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Vonage Bottom line up front: Rigorously check the quality of your internet connection
Bottom line up front: Rigorously check the quality of your internet connection – several times, at various times of day, using several of the different VoIP line quality tests. If the internet connection quality is good, you should be happy with Vonage.
I’ve had Vonage for five years - N TX, rural OK, and S FL.
TW, Cox, Sudden Link, and Comcast as ISPs.
I’ve recommended it to several relatives who also have Vonage.
Probably most telling, I pay for Vonage a year at a time in advance (to get the discount) and have had no cause to regret it (at least not yet – look at Sun Rocket). I wouldn’t recommend this course of action until you’ve had Vonage for a while and are happy with it, though.
I’ve also traveled with the phone adapter and used it in various other places, including overseas.
Once again: A good internet connection will give you good service.
Vonage has had some Vonage system outages (as opposed to ISP issues) in this time, but I actually had more outages with my prior POTS carrier (Southwestern Bell). That, plus the cost, induced me to try Vonage.
What is a good internet connection?
Adequate speed up and down. Doesn’t need to be all that much. I’ve had decent voice quality with 100 kbps.
Low packet loss (preferably zero, but you can live with a couple of per cent).
Low latency (when my latency got over 80 ms to places like ping www.yahoo.com or ping www.mit.edu, voice quality suffered).
Quite important but often overlooked – low jitter, up and down (low singe digit percentage). Good quality of service. Mine has been as low as around 70% and still produces decent voice quality.
Now some of the warts:
Caller ID. Can’t get your name, only number. Exception: If you port the number, the big caller ID system in the sky might remember your name (at least for a while).
Phone book listing. Can be done but is expensive and a pain. Personally, I consider “free unlisted number” to be a Vonage advantage. If you need to be in the local phone book or a web-based derivative, this may be a downside to Vonage.
Porting. Two of my relatives ported a number from Verizon to Vonage and it took a not unreasonable time. The portings went through in 2-3 weeks or so. Another ported from Ameritech/SBC and the porting took almost a year. Vonage said they couldn’t gain the number until the prior carrier released it. Ameritech said that the old number had actually been half of an ISDN line (or so they said – they never had ISDN) and couldn’t be ported. They (Ameritech) pestered them to do the easy thing and go back to Ameritech. After many months, the port went through.
Customer ‘Service.’ If you’re reasonably tech literate and can RTFM, the first people you talk to at Vonage CS will be reading scripts and telling you to do things you’ve already tried. Fortunately, I haven’t had to call CS often.
Satellite ISP. Forget about VoIP (unless/until the satellite providers change how they manage data streams). There are several threads with all the technical details if this applies to you.
VoIP blocking. Several ISPs or countries actively block VoIP. There are threads on this topic also.
Read The Full Thread: Vonage Worth It?
• I am currently deciding if I should go back to the LAN line after having some bad
• Most issues related to VoIP service can be traced back to your ISP service. The
• Read the sticky post at the top of this forum and post all of the results.
What
• You may also wish to check your ISP quality of service on:
http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip/
• I have had Vonage for three years. I have three different lines in three different
• I've been with Vonage for almost three years as well, and other than a few issues
• To reinforce the earlier posters, I've had Vonage for about 4 years in PDX. Vonage
qwertyui posted "Bottom line up front: Rigorously check the quality of your internet connection" on 04/23/2008 |
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