newbie - will vonage work for me

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 08, 2005 Posts: 2

I'm tired of the terrible service I've been getting from AT&T Wireless ... sorry ... Cingular AT&T - new name, same bad service for a while now on my cellphone.

I've read about the Vonage option and am just wondering if this makes sense for me.

1. I don't need to have a cellphone on me all the time.
2. However, I may move location every few months and it sounds like as long as I have a good internet connection, then what the heck, Vonage looks good.
3. I will be going up to Canada some of the time, which i realize should not be any difference, but one of the places I will be has fast internet access using cable. That sounds fine, except the cable company has told me in the past that they 'query' their cable box occasionally, so I'm assuming if the Vonage box is on my side of the cable box, then there's nothing they can do about it?
4. If that's the case, there's nothing destructive the cable company could do (ie: make the speed lower occassionally), etc just to stop someone with a Voip phone?
5. I've seen on the forums that there's a problem in transferring my existing phone number (ie: long time). However, I also see that Vonage will give a temporary number until the xfer. So, if I signed up with Vonage today, using their temporary number, are you up immediately? - ie: you have a phone number right away, the issue is just xferring your old number.
5. If this all sounds good, then I see there are options on which Vonage box/decoder (whatever it's called) and I see some people on forums saying they wish they had got the other one, so for my setup, which box would you recommend?

Thx. for any help - I desperately want to leave the big boys cellphone company and appreciate any help in doing this.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 11:12 am Post subject:

2. yeah
3. query for what? what is the isp? there is a candian forum here so you should be able to get more info if no one here is familiar.
4. see 3
5. yeah
6. research it yourself. if you buy from Vonage, you get the linksys rt31p2 (3 port router). there is a linksys pap2 which requires a router to work (unless you don't need to share your internet connection with any computers) but is small and easy to travel with and there's a linksys wrt54gp2 which is similar to the rt31p2 with wireless functionality. if you already have a good router (i.e. one with qos like the linksys wrt54g), the pap2 seems to be the box of choice, but the rt31p2 will work fine also.

Posts: 89 · Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 11:13 am Post subject:

You may want to keep your cell phone also. Many if not all Vonage users have a cell phone for a "back up". If there is a power outage or internet outage your cell phone will come in handy. You could save money by lowering your current cell phone plan.