Anyone here use Vonage? Opinions?

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randyrls

randyrls

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Joined
Feb 2, 2006
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4,981
Location
Harrisburg, PA 17112
I am thinking of ditching my local and long distance $$ and using Vonage.

Does anyone have experience with them? Both good and bad are appreciated.

Thanks....
 
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I've been using it for over about two years now and I have friends that have had it much longer than myself. I have no complaints. As long as your internet service is reliable and you have a cell phone for your calls to roll over to if your internet does go out, it's a great service. I am saving about $30 per month over what I was paying Bellsouth/ATT.
 
We have had it for years, the quality of sound is great. The only drawback would be a loss of power or loss of internet service would leave you without phone service. We also have cell phones which suffice in those times. We love it.
 
I have been using Magic Jack for about 8 months and have absolutely no complaints. I have a set of phones (6) that one acts as the base for all the others that are spread throughout the house and it works great. Cost me $39 for the first year which included the original hardware. Then they send you optional offers to extend your service for $59 for (5) more years.....total cost = $98 for (6) years. That is what it was costing me per month for my original landline. No brainer....
Cheers
 
We have it and have no problem. The only problem I have is when I call the VA from here in PA, it automatically connects me to the VA in orange New Jersey. I guess automated systems like that recognize vonage as a new jersey system..
 
We had Sunrocket that went bankrupt which we loved.

We tried Magicjack, but apparently there wasn't enough magic and we couldn't receive calls.

Now we have Vonage and we are enjoying it again. The only reason we didn't switch to Vonage in the past was they couldn't port our number (they didn't have access to the area code we are in at that time).
 
We've had it for 5 or 6 years now. Every now and then we've had bad quality calls or the party on the other end couldn't hear us, but I think that was our cable internet and not Vonage. For the most part, we've been happy. The nice thing is that your phone number stays with your router. We started with Vonage in Arkansas and when we moved back to the D.C. area, I just plugged in my Vonage router and that's all there is to it. You could do the same if you went on vacation or something and had a hardwired internet connection. But if you wanted to change your number, I think they charge $10 or so. We decided to just keep the Arkansas number since we had friends there. All in all, I think it's a great deal. You may be able to find something better price wise, but just do your homework.
Also, if you wire things just right, you can plug your router into one of your phone jacks in the house and all the other wall jacks will be "live" so that you can put your phones wherever you want to.
And one more thing, if you know a good bit about computers, you can instal asterisk or something like that and create your own VOIP server, then find someone to give you a direct inward dialing number (DID). This could be a good bit cheaper depending on the calls you make.
 
Tried it for 8 months but ended up going back to a hard line because of the quality of the sound at times and the fact service would drop for no reason.

Local calls would sound as if they were on the moon if we got connected at all and we had two days where we lost service for 9 hours but had internet service.

I know people that have had it for years with no problems but I had lots of bad luck with it, maybe it was just me, after all if it wasn't for bad luck there are days I wouldn't have any luck at all.:eek:

Bruce
 
I've been using it at my business for the past 3+ years with no problems at all. We call long distance on a daily basis including, all over the world and have always enjoyed good sound quality and reliability.

Jim Smith
 
My brother in Okinawa uses it! It is great! I call his South Carolina number and it rings in Okinawa! There is some pretty gnarley lag but i figure that is the distance more than the phone company. He loves it as well!
 
glycerine said:
We've had it for 5 or 6 years now. Every now and then we've had bad quality calls or the party on the other end couldn't hear us, but I think that was our cable internet and not Vonage. For the most part, we've been happy. The nice thing is that your phone number stays with your router. We started with Vonage in Arkansas and when we moved back to the D.C. area, I just plugged in my Vonage router and that's all there is to it. You could do the same if you went on vacation or something and had a hardwired internet connection. But if you wanted to change your number, I think they charge $10 or so. We decided to just keep the Arkansas number since we had friends there. All in all, I think it's a great deal. You may be able to find something better price wise, but just do your homework.
Also, if you wire things just right, you can plug your router into one of your phone jacks in the house and all the other wall jacks will be "live" so that you can put your phones wherever you want to.
And one more thing, if you know a good bit about computers, you can instal asterisk or something like that and create your own VOIP server, then find someone to give you a direct inward dialing number (DID). This could be a good bit cheaper depending on the calls you make.
Click to expand...

Ditto, except for the last paragraph. I don't have any experiences with that.
 
glycerine said:
Really? I think maybe that's because the upload speed of satellite is pretty low compared to other broadband.
Click to expand...
That's correct; they have all the bandwidth on the download (incoming) side. Outgoing is much slower.

Thanks for all the good opinions, good and bad.

I think I will try it and see.
 
TellicoTurning said:
Since I'm on a DSL line, how would that work... I suspect the phone company would still charge me for the phone line + the DSL, so where or what would be the savings....
Click to expand...

I've never had DSL, do they charge you for a local phone line and the internet service? Can you just get DSL without phone service?
 
glycerine said:
I've never had DSL, do they charge you for a local phone line and the internet service? Can you just get DSL without phone service?
Click to expand...

I get a charge for both... regular phone line and the dsl line... don't know if I could get just the DSL or not... where we are can't use a cell phone.. there's very limited wireless service .. so we are pretty much stuck with a land line.
 
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