That Was Easy! New Vonage Account and Connection

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 21, 2005 Posts: 3

There are a lot of messages here from people having problems with Vonage which may discourage and potential customers. I too wondered how much trouble I would have making it work and hesitated for weeks about signing-up.

I bought my adapter at Staples. Since they were very busy on Saturday afternoon, I did not verify the MAC code in the store, as some have recommended due to problems with Vonage Canada recognising certain code numbers

Anyway - once I figured out where to put the adpater (like a lot of people - it seems every electircal outlet is occupied and all the power bars are full and then I buy something else that needs current!) and chose a phone set to use as my trial unit, I got online to Vonage to register (took less than 5 minutes) , connected power to the adpater and had dial tone in less than 30 seconds!

Obvioulsy not a lot of calls in less than one day, but the quality is excellent - clear and louder than the POTS line in a 30year old subdivision- and the caller ID, voice mail, etc seem to be working. I may run into trouble yet but my first experience is positive.

I still have some work to do to run some wire so I don't have to rely on a cordless phone all the time, and I'll be tryng Vonage for a couple of months before I think of porting my telephone number but it seems the potential is good to save some money while getting more flexible and better quality phone service.

For the record, I use Rogers Extreme internet service.

Posts: 14

donald_yyz wrote:

I still have some work to do to run some wire so I don't have to rely on a cordless phone all the time, and I'll be tryng Vonage for a couple of months before I think of porting my telephone number but it seems the potential is good to save some money while getting more flexible and better quality phone service.

I've been using it since last June ( I think) and don't ever recall having a problem with Vonage service. It's been faithfull. Don't know why I didn't do it sooner. I recommend it to everyone I can.

Posts: 37 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 01, 2006 Posts: 37

We only got our router/adapter 3 hours ago. We signed up online, so the equipment came all the way from Ohio. Initial testing seems to work fine.
One thing I noted was that calling from a cellphone to the Vonage phone seems to be more noisy than I had expected, but it may just be because I'm too used at using either cellphones, MSN Messenger Voice, or Skype... and the sound quality on those are just a tad better than a POTS phone...

But anyhow, the setup is by far NOT as simple as Vonage makes it sound on their TV commercials. You can't get it running just by calling them ... you do have to connect some cables, and know just a tiny bit about how the Internet is connected to your computer to be able to do it yourself. I'm lucky that I'm a computer professional, but Vonage's PR makes it sound a heck of a lot simpler than it actually is. And if you're one of the unlucky souls that have a USB-connected DSL modem, you're just out of luck. There isn't any VOIP boxes that support USB WAN connections AFAIK.