I wonder when we are getting these new features.

Posts: 188 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Mar 07, 2004 Posts: 188

I am going to give Vonage a few months before I do vote with my checkbook, after all it took them over a month to fix their silly voicemail Very Happy

I hope that they will be coming out with a better product in the near future, they were quick to cut prices when AT&T did but now they are falling behind in the feature/quality war. All I trying to say is that they had better keep moving forward or they will get barried. As far as big busness goes...if they cannot please their small customers, how do they expect to gain busness custumers? Back to my point, it's all about quality of service not gimics.

Posts: 19 · Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 6:22 pm Post subject:

strange_69 wrote:

I am going to give Vonage a few months before I do vote with my checkbook, after all it took them over a month to fix their silly voicemail Very Happy

I hope that they will be coming out with a better product in the near future, they were quick to cut prices when AT&T did but now they are falling behind in the feature/quality war. All I trying to say is that they had better keep moving forward or they will get barried. As far as big busness goes...if they cannot please their small customers, how do they expect to gain busness custumers? Back to my point, it's all about quality of service not gimics.

The industry identifies "service quality" in terms of stability and voice quality. I can count on one hand the number of times I picked up the phone and couldn't dial out with Vonage, and most people cannot tell that I am using an IP phone service.

I'm sure the VM fix cost them at least $200k (assume 4 nicely-equipped Sun V440 or equivilant boxes, plus SAN connections, plus VM software licensing) It would have taken us that long to upgrade systems within my company, accounting for time to get a project plan put together, a VP to sign off on the funding, hardware delivery times, and installation / configuration / testing time. My company has a much more predictable growth pattern though -- I'm sure Vonage subscriptions vary depending on how many Sunday ads feature their service each week.

What serious features is Vonage lacking compared to its competition though? Anonymous Call Rejection? If it's really that important, you can put a device on your line like this one:

http://www.privacycorps.com/products/?id=20

Another option is to sign up for the federal do-not-call registry:

http://www.donotcall.gov

Since I signed up, I now get maybe 1 call every week or two from a charitable organization that I have previously donated to.

Or you can change providers, since other people are offering it. ATT just introduced this feature for their service, but they are charging an extra $1.99/mo on top of their premium service fees.

ATT is *JUST NOW* adding the "safe forward number" (aka Network Availability Number in the Vonage world) and it only seems to work with their D-Link TAs. ATT has had all sorts of issues with their equipment working behind a router. ATT has had more outages in the last month than Vonage.

Packet8 doesn't have web access to VM, doesn't have a network unavailable forwarding feature, doesn't have call transfer, and charges extra for 911 service.

There isn't a single provider in the same price range that offers everything that Vonage does *in addition* to all the new features that people are talking about.

Every service provider has subtle differences in their product offering, the key is choosing the one that provides the grouping of features that are most important to you.

Posts: 38 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Dec 20, 2004 Posts: 38

BUT.....Vonage DOES NOT have a 334 area code. What technology trick can you pull out of your sack for that one?

Nova Rod Cool

Posts: 19 · Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 8:00 pm Post subject:

NovaRod wrote:

BUT.....Vonage DOES NOT have a 334 area code. What technology trick can you pull out of your sack for that one?

You got me there. Razz

We're still in the early adopter phase of this service. It's going to be a lot like the expansion of PCS services back in the mid-to-late 1990s. If you are in one of the major markets you are going to have great coverage. It's going to take some time for them to expand out into the other markets. Eventually these services are going to start reaching their subscriber goals and start merging into larger companies like is happening right now in the cellular industry.

One thing is for certain, the next couple years are going to be interesting.