Vonage

[Dee]

Has anyone had experience with Vonage.... and if so how do you find it?

Can you receive faxes over it? Does it seem to work OK when you travel?

 

[jacep]

Has anyone had experience with Vonage.... and if so how do you find it?

Can you receive faxes over it? Does it seem to work OK when you travel?

I've used Vonage for awhile. Quality of sound/service is pretty good when I tested it (called my cellphone and left myself a voice mail message to hear the sound quality from the "receiving" person). When I spoke to people, their voice sounded like it came from a regular landline phone (or sometimes a cellphone).

Like with a lot of other company's customer service sucks.

I stopped using Vonage because of a technical issue that I had with their call forwarding. I also switched to a different VOIP provider because the other VOIP provider was charging me the same as Vonage but allowing me to call overseas (to the countries that I normally call) as part of my package. Vonage also now allows free calls to selected European countries landline phones but I don't call these places.

However, now they have a few additional services/features that I like which my current VOIP provider doesn't have so I might go back. They now have a feature where people from various big cities in Canada/US can call you for free using a special local access number that they call and then when prompted, they enter your Vonage number.

Another bad thing about Vonage is some Canadian toll free numbers won't work from a Vonage phone. For example, if you try to call Bell ExpressVu, your call won't go through. I believe that either the Canadian or Quebec tax office's toll free number won't go through either (you have to call their local number). My bank's toll free numbers work without any issues. The reason for this is that the receiving company's 1-800/1-888 number only accepts calls from Canada and even though you might have a Canadian area code, the phone system identifies you as being from the US (US toll free phone numbers work without any problems that I've noticed).

In regards to faxes, I'm not sure about this since I didn't ever use my Vonage line to send faxes but I do know that Vonage offers a "fax line" so it should work. When travelling, as long as your internet connection supports the standard DHCP, PPPoE, etc. which routers are capable of, using your Vonage phone-line in a different city/country/etc. won't be an issue. However, if in order to get internet access, you need to authenticate on a webpage (like some hotels), the Vonage adaptor might not work.

 

[Dee]

Thanks for your comments... anyone else had experience?

 

[johnmbot]

I usually use Skype for free Voip calls in US & Canada.

this is the plan i signed up for... http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/

no problems with sound quality at all.

 

[jacep]

I usually use Skype for Voip calls in US & Canada. The sound quality seems consistently very good. I use Vonage's V-Phone also, which consists of a USB drive as my portable phone system, plug it into your computer and you're good to go. This allows me to have a local MTL number for $4.95/mo added onto my base account at $24/mo, which I use for my local number in the states. I have vonage set to forward to my cell when it goes down or when I'm in transit.

Edit: Removed "free" for Skype calls. It's free if you're calling someone else using Skype.

The V-Phone is actually a useful gadget. When I actually had Vonage and used their phone adapter with built-in router, I brought it once with me on vacation knowing that my hotel had free internet. Unfortunately, my Vonage phone adapter (with built-in router) didn't work because in order to use the free internet, I had to get authenticated on some webpage. The phone adapter from Vonage can't do this. The phone adapter also won't help you if your hotel offers free wifi. It only supports the standard DHCP and PPPoE. If I had the V-Phone with me, I could have just authenticated myself with my laptop and plugged in the V-Phone to make my phone calls (instead of paying over $1US per local call and an "arm and a leg" for long distance calls back home.

I now use Skype with an unlimited North America plan when I travel to make calls when I'm in a hotel that has internet access.

Something that you might want to consider before switching to Vonage is that Vonage (at least in Canada) doesn't have local portability agreements with a lot of telephone companies. You might be able to switch your Bell landline phone number to Vonage but if you later decide to switch your Vonage number to a cellphone or another VOIP company like Primus or a cable telephone company like Videotron, you're out of luck and have to change your phone number. With a Bell landline phone, you can port the number to almost all VOIP companies authorized in Canada, cable telephone companies, and cellphone service providers, however, once your Bell number is "given" to these companies, you might not be able to keep it once you move to a different technology (or the same technology).

This happened to me about a year ago. When I first switched to Vonage, I got my Bell landline number on my Vonage line but then when I tried to get my Vonage number (which was actually my old Bell number) transferred to Primus, I was informed that this isn't possible. I was informed that it didn't make a difference if my number was originally a Bell number and did not originate from Vonage. The answer was still the same.

One last thing. If you do decide to keep your number, you can't cancel your current phone. You have to get the company that you want to sign up with to cancel your old phone for you. If you cancel your current phone, you automatically lose your number.

 

[Kepler]

Has anyone had experience with Vonage....

Call quality is great, but with occasional glitches. Price is super cheap, especially when you consider that you get all the Bell "star services" for free in the basic Vonage plan (I speak less than 500 minutes a month). The extra features are really cool (get your voice mail by email, simul-ring, etc.) It's hard to have multiple wired phones in your home run off Vonage though.

It's a fantastic service to give your kids a line in their room. Really great as a second line for yourself (that's how I use it). But I'm still keeping Bell as the primary home phone.