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The Vonage lines are working great other than several brief outages caused by Comcast cable and a longer outage caused by Vonage. Reliability is still not where it needs to be. The Vonage lines are patched from my Cisco ATA 186 to the rest of my house through my house wiring the same as my ISDN lines were. The V Tech vt5831 5.8ghz expandable cordless phone with caller-id is a great companion to Vonage as it listens for the studder dial tone and has a message waiting light that lights up when the studder dial tone is on. My TiVo and DirecTV systems are able to dial, connect, and download over the Vonage phone line with their modems reliably. Followup comments:
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Had some hiccups here and there but has gotten a lot better. Wish the softphone was a bit better price. Don't agree for the time alotment that they give. I pay for unlimited time and believe that it should go over to other options. Granted pay a little more per month for adding the service but the usage should be still the same. Questionable "federal taxes" on bill is seriously a pain in the ass. Only bill me for what needs to be billed and if its for overhead then state it so I can drop you and move on to another company. Followup comments:
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| »next review in page (previous review) UPDATE: Whatever you do, DO NOT TRANSFER YOUR EXISTING NUMBER TO VONAGE. Things can get ugly very fast if you do so. I am right now without phone service for the second day. It looks like the Vonage switch-over department is hopelessly overloaded and can't get the lines connected as the old carrier releases them. Wait times for support are > 30 minutes. ---- I signed up with Vonage the day before Christmas, and the equipment arrived about a week later via UPS. Given the holidays and such, this was pretty quick (4 business days). The install was much easier then expected. I am using a Linux firewall. I just plugged it into the LAN end, it picked up its internal IP using dhcp, and everything else configured itself. No need to adjust anything. The "ATA device" can also work as its own router, similar to Linksys/Netgear type routers. But its functions are rather basic. The device has 4 plugs: two ethernet jacks (one WAN, one LAN if you use it as a router), and two phone plugs (if you have a second line). Call quality is great. From my testing so far, I don't feel a difference to my land line. There was one call that had more of a cell-phone like quality. But it may have been the other side. I made a number of International calls (Germany, China) without problems. The only issue I have with Vonage so far is that all traffic in unencrypted. This is a fundamental issue with VoIP. So don't use it for "top secret" work, or on a public network (in particular wireless). Others may be able to listen in using the right software. BIG Followup comments:
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Support can be difficult to actually get a human on the phone with hold times over 30 minutes as the norm. Web site advertises services that are not yet deployed to all areas. B+ Followup comments:
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I have had to reboot the Cisco ATA-186 once or twice (with very limited use) because I could not get dial tone or calls wouldn't complete. QOS on outbound voice has been a problem because I occasionally do extended outbound data transfer during the day. When I do that and there is a call in progress, the other party on the call hears lots of garbling and distortion in my voice. Vonage has been nice enough to offer to swap the ATA-186 with a Motorola VT1000 router/voice gateway - which I am waiting for. I have the ATA-186 plugged into my Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless router. My ISP is Roadrunner. Inbound speed typically caps at 2-3 Mbps, outbound at about 350 Kbps. These numbers are derived from real-world file transfer performance and from KB/sec numbers from the Kerio Personal Firewall I have running on my laptop. Roadrunner's service is very straightforward - no PPPoE, no login required. IP address is dynamic. Roadrunner service has been VERY reliable. I will wait another 2-3 weeks for the number porting and then I will probably decide to cancel my Vonage account. I am willing to be forgiving on this issue because my company does Cisco VoIP (and I am a design techie very familiar with Cisco networking), and we have had a hell of a time porting numbers with some carriers. The service is attractively priced and seems to mostly work when I use it, but the number porting problem is very significant for me. Followup comments:
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Imagine my pleasure in finding that there were several mature companies out there already providing VoIP over broadband service! Further investigation revealed that Packet8 and Vonage were the heavyweights. Packet8: Developed and own their infrastructure. Vonage: Outsourse and use all Cisco gear (Cisco partner.) Packet8: $19/month all you can eat, weak web interface, many online complaints (here.) Bad voicemail system. Vonage: $35/month all you can eat, superior manage anything from the web interface. Industry rags say that VoIP providers can't survive with unlimited call plans under $35. As $35 represents less than half my NORMAL phone bill, there was NOTHING to lose. I figured I would go with the best provider and pay a little more for what could be the best out there. (If you've driven a BMW and a VW, you'll know why it's fair to pay a little more.) So I went with Vonage. Got the Motorola box in a week and hooked it up and waited a few weeks to fire Verizon. Have not looked back since. Works nearly flawlessly. Occasionally, if the internet goes down, I may have to reset the Vonage box. This is a *rare* occurance (happened once, and my provider - Comcast - seems to have all sorts of problems managing their network.) Suffice it to say I am less than thrilled with Comcast and still LOVE Vonage. Don't even notice it's there. And had family stay over the holidays - they used the phone and FREAKED when I told them it was going over the internet and they could talk as long as they want. Vonage is great. Some critical points: 1.) Make sure you have at least 128 kb/s upload speed. 2.) Make sure you install a UPS on all your network gear (to keep the phones working in case of power outage.) 3.) Try it worry free for two weeks and then FIRE your phone company! 4.) Disconnect your outside lines and plug the Vonage box into any phone outlet - your house is now VoIP!!! Cheers, drew Followup comments:
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Vonage
(45)
(65)
South Richmond Hill,Queens,NY
$27 per month
"1"
"4"
"3"
about 12 days
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