Competition - PRIMUS CANADA

Posts: 336 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 12:52 am Post subject: Competition - PRIMUS CANADA

Primus Canada has reduced their broadband phone service to $29.95 for unlimited US/Canada calling. Currently Vonage is at $39.95. I think Vonage will undoubtedly have to reduce their prices to stay competitive. Vonage reduced their unlimited service from $45.95 to $39.95 in January 2005.

Primus is offering a $15.95 deal, a $19.95 deal which includes unlimited local calling (which Vonage does not offer on their $19.95 plan). The unlimited local calling with Vonage is $34.95.

Primus also has 911 availability, do not disturb feature, and speed dialing feature. Vonage currently does not offer these features in Canada.

I can only hope that things will change soon at Vonage. I don't want to see Vonage lose their Canadian business.

Note: The above prices were all in Canadian dollars.

Posts: 34 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 06, 2005 Posts: 34

My, that cetainly does sound nice. I'm willing to tough it out with Vonage for a while because they've been good to me and reliable and i don't wanna be jumping around from provider to provider all the time. But at 10 full dollars cheaper I don't think I'll stay with them forever if they don't at least bring their prices in line with the US customer cost (adjusted for the differing dollar of course) which is about the same as Primus.

Posts: 56 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 10:56 am Post subject:

looks very nice. I might have to switch, the price is very attractive AND they have 911!

I love Vonage but if they dont have what we need and asked for many times I dont know what else to do, thats how business works.

Also we dont have Click2Call but the U.S does, I would imagine all they have to do is add the Canadian login i.d.'s and passwords to their Click2Call servers in the U.S. for it to work, as all our calls go through the U.S. anyways. Because if you go on Vonage.com and put in your canadian username and password it doesnt work, which is how you login to click2call. These are just my thoughts not confrimed in anyway but someone please correct me if they know, I emailed Vonage a month ago about it with no response.

Anyone know how long Primus has been working and if there are any review forums or anything?

Posts: 33 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:23 am Post subject: Re: Competition - PRIMUS CANADA

DarKev wrote:

Primus also has 911 availability, do not disturb feature, and speed dialing feature. Vonage currently does not offer these features in Canada.

I also noticed that Primus offers number portability -- for me that is important -- I am hoping that Vonage can incorporate that aspect much sooner versus later.

Posts: 34 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 06, 2005 Posts: 34

I politely emailed Patti Jordan, Director of Marketing & Communications in Canada, who previously replied to emails to the PR email address, to let her know that all things mentioned in this thread are a concern.

If existing customers let Vonage know that we expect more (for less in this case) hopefully we can pressure them to make these changes.

I know we're not really supposed to be discussing comptetitors on this forum, and mostly this thread is about getting Vonage to compete with them, but i notice that talkbroadband also offers two optional virtual numbers for no extra cost (at the price of two other options that is) which is so cool

Posts: 336 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 1:22 pm Post subject:

The Primus virtual numbers cost $4.00 CDN each. You can have a maximum of two virtual numbers with Primus. They also publish your name and number in your local telephone directory. Yes, they do have number portability too. They have been around for well over a year in Canada. I heard of them before I heard tell of Vonage. However, when I signed up with Vonage, Vonage prices were better than Primus. Primus originally was not including unlimited long distance to anywhere in Canada and the US. At the time I signed up last year, Vonage was much more reasonable than Primus. Primus however is trying to push Vonage out. Primus has many great features which would appeal to many people. I am sticking with Vonage, because I have faith that they will compete a little harder. Where is their incentive though? They have over 500,000 customers right now, and are signing up thousands of new people each month? With more business than they can possibly handle, that must have something to do with their incentive to deliver upgrades. In the US, you have AT&T CallVantage, as well as VoicePulse which offers many more features and flexibility than Vonage. Yet even Vonage in the US is not upgrading their systems to match the US competitors. My point is that I do not think that it is a matter of Vonage putting Canada on the back burner. I think they are slow to implement their upgrades, and maybe do not feel that there is any great rush or concern to have the extra features regardless of what country they are in.

One thing I don't like about Primus is their Call Forwarding and Call Transfer features. Even if you have the unlimited US/Canada calling plan, if you forward your Primus number, or transfer a call to a number outside of your local area, you are dinged long distance charges for it. Vonage does not do this! That's great for me because I travel to Nova Scotia to visit my folks back home each year, and when I go there, I forward my number here in Gatineau to my Mom's number in Halifax. There is no charge for this, and I can get all of my calls while I'm visiting for a week or two away from home.

Maybe they are waiting before investing more money on upgrades, to make sure that Vonage is here to stay. They may be feeling insecure about it with all of the press that's been happening and the talk of regulation. Videotron in Quebec made a statement the other day referring to Vonage as a parasite on their high speed cable system, and does not think that they should be allowed to take up bandwidth with their phone service that is costing them virtually nothing to run. Of course keep in mind that Videotron just started selling Voip themselves in the Montreal area. I guess one could make this same statement about anything we do on the internet. Downloading emails and software programs from various companies could be considered parasitic too.

What the heck is the internet for? Surely Videotron does not feel the internet should be used exclusively for Videotron products? That would sure leave us stranded. Not to mention the uselessness of the internet if we could only access Videotron products over it.

Check out this website if you want to see a comparison of features based on various broadband Voip carriers:

Posts: 508 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 3:45 pm Post subject:

Quote:

911 service is available only when customer’s phone number belongs to the Exchange associated with the area where customer permanently resides.

what I get from this is that you can only have 911 if you are in the city that your number comes from..

also, the 'Alternate Numbers' dont' list where you can get numbers form, I dont' imagine they have any US numbers avail.. alth, I do think it's kinda cool you get a different ring from them, but my phone has different ringers depending on the CID info anyways.. Wink

I will be sticking with Vonage .... I don't see mu benifit for me to go to Primus.. but hopefully Vonage will step up and get competing Very Happy

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 20

Another competitor with some interesting packages: Inter.net Canada

Posts: 2251 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 6:44 pm Post subject:

Hey guys, you are breaking forum rules:

This is the Vonage Forum. We are not a comparison site. While we allow the casual conversation about other companies, it can not be the focus of the topic.

And linking to other Voip companies is not allowed at all.

Thank you

Posts: 336 · Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:56 pm Post subject:

Hi Dan,

Sorry for breaking the rules. That link that I attached was simply a chart itemizing the different features of various Broadband Voip services including Vonage. It looked as though the site had something to do with PC Week Magazine. They did not appear to be pushing one company over any other.

My concern is really the fact that other companies are out there beefing up their systems to lure business away from Vonage. I'm surprised that Vonage is not reacting faster.

Competition is always great! Customers always benefit when they have choices.