Vonage Phone Service

[snizo]

Got Lingo for the same thing. I think when I went down to either Pensacola or Corpus, I couldn't get a local number with Vonage - and therefore went with Lingo instead. Similar deal (but not the same) as Vonage, and Lingo is available in some areas where Vonage isn't (and vis versa). These things are pretty cool - and can get you out of some hot water for not having a "local" phone number when you move around. Only problem is sending/receiving faxes doesn't always work well (if that matters to you).

 

[makana]

BTW, I am cancelling my Vonage service this month... It was great, but network congestion on my service provider has made it impossible to maintain a phone call lately. My GUESS is that since they (ISP) rolled out their own VOIP phone service, that they are interrupting any of the other providers. There are a couple articles on the web about how there are some moves afoot to block routing of VOIP through certain backbones (or slow them down).

Quite the conspiracy theorist, eh John? Yeah, keep looking over your shoulder for Big Brother.

 

[webmaster]

Quite the conspiracy theorist, eh John? Yeah, keep looking over your shoulder for Big Brother.

Don't you know it!!

If I was really that curious, I wouldn't look over my shoulder, I would run some packets over their default port, and vonage's, and see what the latency differences were.

It could be that they are bandwith limited (no, geez ISPs never do that), or there are a bunch of us with Vonage out here clobbering the only broadband connection.

Sigh, all I know, it doesn't work as advertised anymore, and I am not going to pay the ~20 bones a month for it as a desktop paper weight....

Time to squeeze some limes...

 

[katiegirl]

Thing to remember with VoIP is that if your power goes out, there goes your Internet, there goes your phone. Might be a potentially inconvenient thing to lose. That's what turned me and my roommates off getting it.

I use packet8 and I have the phone plugged into a battery backup so if power goes out, my modem, computer, and phone are all still active. This works out pretty well, the battery can power everything for about 6 hours and we've never had a power outage longer than that. I love packet8, for $19 a month I get everything that Vonage has, plus unlimited calling in North America and 3cents a minute to Europe and Australia...plus there's no setup fee and when you sign up you get the first month free.

One problem with using cell phones as a back up is that after about a week of not having power the cell phone towers actually die (they run on batteries when there's no power as well), so even though you can charge your phone in your car, you still can't get in touch with anyone because the towers are down. This used to happen when I lived in NC, we'd lose power for 10 days at a time after ice storms and hurricanes...a total pain in the ass, but at least we didn't have to go to work for 2 or 3 weeks.