Looking at transfering over 4 lines for a buisness

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2009 Posts: 4

In attempts to trim down my very large phone bill, i'm considering transfering all my lines over to Vonage. However, me being a business user and never using Voip before, i have some questions.

1) Looking at the Small Business Premium Plan, it says you can very simply add new lines. Is this a completely separate line? (IE all 4 lines could be holding calls at once?) How much is it per new line?
2) Since i've never used Voip before, is call quality good? If its based on available bandwidth, will cable at around 10MBs be enough?
3) We have many different phones. The V-Portal that i see has support for 2 phones. With some rigging, can we have one or two V-Portals that pump the signal through the whole house? (I would put one right before it comes into the house)
4) Will playing online games, streaming video, bittorenting, or other bandwidth intensive applications degrade phone quality?
5) Will we be able to keep all of our original phones?

Thanks in advance.

Posts: 656 · Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:15 pm Post subject:

Quote:

1)Looking at the Small Business Premium Plan, it says you can very simply add new lines. Is this a completely separate line? (IE all 4 lines could be holding calls at once?) How much is it per new line?

Each line would be independent with it's own number so the cost per line would be dependent upon the rate plan you choose per line. You cannot mix residential and business plans. So if you choose the Small Business Premium Plan for $49.99 as your first line, all the other lines on this account must also come from the business plans. They can either be the same Small Business Premium Plan at $49.99 per line or the Small Business Basic 1500 Minutes Plan for $39.99 per line.

Quote:

2) Since i've never used Voip before, is call quality good? If its based on available bandwidth, will cable at around 10MBs be enough?

The quality is only as good as the internet connection between your location and the Vonage media relays. This can also change depending upon usage of the local ISP's node. During high usage time, peak hours of 5 PM to 10 PM, there may be audio issues where early in the day and late night, there are no issues. There is no way for one person to answer this since some people have picture perfect quality all the time, some people have nothing but poor audio, and others have a mix of both. This also depends upon your make and model modem, the rest of the hardware you use, and the usage of bandwidth within your home. You mention 10Mbit bandwidth which is your downstream, how much is your upstream?

Quote:

3) We have many different phones. The V-Portal that i see has support for 2 phones. With some rigging, can we have one or two V-Portals that pump the signal through the whole house? (I would put one right before it comes into the house)

Each Vonage phone adapter has 2 phone ports. Each can be assigned with a separate phone number for a total of 2 phone numbers per adapter. If you only have 1 phone number, only 1 phone port is active. If you needed 3 or 4 numbers, you would need a 2nd Vonage adapter. The phone signal can be wired into your home wiring and depending upon how many pairs you have through out your house, will determine how many Vonage lines you can wire to your jacks. If you cannot do this yourself, Vonage doesn't do this for you. You can get a Pro install from Vonage but they are not available in all areas and will only do 1 set of pairs which is 1 phone number through your house. It would be extra for more and could get costly.

Quote:

4) Will playing online games, streaming video, bittorenting, or other bandwidth intensive applications degrade phone quality?

As mentioned before, this will depend upon your internet connection quality both bandwidth, latency, jitter, and packet loss as well as your modem and router if your using one. If you have your own router, it would need to be able to perform QOS otherwise gaming and P2P applications will affect the phone quality drastically. You could put thew Vonage adapter directly to your modem to achieve the highest possible QOS however when on a call, the rest of your applications will have very little bandwidth to work with and could choke.

5) Will we be able to keep all of our original phones?

This is another question that is general and cannot be answered without knowing your phone numbers. While Vonage can port most numbers, since Vonage is not a local phone company and operates Nationally, there is no possible way for Vonage to have service in every rate center in the country. Therefore smaller markets do not have numbers offered by Vonage and in return your numbers cannot be ported since Vonage does not have a partner carrier that services that rate center. In order to see if your numbers can be ported, go to the Vonage website and enter your numbers into the LNP tool which can be found here:

http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=lnp&refer_id=WEBSR0706010003W1

Now on the right hand side there are a few banners. Put your numbers in where it says:

Check if you can keep your current number here:

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2009 Posts: 4

Thanks for your quick reply. Just had one question.

