Canceling Vonage, for now

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 19, 2005 Posts: 6

I was eager to give Vonage a try, now that lots of places are offering full rebates on the hardware purchases. I am currently a Time Warner Digital Phone customer, and I was looking forward to paying $25.00 per month for more services and features than Time Warner is giving me for $45 / month.

I purchased a Linksys PAP2 adapter at Staples, brought it home, and completed the retail activation. I had dial tone in less than 5 minutes! I was very impressed with the calling features, and the Vonage dashboard is really nifty. I was really rooting for this to work.

So why cancel? In a nutshell, inconsistent call quality. When Vonage is good, it is VERY good - certainly on a par with Time Warner Digital Phone. However, under many circumstances I would get dropouts, hiss, and lots of "lag" that made conversations difficult, even when I wasn't using my internet connection. Testing with PingPlotter, TestYourVOIP, and this forum's Voip speed tests showed very good results, yet call quality was very inconsistent.

When I called to cancel, the person asked if I had talked to Vonage tech support - which I have not. Realistically, is there anything they could have done in this situation?

I may try again in another 6 months or so. In the meantime, I'm awaiting a call back from someone who can complete the cancellation of my account. Sad

Posts: 206 · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 4:13 pm Post subject: Re: Canceling Vonage, for now

BigDeal wrote:

I was eager to give Vonage a try, now that lots of places are offering full rebates on the hardware purchases. I am currently a Time Warner Digital Phone customer, and I was looking forward to paying $25.00 per month for more services and features than Time Warner is giving me for $45 / month.

I purchased a Linksys PAP2 adapter at Staples, brought it home, and completed the retail activation. I had dial tone in less than 5 minutes! I was very impressed with the calling features, and the Vonage dashboard is really nifty. I was really rooting for this to work.

So why cancel? In a nutshell, inconsistent call quality. When Vonage is good, it is VERY good - certainly on a par with Time Warner Digital Phone. However, under many circumstances I would get dropouts, hiss, and lots of "lag" that made conversations difficult, even when I wasn't using my internet connection. Testing with PingPlotter, TestYourVOIP, and this forum's Voip speed tests showed very good results, yet call quality was very inconsistent.

When I called to cancel, the person asked if I had talked to Vonage tech support - which I have not. Realistically, is there anything they could have done in this situation?

I may try again in another 6 months or so. In the meantime, I'm awaiting a call back from someone who can complete the cancellation of my account. Sad

Sure there is. If your tests look ok, it very easily could have been a settings change or an alteration in your LAN configuration that would have made everything better.

Posts: 318 · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 5:57 pm Post subject:

Perhaps having a phone adapter like the Linksys, with QoS, could've helped too?

Or perhaps Time Warner was "sabotaging" Vonage's traffic (a conspiracy theory that's been floating around) to keep you with them.

Posts: 218 · Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 6:18 pm Post subject:

Quote:

Sure there is. If your tests look ok, it very easily could have been a settings change or an alteration in your LAN configuration that would have made everything better.

I agree...I was getting some crappy quality and I simply moved my PAP2 on my LAN and I also upgraded my home phone system to the Uniden 8860. It all made a world of difference and I cannot tell any difference from how things used to be with Verizon....except the bill!!

Posts: 89 · Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 10:07 am Post subject:

BigDeal,
I am also a TW Roadrunner customer. I am in Upstate NY. My service is far from perfect but it is "OK" for now. I too have looked into their digital phone service but found the price to be very high. Although my speeds average around 4500/350 I still have a problem with choppy audio when my bandwith saver is set to 90. I now have it at 50 and it is better. The problem is that there is no good reason why this is happening. My speed tests are good and my results from testyourvoip are good also. Please let me know your setup and if it is similar to mine we can isolate some things. I know you are on your way out the door but your info will help me and others.

Common problems:
1) choppy audio when band set to 90
2) echos, worse when band set to 90
3) other say I sound like I am in a tunnel ( happens once in a while, Vonage did raise my FXS input I will se if that helps.)

set up:

Motorola SB4100>> Linksys RT31p2>> PC
Bandwith saver at 50
QOS enabled at 256
speeds around 4500/350

If anyone else has any suggestions or if there are other TW Roadrunner folks out there your response is welcome.

Thanks

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 19, 2005 Posts: 6

My setup was:

Motorola SBV4200 Voice over IP cable modem
Netgear WGR614 wireless router
Linksys PAP2 telephone adapter

Three PCs, one wireless, two wired to the WGR 614, very rare that more than one PC in use at any one time. I don't do any P2P filesharing or anything like that, VPN to work is the heaviest use for the upstream connection.

"Official" speeds 5 Mbps downstream, 384 Kbps upstream.

Just did a speed test, which reported 4.83 Mbps down and 566 Kbps upstream. QOS 97 %, RTT 56ms, MaxPause 20ms. TestYourVOIP numbers to Boston and San Jose today vary between 4.3 and 4.4 (with 4.4 being the "max").

These numbers are consistent with what I saw when I was testing Vonage. The numbers always looked good, but very often I was still experiencing unacceptable call quality. I never saw an association between poor quality calls and my own personal internet activity. I would try speed tests during calls and not notice any degradation in call quality. Other times I would be have all the PCs turned off, and calls would still be unacceptable.

With the clock ticking down on my 14-day trial, and reading the threads about how difficult it is to get to Vonage tech support, I decided to cancel for now. When Vonage comes out with E-911 and seems to have a better grip on customer support, I will most likely try again. For now, with Time Warner, I'm still saving money over Verizon, and my call quality is excellent.

Posts: 318 · Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 3:27 pm Post subject:

I don't know how, but I wonder if the Voip cable modem had something to do with it?

There may be truth in the rumours that Time Warner is sabotaging their competition (Vonage)...

Posts: 89 · Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:01 pm Post subject:

As you can see I a using the Motorola SB4100. Maybe this has something to do with it. I have asked for a SB5100 and am waiting for that. If I ever get them to call me back so I can get a SB5100 I'll report back. I tried buying my own modem but they said I have to use one of theirs Rolling Eyes

. I have read other threads that the SB5100 has worked well for others.

Posts: 2 · Vonage Engineer Joined: Oct 24, 2005 Posts: 2

Currently there known problems with the Motorola SBV4200 cable modem and the Vonage service. This issue is currently being researched.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

You're responding to a thread 9 months old.