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?

Well, we hadn't been planning on switching, but I guess now we have to consider it.

Yeah, you can't have DSL without a phone line, so there's no real point in doing VoIP over it.