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Posted by on August 23, 2006, 3:01 am
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Would you recommend Vonage ?
Hi
We are thinking of installing Vonage ..............$24.99 per month.
We have Comcast cable / internet.
I have heard that the sound quality is poor sometimes.
Does anyone have any experience with them ?
Positive, negative ?
Pls let me know.
Thanks
Kim
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Posted by Elmo P. Shagnasty on August 23, 2006, 7:17 am
kimshapiro100@yahoo.com wrote:
> Would you recommend Vonage ?
At $25/month? Hell, no.
ViaTalk right now has $199 for two years, but you have to buy the
hardware. If you catch them on a holiday or on a good day, Sunrocket
has $199 for two years and for that they provide the hardware.
$8.33/month. I snapped it up. So far, so good.
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Posted by KenW on August 23, 2006, 9:04 am
On 23 Aug 2006 00:01:19 -0700, kimshapiro100@yahoo.com wrote:
>Would you recommend Vonage ?
>
>Hi
>
>We are thinking of installing Vonage ..............$24.99 per month.
>We have Comcast cable / internet.
>
>I have heard that the sound quality is poor sometimes.
>
>Does anyone have any experience with them ?
>
>Positive, negative ?
>
>
>Pls let me know.
>
>Thanks
>Kim
I have no complaints for 2 years. Just remember, the internet is a
'funny' happening. Packets can go anywhere to get to the same place
and depends on the amount of traffic between two points. My calls from
New Jersey to Colorado have been very good. Calls to Western Mass. are
iffy.
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Posted by Ed Nielsen on August 23, 2006, 9:14 am
I would and often do. I've been with them for going on 3 years and no
complaints here. Occasional (very seldom) degradation of voice quality,
but I'd put them right up there with a landline any day. Based on our
phone usage at the time we switched over, we have saved over $4k.
Well worth the switch, in my opinion.
CIAO!
Ed N.
kimshapiro100@yahoo.com wrote:
> Would you recommend Vonage ?
>
> Hi
>
> We are thinking of installing Vonage ..............$24.99 per month.
> We have Comcast cable / internet.
>
> I have heard that the sound quality is poor sometimes.
>
> Does anyone have any experience with them ?
>
> Positive, negative ?
>
>
> Pls let me know.
>
> Thanks
> Kim
>
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Posted by Warren on August 23, 2006, 3:11 pm
kimshapiro100@yahoo.com wrote:
> Would you recommend Vonage ?
>
> Hi
>
> We are thinking of installing Vonage ..............$24.99 per month.
> We have Comcast cable / internet.
>
> I have heard that the sound quality is poor sometimes.
>
> Does anyone have any experience with them ?
>
> Positive, negative ?
>
>
> Pls let me know.
I'm not clear about where you are in the decision making process. Are you
deciding between Vonage and other VoIP providers, or are you deciding
between VoIP and standard telephone service?
As a VoIP provider, Vonage is great. They are reliable, and they are
priced well. They also have a wide host of features available. Overall, if
you decide that VoIP is what you want, Vonage is a good choice.
However, while VoIP is marketed and typically used as a replacement for
standard telephone service, it is not standard telephone service. It's not
regulated the same way. It doesn't use the same technology. It has
different limitations, and different benefits.
The most important part of VoIP is that little "o" in the middle: The
"over" part of it. With VoIP, you are essentially making phone calls on a
system that's an overlay over another system. The phone system was
designed to be used for phone calls, and is essentially a connection
switching network. When you make a phone call on a regular telephone,
essentially the pair of wires coming out of your phone become connected
with the pair of wires going into the phone on the other end of the call.
Your call goes through a number of switches, and the signal is processed
by various pieces of equipment, but you are essentially directly connected
between the two places. There may be places where multiple phone
connections are multiplexed, and are using the same physical wire, but
you're still essentially directly connected.
With VoIP, after your voice is turned into digital data, that data is
broken-up into packets, and those packets are sent off to the destination.
These packets could go in different directions, but the most important
difference is that the packets, not the connection, are the discrete
units. It's a far more efficient way of sending data, but efficiency isn't
always the most important.
Think of it this way: If you were shipping a dozen widgets across town,
you could hire a delivery service to come and pick them all up at once,
and take them as a unit over to their destination for next day delivery.
Yes, they might sit in the truck along with some other deliveries, but
they're essentially being taken straight from one place to another as a
unit. That compares to standard telephone service. Now take those same
dozen widgets, pack them into a dozen boxes, and drop them in the mailbox
outside your office. They'll get picked-up with all the other mail in the
box, taken to be sorted, and dispatched to a delivery person who'll
deliver them. That's VoIP.
In the above example, most of the time the dozen widgets will get from
point A to point B in about the same amount of time, and in the same
condition. The significantly lower cost of the second method will be the
primary reason why you would choose method two over method one. That's a
perfectly valid choice, and most people will be completely satisfied
making that choice.
Likewise, most of the time VoIP is going to work just as well as standard
telephone service. The sound quality will be the same. Everything will
work just as well as if you were using a standard telephone -- but the
cost will be significantly lower! And that's a perfectly valid choice.
(One that I made, as a matter of fact.)
But VoIP does have it's limitations. Because it's using your Internet
connection, it depends upon your Internet connection being up and running.
You're going to have your cable modem, a router, and a phone adapter in
your house (perhaps two or even all three of them might be combined in the
same box) that all need power to operate. But even if you get battery
back-up to power these devices during a power failure, if your ISP is
having problems, it doesn't matter if you've got power going to those
devices. Even if your ISP is up 99% of the time, that's 14 minutes a day
that they're down. And what percentage of time a consumer-level ISP is up
or down is not regulated. They don't have to be up any more then they need
to be to keep from losing customers, and that's more like 95% of the time
than 99% of the time. A regular phone company typically needs to be up
99.999% of the time. That's less than a minute a day down.
Not only does your ISP need to be up, the VoIP provider needs to be up,
too. Are they striving for just 99%, or 99.999% of the time? Remember that
it's far more likely that their down-time isn't going to overlap the ISP's
down time than it is that it will overlap. So if both the ISP and the VoIP
provider are shooting for 99%, that could mean an average of 28 minutes a
day you won't have phone service, compared to an average of less than a
minute a day with standard telephone service!
In most cases, it's not going to be that bad. And even if the numbers do
reach those extremes, it's unlikely that it's going to have a bad outcome.
However, for some people, this potential may not be acceptable at any
cost.
Vonage does have a way to address most of this. If your phone adapter
loses connection, and you've got a call coming in, it can be rerouted to
another number of your choice, typically your cell phone number. And
having a working cell phone is also a good back-up for when you need to
make an emergency call, and bad luck puts that emergency at the same time
that your VoIP is down. (A working cell phone is a good back-up for
standard phone service, too.)
The other issue with VoIP is the "V". It stands for "voice". VoIP was
designed for voice communications. Most of the time your fax machine will
work just fine. Most of the time your DishTV box or Tivo will be able to
phone home just fine. Alarm systems, medical equipment, Realtor's eKeys...
most will work okay much of the time. However, this is not what VoIP was
designed for. These devices may or may not work reliably. And they may not
work at all. This could be very important for some people.
All that said, I did make the choice to drop my standard phone service,
and go with VoIP. And I did go with Vonage. And I have been satisfied.
--
Warren H.
==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Power Lawncare Tools for Spring Clean-up:
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/blackanddecker/
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