Using Vonage overseas - Field Report

Posts: 14 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 26, 2004 Posts: 14

I have been using Vonage at home for about 14 months now and for the most part, I have been happy. I now have a job that has me travelling overseas for about 35% of my time; I figured Vonage would be a great, low-cost option of keeping in touch with friends, family, and co-workers (the last part is how I got my company to foot the cost Smile

hehe)

Preface: I am in Asia right now; staying at 5 star hotels with broadband available in their rooms. I have to travel with the following: 1) laptop, 2) laptop power adaptor, 3) mini usb optical mouse, 4) pocket wifi G access point, 5) Vonage box, 6) Vonage power adaptor, 7) ipod Cool

ipod charger, 9) blackberry, and 10) bose quiet comfort II head phones and 11) canon s500 powershot digicam and charger. As you can see, I almost need a small suitcase just for my electronics!

I'll start with the bad:
1) The Linksys router is TOO BIG for travel. Until they can offer something about half the size, I will find this to be a big nuisance.
2) WHY IS THIS ONLY 110V? Every friggin electronics device I own nowadays has a power adaptor that supports 110v-240v. This is a big problem depending on region I am in, and if the hotel I am staying has a transformer available.
3) Latency matters A LOT. Here in Beijing, China I had about 30-40kbps upstream which is good, but latency was bad. This caused a decent amount of delay--enough to sometimes cause confusion in the conversation.
4) When (If?) hotels move to 100% digital phones (of even IP-based phones), we will have to start ALSO carrying an analog handset. IMO this is very cumbersome and at some point not worth it. Exactly how much computer gear am I supposed to carry?! I guess softphone will be the next feature I need to try out (but this adds another cost).

The good:
1) Once I had internet access, I was able to successfully get a dial-tone and make calls. It was almost seamless.
2) The linksys is wireless AP friendly. I was able to plug-in my deck-of-cards sized Asus wifi access point into the linksys router and voila, instant wifi in my hotel room.
http://usa.asus.com/products/communication/wireless/wl-330g/overview.HTM

Overall, this cuts down on my telephone costs while overseas about 75% and removes any restrictions I had on minute usage.

The only annoying this is my friends & family back home forgetting that I am in a different time-zone and ringing me up at 2:30am! Eek

Posts: 14 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 26, 2004 Posts: 14

Strange, but for some reason I cannot edit my own posts! I wanted to fix up some of the grammer and make it easier to read...

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