Vonage Worth It?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 18, 2008 Posts: 1

I am currently deciding if I should go back to the LAN line after having some bad experiences with VoIPs. I had SunRocket for nearly a year before they went under and had few problems. I jumped to Voip.com and they are horrible. Haven't had good service for the ~10months I've been with them. Before I go back to Ma Bell, I wanted to hear how Vonage customers felt about their service. I do get the sense that Vonage has a lot of satisfied customers by reading a few pages of threads - quite the opposite at voip.com's forum.

In case I'm crazy and my 'problems' are simply related to all VoIPs, I will share some of them with you and you can tell me if this is the norm or not. Consistently, it takes up to a minute for the call to go through - no dial tone, just silence before I can hear the person I am call. Also consistently, there are times where one person can't hear the other person or simply the call get's dropped. Oh, and many of my callers tell me they get a message that I don't have service. Voip.com's cureall is to power cycle the equipment. That's all for now.

Following is my setup, in order - Comcast Modem / Linksys WRT54G Router / Voip adapter(connected outside firewall) / Phones - Uniden TRU-9485 w/ 6 phones connected to wireless base. Let me know if you need anything else.

Thanks for your time!

Posts: 881 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Nov 05, 2005 Posts: 881

Most issues related to Voip service can be traced back to your ISP service. The quality of your Voip service is highly dependent upon the quality of your ISP service...The two go hand-in-hand.

Run the Voip speed test and post your results. Connect your cable modem directly to your computer removing all other networking equipment. See the following sticky located at the top of the Voip forum: http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic7191.html

Posts: 323 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 323

Read the sticky post at the top of this forum and post all of the results.

What you are describing sounds like a bad internet connection, but the speed test will help to confirm that.

Posts: 830 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 830

You may also wish to check your ISP quality of service on:

http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip/

I and others get inconsistent results on this site's speed test.

From what I have read, over time, there are two Voip pure play providers that seem to work best, Vonage is one.

I prefer Vonage based on additional features such as Vonage Talk and Contact Book (though both in Beta), just to name a couple.

A word to the wise, read your TOS before signing up with any Voip provider (and the cable players as well). Seems everyone has a minimum contract and cancellation fees. Just know what you have agreed to as most folks don't and then love to rant about how they are being cheated. Rolling Eyes

Posts: 38 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 10, 2005 Posts: 38

I have had Vonage for three years. I have three different lines in three different locations all with Comcast and they all work great. I have none of the problems you list. I recommend using a Vonage router and placing it directly after the cable modem. If you think you are having problems temporarily connect your Vonage adapter directly after the cable modem and see if it improves.

I use Motorola SB5100s for the cable modem and either a VT2442 or RPT300 for the Vonage router.

Posts: 229 · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:29 am Post subject:

I've been with Vonage for almost three years as well, and other than a few issues within my first few months of service, the call quality itself has been stellar, even using a low-teir broadband service. Customer service and technical support can be quite another issue, but I may have to talk to them once a year about something, so it's very tollerable.

Posts: 64 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 24, 2006 Posts: 64

Bottom line up front: Rigorously check the quality of your internet connection – several times, at various times of day, using several of the different Voip line quality tests. If the internet connection quality is good, you should be happy with Vonage.

I’ve had Vonage for five years - N TX, rural OK, and S FL.

TW, Cox, Sudden Link, and Comcast as ISPs.

I’ve recommended it to several relatives who also have Vonage.

Probably most telling, I pay for Vonage a year at a time in advance (to get the discount) and have had no cause to regret it (at least not yet – look at Sun Rocket). I wouldn’t recommend this course of action until you’ve had Vonage for a while and are happy with it, though.

I’ve also traveled with the phone adapter and used it in various other places, including overseas.

Once again: A good internet connection will give you good service.

Vonage has had some Vonage system outages (as opposed to ISP issues) in this time, but I actually had more outages with my prior POTS carrier (Southwestern Bell). That, plus the cost, induced me to try Vonage.

What is a good internet connection?

Adequate speed up and down. Doesn’t need to be all that much. I’ve had decent voice quality with 100 kbps.

Low packet loss (preferably zero, but you can live with a couple of per cent).

Low latency (when my latency got over 80 ms to places like ping www.yahoo.com or ping www.mit.edu, voice quality suffered).

Quite important but often overlooked – low jitter, up and down (low singe digit percentage). Good quality of service. Mine has been as low as around 70% and still produces decent voice quality.

Now some of the warts:

Caller ID. Can’t get your name, only number. Exception: If you port the number, the big caller ID system in the sky might remember your name (at least for a while).

Phone book listing. Can be done but is expensive and a pain. Personally, I consider “free unlisted number” to be a Vonage advantage. If you need to be in the local phone book or a web-based derivative, this may be a downside to Vonage.

Porting. Two of my relatives ported a number from Verizon to Vonage and it took a not unreasonable time. The portings went through in 2-3 weeks or so. Another ported from Ameritech/SBC and the porting took almost a year. Vonage said they couldn’t gain the number until the prior carrier released it. Ameritech said that the old number had actually been half of an ISDN line (or so they said – they never had ISDN) and couldn’t be ported. They (Ameritech) pestered them to do the easy thing and go back to Ameritech. After many months, the port went through.

Customer ‘Service.’ If you’re reasonably tech literate and can RTFM, the first people you talk to at Vonage CS will be reading scripts and telling you to do things you’ve already tried. Fortunately, I haven’t had to call CS often.

Satellite ISP. Forget about Voip (unless/until the satellite providers change how they manage data streams). There are several threads with all the technical details if this applies to you.

Voip blocking. Several ISPs or countries actively block Voip. There are threads on this topic also.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 12, 2006 Posts: 9

To reinforce the earlier posters, I've had Vonage for about 4 years in PDX. Vonage service has been far superior to POTS. Any problems I've had were traced to Comcast. Quality, reliability are as good or better than my old land line Verizon, plus I spend less than 1/3 on voice service with Vonage. But the best part of Vonage is that I control my phone services via the vonage.com website.