VonTechMgr wrote:

Quote:

1)Looking at the Small Business Premium Plan, it says you can very simply add new lines. Is this a completely separate line? (IE all 4 lines could be holding calls at once?) How much is it per new line?

Each line would be independent with it's own number so the cost per line would be dependent upon the rate plan you choose per line. You cannot mix residential and business plans. So if you choose the Small Business Premium Plan for $49.99 as your first line, all the other lines on this account must also come from the business plans. They can either be the same Small Business Premium Plan at $49.99 per line or the Small Business Basic 1500 Minutes Plan for $39.99 per line.

So each line is a new account (or i pay it like a new account)? So if i want to transfer all of my lines over, all using the Small Business Premium Plan, it would be $50 x 4, or $200 to do it? That's not savings; in fact i think thats more then what i currently pay...

Please confirm.

And when you were telling me about wiring it into my house, i believe i can do it myself. If not, i have a friend who could help me, he's very good with this stuff.

Posts: 656 · Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 5:19 pm Post subject:

You can have as many lines on a single account but each line has it's own rate plan.

You don't buy 1 line at $49.99 and get other lines for free. So depending upon your needs, you can have 4 lines all on the Small Business Unlimited rates each costing $49.99 on 1 account ($200.00 plus fees and taxes) or you can mix the rate plans up with 1 line on the Small Business Unlimited Plan and the other 3 on the 1500 Minute Business plan at $39.99, etc....

If you open a business account, all lines on the account must come from the Business rate plans. If you open a Residential account, all lines must be from the Residential rate plans. You cannot have a Residential account with Business Rate Plans lines on it and vice versa.

When you sign up, the first number added on the Account is considered the Primary line so what ever rate plan is chosen for this line dictates what type of account you have, Business vs Residential.

Does this clear things up?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2009 Posts: 4

Yes. Due to the expense i will probably look for an alternative. Thanks for the help.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 13, 2007 Posts: 6

Just get residential lines...

They might check you for residential vs business use but only if you use TONS of minutes and there is no benefit to being a business customer (no special perks/support/features, etc.) unless you count the "free" "Fax" line.

If I were you, I would get 3 residential lines with Vonage and keep one landline as a backup/data/fax line. The inbound calls are unlimited with all Vonage lines, so you could have it like this:
2 Residential Unlimited lines @ $24.99 ea - use for dialing out only - you never pay overage or long distance on these lines. You set them up in a call hunt as a rollover line for...
1 Residential 500 line $17.99 - Primary inbound number has all of the features on it that the unlimited does, just limited to 500 minutes outbound you only use this line to dial out when the other 2 are busy.
3 Lines for under $80 including taxes and fees is dirt cheap for a business...

You set your backup landline number as the network availability number on the 500 minute line so if the internet drops you still get all of your calls there - hook up an answering machine to that one and just carry call waiting on it... you will also need this landline if you need to do any kind of serious / regular faxing , have an alarm system, or use TiVo/Credit Card terminal / other type of dialup data stuff for your business

PS: Transfer one line at a time unless you are a masochist. It will take a bit longer but you will have a much better experience spreading the transition out over the course of a month or two if you can...

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 10, 2009 Posts: 4

Is it legal for a business to get residential lines? I don't want to be doing anything illegal or get caught when i'm audited. The business would also be paying for this, not me personally.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Nov 11, 2008 Posts: 13

you can just set up residential lines and if a fax line is needed just add it to one account. If you need any help or wanna try make the switch send me a pm i will give you a good deal on our 3 phone sets. Feel free to email me mpuente@retailingwireless.com

Mike

Posts: 183 · Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 1:21 pm Post subject:

You'd be in violation of ToS. I would not violate ToS and potentially lose my phone service if it was ever found out what was occurring.