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DPChallenge Forums >> General Discussion >> Vonage - Has anybody ever been satisfied?
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12/13/2008 12:47:08 PM · #1
Voice over IP phone.

I had VOIP for years through our cable ISP (Cogeco, not Vonage) when we lived at another house. The cable ISP service to our new house is no good, so I switched to Bell aDSL (5000kbps down, 600kbps up, which I very recently switched to Dry Loop aDSL 7000kbps down, ~900kbps up). I switched to Dry Loop in preparation to discontinue our POTS telephone from Bell, which is frikkin expensive.

I've been talking to myself to compare lag between my cell and POTS, cell and VOIP, POTS and VOIP. It's pretty laggy. About 1 second on VOIP compared to less than half a second on POTS/cell.

Also, the VOIP router seems to be hanging sometimes. I don't know if that's because of the Bell DSL, which started having some troubles when it was switched to dry loop, before the Vonage router arrived. The Bell modem has been losing synch every once in a while, and unable to get synch by a simple power cycle on the modem. Even with the Vonage router unplugged. I called Bell twice and the tech support lines just give a busy signal, even when I zeroed my way to a human and had him transfer me. Hehe, when the guy picked up, I said, "Please press 1 if you can help me with my Internet connection." My humour was lost on him until I told him I was making fun of their menu system and 'Emily'.

I configured the Vonage router for PPPoE and gave it my Bell username and pwd to send to the Bell modem. This was once the duty of my Linksys router & wireless, which I have since configured to a static IP, and it now uses the Vonage router as a gateway. The Vonage router has the Linksys IP in the DMZ.

I wonder if I screwed up a configuration somewhere, or if it's just Bell having troubles. Having Dry Loop DSL and POTS on the line at the same time shouldn't be a problem, should it?

Also, our phone number hasn't been released from Bell to Vonage yet, so we're on a virtual number. If that makes any difference. I've got phones set up on both lines right now.

Anyway....

Has/does anyone have Vonage. And have you managed to keep it working semi-reliably?

Message edited by author 2008-12-13 12:50:49.
12/13/2008 12:49:29 PM · #2
I've never had it. I only use a cell. I'm just not home enough to warrant having a home-phone of any kind really.
12/13/2008 12:52:26 PM · #3
Originally posted by K10DGuy:

I've never had it. I only use a cell. I'm just not home enough to warrant having a home-phone of any kind really.

I may end up doing this if I can get a reasonable cell plan, but my Bell cell contract isn't up until May, and Bell has no digital service where I live, while Rogers does. We'll see what Rogers has in May.
12/13/2008 12:53:45 PM · #4
Originally posted by Strikeslip:

Originally posted by K10DGuy:

I've never had it. I only use a cell. I'm just not home enough to warrant having a home-phone of any kind really.

I may end up doing this if I can get a reasonable cell plan, but my Bell cell contract isn't up until May, and Bell has no digital service where I live, while Rogers does. We'll see what Rogers has in May.


I'm on Rogers, and it's not horrible. Not great, but no company is great. At least Rogers doesn't charge you for incoming texts ;)

I have the Canada Wide My5 plan, and I love it.
12/13/2008 12:59:20 PM · #5
I have been on Vonage for quite a while and have generally been very satisfied. They provide great service, their Tech Support has English as their first language and are very capable if you do have a problem. We pay an annual fee rather than monthly and save another 10% or so. Only problem is when the internet goes down...but even then, it is set up to redirect my calls to my cell. Highly recommend.
12/13/2008 12:59:43 PM · #6
Use it for a few years..... It's reliability has been dependent on the cable company I use - which is average at best (lying thieves at worst). On days with decent thru put, I have no issues, other days it's droppy because of the bandwidth fluctuation & stalls that I get.

I have it rigged so that their voice router can take as much bandwidth as it needs leaving my net connection with very little rather then having it as another node on the larger network.... works most days well.

