Earthlink Unlimited Voice Leaving Vonage? What Now?

Posts: 24

I'm one of those folks here who has Earthlink Unlimited Voice service... for those not familiar, it's Earthlink reselling Vonage.

They apparently are about to part ways with Vonage. You can't sign up at the Unlimited Voice website anymore, and they provide a link to a new "Earthlink Voice" service, which is their own, new VoIP in-house service.

The website will still let you log in, if you're an existing EL-UV customer, and says "stay tuned for additional information".

Does ANYONE know what happens to us EL-UV customers? Will they move us to Vonage, or move us to their own, new service (with new equipment? Phone numbers?)?

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:02 pm Post subject:

Customers are worth $100-$200 apiece. I doubt they will simply let Vonage take them over. I would expect that they are trying to work a deal with Vonage to flash the adapters over for use with their service.

Otherwise, expect new hardware. It is likely that Earthlink is using many of the same CLECs as Vonage so I would expect most numbers to come over easily.

I would expect some period of incoming call down time during the transition. Depending on how Earthlink handles it, it could be hours or days. They might provide a temporary incoming number during the transition and allow you to forward your existing number to that number.

Posts: 605 · Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 8:55 pm Post subject:

You could always switch over to Vonage service and have your number ported before the big change! Razz

There is a coupon located in the upper right hand corner of your screen if you scroll up. As long as you dont live in NJ its only 27.29 or something like that a month. Dont know the exact cent ammount, too lazy to login and look at my bill.

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Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 16, 2005 Posts: 6

I am also a subscriber to Earthlink Unlimited Voice. I called Earthlink last week about this and I was told that I would receive an email on Oct. 26(never did) that would tell me that Earthlink is severing it's tie with Vonage, and I had 3 choices: Switch over to become a Vonage customer right away and pay 24.95, wait until January and automatically switch over to Vonage and pay 24.95, or cancel my Earthlink Unlimited Voice account. Embarassed

I was very suprised that they would be so ready to lose customers, and I wrote to Earthlink about this. I got a quick reply telling me that I could terminate my Vonage acct, and if I sent back my ATA I would not pay a termination fee, and then I could get their new truevoice at 24.95 with 2 months free. It seems like the new Earthlink Voip has call blocking, but does not have 3-way calling. I need to see exactly what the call blocking is. Question

Now, today, my neighbor got a flyer from them(earthlink with a promotion for 19.95 for 3 months, and then a charge of $29.95 a month. If they are going to charge $29.95 a month, I will not bother to change.

Posts: 233 · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 9:23 am Post subject:

From looking around I think that Vonage has some of the best reliability of the VoIPs. I know a lot of people post about problems on the forum, but that is why the forum is here. Overall, the reliability and stability of Vonage seems good. Not that it matters, but why change to an unknown? Best case, hang on to Vonage and if Earthlink seems to move higher on the scale you could change later. Unless Earthlink is reselling somebody else it may take a while to get the kinks out anyway. So far Vonage has not given me any reason to look elsewhere.

I wonder what happened over at the Earthlink base. They still have to sell their services on top of a cable or DSL. Are they converting to a VoIP provider since dial-up growth has died? They don't have the back-up of a cable brother to fall back on like AOL through Time Warner as dial up dies off. Either way, it looks like they rolled the dice and we'll soon see the numbers. My prediction: most of their original customer base will stay with Vonage or will come back to Vonage because of start-up kinks if Earthlink's VoIP is a totally new service.

Posts: 24 · Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 9:59 pm Post subject:

As the person who posted this originally...yes, it's true. If you do nothing as an EL-UV customer, your account will automatically be moved to Vonage, and you become a Vonage customer.

Those wanting to sign up for EL's new VoIP service have to do so proactively.

Here's the E-Mail I got about it recently:

------------------

Dear EarthLink Subscriber,

We're writing to let you know about an important change to your
EarthLink Unlimited Voice account.

EarthLink currently provides you with Unlimited Voice service
through a relationship with Vonage. After December 31st, 2005,
EarthLink will no longer provide this service. However, you can
switch to our new phone service, called EarthLink trueVoice,
or transfer your existing service to Vonage.

EarthLink trueVoice delivers high-quality, low-cost service that
includes unlimited local and long-distance calling, easy online
account management, and a suite of innovative features -- all
for only $24.95 a month. Plus, if you sign up for EarthLink
trueVoice before December 31st, 2005, you'll receive your first
two months FREE!

*****************************
SWITCH TO EARTHLINK TRUEVOICE
*****************************
Just call us at 1-888-ELNKVOICE before December 31st. Make sure
to select the option for sales, and mention promo code 1024636.

******************
TRANSFER TO VONAGE
******************
It's easy to keep on using your free features and great service
as you normally would. If we do not hear from you by
December 31st, 2005, your account and payment information will
remain with Vonage.

The monthly rate for Unlimited Voice residential subscribers
will change from $29.99 to $24.99.

Posts: 24 · Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:05 pm Post subject:

An additional note:

I used this link (in the E-Mail) to pro-actively switch the account to Vonage:

If you need more information and/or prefer to transfer your
service now, please visit:
https://vloa.3pv.net/Switchto Vonage

(This will only work if you're already an EL-UV customer... it requires you to put in your phone number or account number.)

By doing it early, I save at least $5 a month for an extra month or so. As far as the service goes, none of the stuff described in an above message is needed. The EL-UV service IS Vonage service, just billed differently. All that's needed is for Vonage to handle the billing. No hardware or other changes are needed.

Posts: 28 · Vonage Representative Joined: Nov 09, 2005 Posts: 28

for you earthlink customers, if you do not specify to them that you wish to stay on board with EL, you will be automatically switched over to vonage sometime in december, so unless you wish to remain with EL exclusivly, you dont have to do anything Cool

Posts: 24 · Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 4:55 pm Post subject:

essdeek wrote:

for you earthlink customers, if you do not specify to them that you wish to stay on board with EL, you will be automatically switched over to vonage sometime in december, so unless you wish to remain with EL exclusivly, you dont have to do anything Cool

Which is what I said in the above message...

As for what I did, I decided to "make the switch" with the link above because A) it'll save me $5 for December - EL-UV is still $29.95 a month, though the new EL product will be $24.95...and B) they give you a free month for making the early switch.

As I said, and you repeated above, doing nothing just means you get transferred to Vonage automatically at the end of the year.

Posts: 24 · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 2:05 am Post subject:

As an update to this old thread:

I did proactively request the move to Vonage using that above link, and before this month's bill, Vonage took me over. I'm now being billed by them, and can access my account from the Vonage website. (I couldn't do that before as an EL-UV customer, I had to go to their own version of the Vonage website.)

Oh, and I got the free month, too Smile

Well, almost free. They had to charge me regulatory fees of a couple of bucks. My December bill was something like $2.27.