier. To me voip is greek and I learn as I go long as with anyone else...

Bingo!

My biggest gripe is #2 . I d/l and u/l lots of full movies which makes my phone useless

I have had Vonage for a few years now. If you have really good Internet connection, it's a damn near perfect service for phone and even fax.

People whom travel, or just move around a lot, it's damn near one of the best tools to own, better than any phone service. Your phone number will stay the same from the US to Canada, and it sounds like some Islands too.

However, if your Internet sucks, has heavy use, or is slow, then Vonage kind of blows.

In Vegas it was great, the Net was also amazing.
In South AZ, it was kind of half ass and so was the net.
In Denver, I couldn't even use Vonage, the net was a major pile of shit.
And, back to Az, The net is good enough now that I can fax through Vonage, takes a couple tries, but they go through.


At the same time, I have heard (in the past at least) that Vonage doesn't always like to cancel your account and will just auto rebill you.. So, maybe some other VOIP services on this post should be deeper looked into :)

Had it for over a year and would never go back to regular phone service. It has every feature you would want and more included in the base price. No upcharges. Have a friend in another country and want to talk to them all the time. For 10 bucks you can get a local (in most any other country) number that they can dial as a local number with no tolls and it rings at your house.

all three of our office phones are vonage, best service ever, and yes you can tell ti after a certain number of calls wheret o forward

I HATE talking to my friends who have it, the reception sounds like shit, they usually end up calling me back on their cells. :2 cents:

We have Lingo, another Vonage competitor, owned by Primus Telecom, which is a gigantic European telephone company.

When we first got it a year and a half ago, it was flaky and unreliable, but in the past 10 months it's been rock solid. Their support is actually really knowledgeable and helpful if you ever have to call, and they seem to genuinely care about customer service.

It's a few dollars less than Vonage (19.95 or so) with the same exact features, and if it's properly configured (Lingo modem goes directly after cable modem, and router plugs into Lingo modem) then you won't have problems with calls even when you're doing a ton of upload or download (it automatically throttles the bandwidth while you're on the phone.)

Calls to US and Canada are free, most other countries are a nickel a minute or less.

If you want a line to just receive calls (incoming order line, for example), you can get a "limited" lingo line for $8/month that allows unlimited incoming calls. You can also add phone numbers in various cities throughout the world (US is I think $4/month per number, Europe is $10/month per number).

I've also heard good things about Packet 8.

Only thing that scares me about Vonage is apparently they are hemorrhaging money, even after their IPO; apparently they are spending about $200 per subscriber in advertising to get customers, have never made money, and are using their VC money to cover their operating shortfall. This info came from their own prospectus; I'm more comfortable going with one of the smaller companies that is not advertising as much.

If anyone decides they want Lingo, email me and you can get a month free plus, I think, a discount on their regular priced service.

I have it -- it's awesome.

I live in Florida but have an Illinois phone number so my family up there can call me at no cost to them -- it's a local call to them...and it costs me nothing extra. They just don't "get" that LOL

Vonage has a feature called Simul-Ring -- when someone calls my Vonage phone number it will ring (I think) up to 8 additional phone numbers I want. I have it set up to ring my cell-phone simultaneously. But I can have it ring ANY phone numbers I choose.

If you travel...just take your phone modem and plug it into a high-speed line and you have YOUR phone service. They say this is true no matter where in the world you might be plugging it in.

Toll-free numbers are only $5 a month and that includes 100 minutes of talk time. I think it's only 5 or 6 cents a minute after that. You can also get additional phone numbers in any location they have numbers available so you can have a multitude of "home phone numbers" that will all ring your one phone line.

Like I said...it's way cool and I am happy with it. People who think it sucks need better high-speed Internet service :2 cents: I have RoadRuner that d/l's at 8 MegaBit -- I have no problems with Vonage no matter what I am doing online. But when I griefly had DSL -- Vonage was PURE SHIT...not Vonage's fault.

So far so good with Vonage. I got it yesterday and made a few dozen calls today. Sounds very clear and clean and have not had any connection problems. :thumbsup

I've had mine for 3 years at least, no worries, plus when I moved, I took it with me and kept the phone number, that way, people that were local can still call me at local rates

You had a local Redding number with Vonage?

my local phone provider is VOIP enabled :) so thats what we have here

the number was from chico I think, but it as the right area code

2 lines .. works great ... but I have the extreme high speed ( 8-10 mbps )