Incoming calls

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 13, 2007 Posts: 2

I am thinking of signing up with Vonage. However, I had a question that I hope someone knows the answer to.

Currently, Vonage is not able to use my existing phone number. I'm assuming I will pick my area code and they will assign me a number.

Will the number be long distance for people calling me from my same town? What controls what is a long distance call for them?

Posts: 4751 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4751

You should be able to select both an area code and a town. From this, Vonage should assign a number to you that's local to that town. Your question is a good one, since we've seen times reported here when it didn't work out correctly, and a session with customer service was needed to fix it. Hopefully that won't happen with you.

Posts: 153 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 11, 2007 Posts: 153

You can use the site http://www.localcallingguide.com/

There are a lot of ways to search this site, but for your purposes, I would suggest that you start with "Search Area Code/Prefix/OCN".

Enter your current area code and prefix into the first two boxes, and leave the rest blank, and submit.

You'll get a page which includes a line for your NPA-NXX with headings as follows:
NPA-NXX BLOCK RATE CENTRE REGION SWITCH ...

The name of your town (or more precisely, rate center) will be under that heading. Click there.

The next page will list all of the prefixes that are in the same rate center. If you choose one of those, then you will be in exactly the same local calling area as before.

The page also lists the names of each of the other rate centers which are a local call to your rate center. If one of those is "fooville" you could pick a "fooville" number and you'd still be a local call to anyone in your old rate center, but not necessarily to all the other rate centers which were formerly a local call. You can check fooville's local calling area, or the local calling areas for each of the prefixes that are local to your current rate center, and decide which is the best, and then see if Vonage has numbers with that prefix.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 13, 2007 Posts: 2

Thanks for all the information. I am just trying to cover all my bases here and this information has really helped me.

Trying to figure all this out isn't as easy as it seems on the surface.