Post by member pmb1010
Voice over IP - for my home phone service, I'm using "Vonage"
http://www.vonage.com
I replaced my Verizon based land line with this service. I like it, it works OK and has saved me a bunch of money.
Background:
My previous service form Verizon was about $35/month, that gave me the dial tone and 100 free calls in the local area of service. On top of that, I had selected MCI as my long distance company. The wife likes to call her sister in VA almost daily, and has a friend in MA she calls weekly. The LD portion of my bill could get as high as $75/month, so my phone service was just over $100/mo.
High speed cable service:
I subscribe to Cable TV, been long time cable user. Since I work in the IT industry, having connection back to the office for remote work saves me the trouble of driving in to fix problems. I had dialup for many years, and wanted DSL from Verizon but the issues were always distance from Central office. When cable offered High Speed, I subscribed. It's very stable, works great.
Vonage:
Due to the cost of phone, when this Vonage service started, I thought I'd give it a try. I subscribed, they sent me a Cisco IP/Telco converter. They had (still might, not sure) a 30 day trial if you didn't like it, send it back. I tried it, they gave me a temporary number. It worked great. For voice quality, if you gave a land line (ie: Verizon) a 10, and a cell phone a 5, this was an 8. Decent quality, reliablity has been excellent. After a couple weeks, we decided to have Vonage "port" my existing number to them, and I literally pulled the plug on Verizon.
Service:
It's been great. There are a couple caveats, though:
1. If the power goes out, you won't have phone service. Even though I have battery UPS on my equipment, and a backup generator to power my home, when the power goes out the cable service drops because the poles have "repeaters" on them that carry the service back to the cable home office. That's ok for me, when we had the power outage in the northeast last year, my cell phone worked and that's good enough.
2. 911 service - Since it's not connected to a true central office anymore (it all routes over IP), if you dial 911 it wont go into your local 911 emergency service. Vonage has worked that around that if you do dial 911, it reroutes to your local PD but they wont get the display that shows your address. That is not a big deal for me, we instruct anyone that if they dial 911 they will need to give the dispatcher location information.
Other:
Vonage has 2 plans, 500 minutes per month for $15, and unlimted for $25. On top of that, I do pay $1 for federal tax, but no state or local taxes. So I cut my bill by 75%, it literally pays for my high speed data connection. Wife can be on the phone, and I can use the computer connection, browse, download files, etc with no impact on phone service.
The box that Vonage provides has an Ethernet Input (my buddy that signed up got a Linksys router combo/phone converter) and has phone jack. You can plug this into a wall outlet, and now all your phones are vonage connected. ONe thing to remember, is find where your old phone service came into the house, and disconnect their wires going out to the pole. Otherwise, your vonage service will have trouble ringing the phones as the signal will attempt to go back out and down the street!
Savings:
Vonage has an offer where if I send you an email link, and sign up both you and I can get a discount (ends up being a free month of service). If you are interested in trying it out, send me a message via the forum with your email address and I will send you a sponsor link. Good way to save a few dollars if you are interested...
Any questions, send me msg, or post response...