How clear is it.... really

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 16, 2004 Posts: 5

I just ordered the service reluctantly. My phone bill has been over 50 bucks a month for a while and I try real hard to use my cell from home alot to cut down charges.

But how clear are the calls. Is the person on the other line going to think I'm on a cell phone or will they know the difference.

Veterans, what are your experience... Very Happy

Posts: 10 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jan 26, 2004 Posts: 10

I use it for work and home. I am generally happy with it, very loud and clear. I do get some latency on occasions and it drives my wife nuts..no worse than wireless. The support needs vast improvement in their time to answer, on hold for 20+ minutes!!!! but the service is worth the cost especially to get out from the outrageous babybell charges

Posts: 41 · Full Forum Member Joined: 1064934432 Posts: 41

I, too, am a happy camper. Smile

I have noticed some echo (latency) when using the phone, but it is not always there. I normally don't have any other issues unless I try to do some major uploading while using the phone. I only have 128K up, so if I'm working on a VPN and uploading some big files, the call quality suffers a bit.

Posts: 37 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 12, 2004 Posts: 37

I have not been able to tell vonage from a regular land-line. The quality has been great. I may be lucky in that my cable inernet connection is very fast: 5Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up. I've never noticed any latency issues.

FYI, I've only been using the service for two months so far.

Posts: 37 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 12, 2004 Posts: 37

Moto, My internet is through Cablevision's Optimum Online. I'm amazed at the speed and reliability of the internet service. I've never seen the connection slow down or fail in the year I've had it.

Posts: 17 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 19, 2004 Posts: 17

I have the same cable provider and will run some speed test this afternoon and see were i'm at. Also going to try and putting the ATA in front of the router as opposed to behind it. Rather sacrifise phone quality over internet speed.

Posts: 37 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Feb 12, 2004 Posts: 37

mospeed wrote:

Also going to try and putting the ATA in front of the router as opposed to behind it. Rather sacrifise phone quality over internet speed.

I think you mean the other way around. Putting the ATA BEHIND the router keeps it out of the way of your computer's internet connection.

Posts: 21 · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 1:25 am Post subject: Phone Quality

I will admit, when I first got Vonage installed I was constantly listening really hard when placing/receiving calls. If I heard the least bit of noise/static etc I thought about my calls going over the internet. Now that I have had it a while, I don't even think about it any longer. This past weekend I was on the phone for 1.5 hours - without a problem. I actually didn't think about the phone line.

I took a bit for me to stop worrying about it, and just accept it. Once I did that I was okay. Only once have I gotten a bad call and that was when I first had the system set up. I get great call clarity and no complaints from those that speak to me. I really love it. I love the savings even more!

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 03, 2004 Posts: 20

I've had it for about a month and haven't looked back. Every time I get a little echo (which is very rarely), I just tell myself "You're saving $70 a month, so get over it!"

I'm still having some minor trials with the MTA and my home network, but it's nothing I can't live with.

Posts: 21 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 15, 2004 Posts: 21

The first question you should ask is, "How happy am I with my HSI provider?" If you don't answer that with at least a 7 out of 10 response, VOIP isn't for you.

VOIP will never be better than your HSI. If you have high latency, packet loss or poor throughput during peak periods or all the time, forget Vonage and other VOIP providers.

If you have a decent quality (not perfect but it has to be decent) HSI, then I think you'll find Vonage's quality is better than classic phone service.

I live in a subdivision that is 25 years old. The classic phone service was terrible. Noise on the line, low volume -- I could hardly hear my father who only calls from 20 minutes away. (That's mostly due to his crappy classic phone service but once I got Vonage, I could actually carry on a normal conversation!)

I've had Vonage for a year and the quality is absolutely without compare. Much better than POTS. Louder, clearer and a superior signal to noise ratio.

I've recently been having some router problems which has caused me to do a lot of packet sniffing. I had to laugh when I watched one of my calls to voice mail. I actually saw packets identified as "Comfort Noise". This is noise VOIP companies add to sessions so that the call sounds normal. Folks get spooked if they don't hear some noise. They think their phone is dead!

I will say that there is the slightest hint of quantization noise which puts a bit of frizz around certain sounds. I don't notice it when I call another human. I notice it when I call automated services (like time and temperature, my company's voice mail or call routing systems.) I think this is because those systems use digital recordings whose wave form doesn't look like a typical human "analog" voice. The codec VOIP uses is optimized for voice. I'm guessing that these "automated" voices confuse the algorithm and result in a bit of tarnish around the edges. You REALLY have to listen closely for it. In fact, I never notice it over cordless phones because their added background noise hides it. I only notice it on a corded phone and again, only because Vonage calls are so quiet that you can hear things like this.

Don't confuse my statements with "digital cell" quality calls. Vonage is nothing like a digital cell phone call. It's very good quality.

You do, however, have the option of choosing the quality of your calls. Vonage offers 30Kbps, 50Kbps and 90Kbps. I always leave my calls on 90Kbps. 50Kbps also offers good quality but when I switched, I experienced dropped calls and periods where the other party could hear me but I couldn't hear them (or vice versa.) These could have been my problems or by now Vonage may have fixed them. I haven't tried it since they first offered the 50Kbps option. I think it was around six months ago.

IMO -- the 30Kbps codec sounds like a good quality digital cell call when you're not moving. It's way better than a moving cell call because it doesn't fluctuate in quality. However, I didn't like it and I just leave it at the high quality 90Kbps setting. My cable provider has always provided ample bandwidth for the 90Kbps quality (they started with 350K, then they dropped it to 128K and now it's 256K). I have Charter and in my area they do a great job at managing the system. There's no packet loss (oh there's a little but statistically, it's zero) and never any peak bandwidth problems. Every few months something craps out in their system but it's usually fixed within a few hours or by the next day. I think the quality of my HSI has a lot to do with my very positive Vonage experience.