Vonage VoIP Forum Digest - May 14, 2007

May 14, 2007

By Daniel Connor

Welcome to today's edition of the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest.

In the news today we will read about Vonage's inclusion in the Internet communication section of Wal-Mart stores. On the forum we will discuss a called ID issue and would then get the stock market update for Vonage.

In The News

Vonage in Wal-Mart's Internet Communications section

An assortment of products that work with Vonage will now find place in the Internet communications section of 1,800 outlets of Wal-Mart Stores Incorporation, as reported by USA Today. Melissa O'Brien, a spokeswoman for the largest retail chain says that the 1,800 Wal-Mart stores will be evenly spread across the nation. Vonage, which already sells its Internet phones services and products at the Wal-Mart, will thus be coupled with a collection of Skype phone gears, to be featured in the same section.

USA Today reports that the Internet Communications section of Wal-Mart stores, which consists of products from both Vonage and Skype, is to be launched on May14.

Don Albert, Vice President of Skype's North American operations, says that Skype and Vonage will be the only two tenants, for now, at the Wal-Mart Internet communications section.

Vonage, the largest Internet phone company of the USA with over 2.4 million subscriber base, offers E-911 services. Vonage has also popularized the VoIP among callers and offers a range of packages as a complement to the traditional phone services.

In The Vonage VoIP Forum

A Vonage forum master, Darrell_G begins a thread titled as, 'Outgoing caller ID'

He began the conversation saying, "I've been informed as of today that when I make an outbound call from my Vonage line, the caller I.D. information that is displayed to the other party is a restricted or private number. I placed a call to my cell number from my Vonage line and the cell also displayed an incoming restricted number."

He adds, "When I tried accessing my voicemail by dialing my Vonage number from my Vonage line I received a message basically stating that I would have to unblock my number so that the caller I.D. information could be displayed even though I never blocked my outgoing caller I.D. information. Anyone else notice this behavior? I wonder if Vonage is now blocking the outgoing caller I.D."

Highlighting the post of Darell_G Tmbeem replied, "I just tried calling my cell phone from my Vonage line and it didn't go through as a blocked call. I tried calling my mother (who doesn't use Vonage) and unfortunately no one was home, but I'll have her check her Caller ID logs to find out if it was sent as blocked or not. I don't know why Vonage would be blocking your number from being displayed. It shouldn't, obviously. I'll update you as soon as I can get hold of my mother and see what her Caller ID says."

Darrell_G again wrote, "Thanks for your reply. I have an open ticket with Vonage and they are currently researching this for me. They told me that my caller I.D. information should not be blocked and it should be displayed when making a call from my Vonage line."

Bmerdinian who had been responding some of the threads yesterday also tried to provide some solution to this problem. He said, "You can test it by just unblocking it yourself, if you are going to wait for Cx service of Vonage, probably they will blame youself for not knowing how to dial the phone no, or tell you to use and test another phone, which i am sure that even before Vonage you were using the same phone and it was working great. Just try this and tell me what happens.

Simply dial *77 from your Vonage phone to turn on "Anonymous Call Block," *87 to turn it off. After this try to use it again and see if you still have the same problem, Probably by mistake some1 has turned it on from the server and the Agent you got maybe he is a newbie and liek may others in the company which they don't know what to do Simply dial *78 from your Vonage phone to turn on "Do Not Disturb," *79 to turn it off."

He continued saying, "There is a feature in some phones you can turn on the Caller id when you call out, like mine i can do that even the service doesn't support it or i dial *67then the no i.e *675142610123 this blocks the call when you are calling out. Check your phone or try to reset it, i would be more helpful if you tell me what kind of phone you have (MODEL)? Cheers"

Vonage Stock Report

On Friday, at the New York Stock Exchange, Vonage stock closed at $3.46 a share, which is a rise of 0.08 cents (2.37%) from that of Thursday's closing price $3.38 per share. The day's lowest price was $3.39 a share and the total number of Vonage share traded on Friday was 3,149,000.

Once again our Vonage Forum can be reached through vonage-forum.com/forum15.html">this link.

That's what's hot about Vonage today. Check with us tomorrow for our next edition of the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest.