Well, I took the plunge yesterday, and ordered Vonnage voice over IP; gonna try it insted of our 2nd phone line..Pricing is awesum, and I hope the service will be too!

Has anyone had experience with Vonnage, or VOIP in general?
We had it at work, using it to call our offices in Mexico and China, and it usually worked flawlessly...

Thanks!


wase4711

My brother has been using Vonnage for about 6 months now and he loves it.

Recently he was sent to New Mexico on busness for a few months and his wife calls him using Vonnage and talks up a storm. I only question in the end if Vonnage will win the legal battles so they don't have to pay the same fees that the regular phone companies pay.

thanks, KC; i think it is what we ALL will be using in the next few years...

No thank you for reminding me to look into something that I have put off for too long. After talking to my brother today what his most recent thoughts were on his past six months of Vonnage service. He says he's still happy and after hearing him say that I signed up today for the $14.99 plan.

Startup Costs
(which includes your first month's service charges)
Activation Fee 29.99 (which includes the free phone unit needed.)
First Month's Service Charge 14.99
Federal Excise Tax 1.35
Regulatory Recover Fee 1.50
Shipping and Handling 9.95

Total 57.78

After that....

Monthly Service Charge

Monthly Service Charge 14.99
Federal Excise Tax 0.45
Regulatory Recover Fee 1.50
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total 16.94 :D

Of course, my brother refered me and so he gets a $14.99 credit for that and so do I. Please feel free to use me as a referal. Drop me a PM. B)

Just got my unit today and hooked it up. I didn't have to forward any ports and everything is working fine. I've made several calls and so far I'm so :) happy.

It's as clear as a regular line or better. B)

join the voip club, KC; just hooked mine up too!

I did have to mess a bit with my router; i have a linksys wrt54g, and I had to un-check the box that blocked requests from the internet...until then, I was able to make calls, but my internet was dead!

Everything is fine now, web speed is back up to full, and the phone sounds AT LEAST as clear as a wired line!

Are we bleedign edge, or what?


lol

wase4711

Yes, I'm so happy I'm on the phone now to change my plan to the...

Edit - No problems with calls in or out. :P
Sorry to hear you had to adjust your router. Maybe that means your system is more secure than mine. :lol:

I am gonna wait a bit to upfrade to unlimited; I want to see how much I actually use..
You know, you dont have to call them to make ANY chnages to your account; It can all be done through the online interface...

hxxps://secure.vonage.com/vonage-web/logoff.do

I've got a 5.8ghz corldless phone running on it now, and its as clear as a bell...

They want $9.99 service charge to change your plan, but I giving them some s#%t and I think I can get it done for free. :P

I think I'm going to setup this FREE feature:

Free Simul-Ring allows one incoming call to ring on two different phones.
It's just like Call Forwarding, except that both phones ring at the same time. When someone calls you, your Vonage phone and another selected phone number will ring at the same time.


I'll set this feature up so the home/vonage phone and my cell phone ring at the same time.

Gonna have to wait a bit over here in England for it. ISPs are still squabbling, although we could see the service introduced to the mainstream consumer soon. :)

all that ringing might drive you nuts, KC!!
can you then pick up EITHER phone to answer it?

why not try the free software solution from pulver


works a treat for me

jake :)

Side Note - If any of you want to signup with Vonage you get a free month ONLY if you were refered by a friend. You must signup using a link sent by the friend that refered you. Use wase4711, myself or even Poolman now as a referal. Just PM your email address and I'm sure any of us would love to refer you. Why not, we get a credit equal to yours. :thumbsup:

wase4711 Posted on Mar 19 2004, 05:09 AM
The feature worked like it said, but I decided to just use the auto call forwarding feature after 15 sec. of ring on the vonage phone and then have it forwarded to the cell.

I have the 911 setup and have also tried the three way calling. The three way calling sound quality drops, but still works fine for as much as I'd use that feature.

