Jenny ,'Bring On The Night'
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Okay, techies....
My phone bill makes me vomit, and despite the incredibly annoying song in the commercials, Vonage is starting to tempt me. So....
Any and all of you who've had experience with internet phone service, what is your experience? Is that price they give (about $25 a month) real? Any surprise costs? How much of an initial investment is required to make it work? Can we transfer over our current phone number?
My Vonage experience was one of terrible call quality and even worse customer service, originally summarized here:
Jessica "Buffistechnology 2: You Made Her So She Growls?" Mar 5, 2005 3:57:38 pm PST
Price is real. Some people have had really poor quality with vonnage - poor sound, dropped calls. (Don't know if that is everyone.) Also 911 service is equivalent to what you get with cell phones. They don't automatically know your address. Comcast and possibly other cable companies offer equivalent services.
t X-post with Jesse
Comcast and possibly other cable companies offer equivalent services.
Not quite -- with a cable company's digital phone service, they give you more bandwidth to cover the voice calls (so your phone service won't slow down your internet, and your internet traffic won't interferre with phone calls). With Vonage, you're piggy-backing onto the bandwidth you already have with your internet service, and so both of these things can (and IME, DO) happen. I have digital phone from TWC now, and it's about a thousand times better than Vonage was in every respect.
That was badly phrased - I should have said comparably priced. The two people I know with comcast digital are very happy.
I have comcast digital voice and I like it.
Cool, thanks everyone. Jess, I knew you'd had Vonage, but I couldn't remember your experience with it. I think I'll check other services out. I don't get Comcast. I wonder if Adelphia offers service.
I've had Vonage since I moved in here. I have a very fast cable modem connection and I've had good call quality on it.
Hmm, crap. We get Earthlink DSL, and Earthlink also offers VoIP, but apparently if you have DSL, you need to keep your old phone active and get a new number, neither of which are acceptable alternatives to what we're doing now.
Yeah, if you are on DSL then you have to have a phone line anyway. Are you planning to switch to cable modem before you do the VoIP thing?