Vonage - Better Than A Conventional Landline?
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Is Vonage a better service than a conventional landline telephone? After 6 months with Vonage I would give it two thumbs up!
My particular telephone needs are a bit different than the normal user. I’m an American living in Michigan that’s married to a Canadian living in Toronto. For various reasons we’ve chosen to maintain both homes. While in Toronto, I wanted to have access to local telephone service for Michigan. Vonage was the answer. While in Toronto I plug my Vonage interface into the router and anyone calling my Michigan number gets me. All my outgoing calls to Canada or the US are toll free. I added a virtual line on for $4.95 a month and have a local inbound number for the Toronto area, regardless of where I am.
Other features like web access to voice mail, receiving voice mails as email attachments, dual ringing on both the Vonage line and your wireless phone are among many of the features you can set via the web.
Anyone unhappy with their current landline service now has a good alternative.
[tags] vonage,voip,telephone[/tags]

6 Comments
Ryan Bilesky
October 16th, 2007
at 12:58pm
I’ve heard bad things about Vonage from other users, who had problems ranging from billing problems, to not getting their number switched over, ect…Plus their commercials are so bogus, when they talk about other phone companies always raising rates, they obviously haven’t heard of Qwest’s Price For Life Guarantee. Plus they say they have 25 calling features, but seriously, I cannot even think of 25 legitimate features.
miiikeee
October 16th, 2007
at 1:14pm
Vonage has kicked up their advertising in recent months. Already having the service I don’t really pay attention to them. When I initially signed up, I was worried about loosing my old number in the transition. It took about 10 days but I got it. During the changeover I had a temporary number to use. I agree with you on the features. Far more than I can put to any practical use. After having the service for six months I can’t fault it. It gives me the phone service I need for an extrememy reasonable price.
madjeff
October 16th, 2007
at 3:02pm
I had vonage for ~8 months before canceling. What I found is that the line quality was ok unless I was running other high-bandwidth applications, such as web meetings which I do several times a week. So every time I wanted to work from home I had to disconnect my vonage and switch back to my local line. I’ve heard other people mention this in regard to video/music downloads … the phone instantly becomes unusable once a large download starts.
Justin
October 16th, 2007
at 3:12pm
Vonage is great for the military too. My dad lives over seas, and through vonage, he is able to have a land line in the US, so calls to him do not involve international rates.
miiikeee
October 16th, 2007
at 3:18pm
I never had that problem. I’ve streamed our radio streams (one-16kmp3 & one 64kmp3pro) as well as a web cam up to the server and used the phone at the same time. I use comcast and see around 10mb down and 1.6 gig up on a consistent bases.
Chris Schornak
October 16th, 2007
at 5:37pm
It depends. Maybe for personal use Vonage is OK, but if you are using it for anything to do with high call volume, or getting more then one phone line, they absolutely stink. And don’t think your number transfer (porting) will go smoothly. It took them over 3 months to get my numbers ported. Customer Service? If you like speaking to someone who speaks english as a second language (India) reading from a customer service script. Every time I called vonage, it turned into at least a 30-45 ordeal. Considering the HUGE drop in traditional phone service with ma & pa bell, I’d stick with your land line. One good think about vonage is the portability. 1.5 thumbs down.