They don't advertise it much but there is a basic service with 500min/month@$15 or so..... I use it mostly for international calls, so that works for me.
12/13/2008 01:01:44 PM · #7
I rarely talk on the phone due to my antisocial nature, but my wife needs almost unlimited minutes as she chats enough to make up for me.
12/13/2008 01:01:50 PM · #8
I've had Vonage for a couple of years and have found it very reliable. Any problems we have had have appeared to be due to our ISP connection dropping not Vonage.
12/13/2008 01:26:35 PM · #9
I use Vonage as my office phone and have had NO issues at all ... I would highly recommend them ...
12/13/2008 01:56:26 PM · #10
I am a landline-less cell-only guy, but I did need a way to do all the conference calls into meetings when working from home (hated burning cell minutes). I couldn't justify a landline or monthly subscription of any kind, though.

I got the Magic Jack, which is about 30-40 buck for the first year, then 20 bucks per year after that. I like it. It works great. If you want it as an always on active phone line for incoming calls, too, then you have to have a computer on all the time to use it. But if, like me, you just want it for occasional outgoing calls to save cell minutes, it is great. You can also travel with it, it has voice mail, etc.

Message edited by author 2008-12-13 13:57:09.
12/13/2008 02:13:33 PM · #11
I had Vonage for a little over 3 years for my business, personally I think it was the best service I've ever had, with more features standard than I now have. The only reason I switched was for cost. I now have Verizon Fios - with Internet, Cable and Phone bundles together. But as far as reliability goes, I think that Vonage easily beats Verizon Fios hands down. Previously I had my Internet service, my cable service, vonage, 800# service, bundled with my cell phone usage I was spending about $4,500 a year in communications, switching to Fios I spend about 1/2 of that. The other big plus I have with Fios is the base Fiber Optic speed is much faster.
12/13/2008 02:16:19 PM · #12
I've used Vonage for about 6 years now. Home service through Comcast. Never a problem. Works great, even when downloading.
12/13/2008 03:01:01 PM · #13
I love Vonage, never had any problems with them. Recently I had to switch away from Comcast due to service problems and we had to get rid of Vonage and switch to a landline and I hate it. I want my Vonage back!!
12/13/2008 05:03:50 PM · #14
I think I'm going to try putting the Vonage router behind my router...
12/13/2008 06:49:00 PM · #15
A quick observation:

Bell's tech support in India.... sucks arse.

Vonage's tech support in the Phillipines.... is very nice.

Neither tech support understands my humour, so making jokes is useless with both.
12/13/2008 09:54:23 PM · #16
as long as you have enough bandwidth it's not a problem. If you don't have the bandwidth then you'll have teh 'in the tunnel' sound going on.

I've had some imprefections now and then but it's like $20/month (buy a year in advance)for all the features including emails of messages and lots of voicemail features. Last landline I had cost me $75 a month and that was NO features. My cell phone (2 lines, me and the wife) is $97 if we never ever go over our minutes. And it's less reliable than vonage.
12/13/2008 11:30:19 PM · #17
I had used VoipYourLife.com for a couple of years and thought they were great. Customer service is freaky good. Bandwidth did create an issue but that was at my end, not theirs. Did a fair amount of research and they came out on top. I'd still use them by my local area code is a problem here on Van Isle. Other than that, I'd steer anyone in their direction with no reservations.
12/14/2008 08:35:32 AM · #18
I have Magicjack. $39 for the first year and about $16 every year after that. Its running on Verizon FIOs, works as well as my previous phone service that I paid $45/month for. I can even take it with me when I travel...
12/14/2008 11:07:18 AM · #19
I had vonage for many years. It was great! I used to spend 300+ a month calling my family that live across the state. I switched and not only did I save myself a TON, but I would call my family back immediately and save them money every month too. Since we moved. We cannot get high speed so we had to go back to the land line. bleh! If you have reliable internet service, I would check into it.
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