We have had it a week now and with my wifes help we're getting silly with our free minutes. :P

In-Plan / Free Calls:
Unlimited Plan minutes used: 746

That equals over 106 minutes a day. @wase4711 how about you?

Oh ya, if you didn't notice yet, I changed to the $34.99 package from the $15.00 one I had signed up for at first. Note that there is a $9.99 charge to change your rate plan up or down. Don't make the mistake I did, just get the unlimited plan the first time. :(

@jakesnake - Thanks, but I like the vonage because it don't need anything from my computer. No software at all. Just plug in their box to the cable modem and your off.

Well, I signed up like yourself for the 500 minutes for $14.99 initially, just to see if I liked the service enough to go full boat with it...And, I cancelled my 2nd land line, and reduced my only wired line to the absolute minimum package..
Also, the damn cell phone gives me unlimited nights and weekends, so between all those other options, I am trying to see if the $14.99/500 minute package gives me enough options, when used with the other stuff..

Yeah KC, I think if I would have known that they charged $9.99 to change packages, I would have started with unlimited...but, with AT&T announcing their service last week, and with the other major telecom people getting ready to announce their VOIP services this year, I think there will be some deals/incentives offered to current Vonage users to not jump ship.

I have had one annoying problem, that I will address with Vonage once I get my PC back from the mobo repair; every 2 days or so, I have to re-boot my adapter...It loses its connection, which, from what I have read on the vonage board, is related to your cable modem lease being "renewed" every 48 hours by Comcast..supposedly they can fix it by sending a firmware update to you, so I think I will try that when everything is hooked back up..

Other than that, the sound is perfectly clear, even more so than my POTS line..
And, the FIRST DAY we had it, I used 121 minutes!!!

And finally, yes, if anyone else wants to try the service, please use one of us( KC, Poolman, or myself) as a referral, since we ALL get 1 month free when sign up occurs from a referral..

Update!

Everyone knows Vonage's top package is now only $29.99 rather than the $39.99 I signed up for. I must say when I received an email from Vonage telling me that their rate plan is now only $29.99 for the unlimited package and that they would adjust my bill to reflect it... I was shocked! :blink:

My old phone company would never have reduced my plan on it's own and I'm not sure any other business would either. For example a cellular phone company.

Here's tips to those that might be interested in Vonage:

1. As noted above there is a $9.99 charge for changing your plan up or down.

2. Don't buy your unit from BestBuy or any local stores. You miss out on the free month offer. You must be refered from a current Vonage user and use the link the user sends you to signup with or you don't qualify. BestBuy gets all the credit $Money$ since they sold it to you.

3. If you have a broadband upload cap of 15kb/s like with most current cable ISP plans and you want to use the three way calling feature you must drop down the sound quality on your account in your Vonage website settings as I have. The sound quality is still great. I'll help anyone who is interested or answer any questions they might have. I'll even test out the three way calling quality with you if requested. :)

4. Just because their website says they offer local number in an area don't mean they are available when you sign up. To help your chances of getting a local number don't cancel your home phone or cell phone until you find out if Vonage can support a carry over of that number. I canceled my cell phone and therefore lost a local number I could have had. :(

Please feel free to drop me a PM.

Oh ya, as a side note. I recently seen Vonage talked about in MaximumPC magazine. They said that they took their unit that had a USA subscription on a trip with them to England and over their hooked it to broadband and called back to the USA for FREE! So lets say I have family in Mexico and I live in the USA. I signup for a 500 minute plan or better and mail them the unit to hookup to broadband over there. Now no extra charge for them to call me or anyone else in the USA. WOW the regular phone companies must really hate this. :D

If you upgrade to the unlimited throught the end of the month of June the $9.99 fee is waived for existing customers. See Here

http://www.vonage.com/price_drop.php..._id=1002208369

Thanks Phogphire for telling me this:

Seems things change fast with this company, but they all seem to be for the better.

The offers seem to be different all over. Looking at BestBuy.com here...

I see nothing about two months free and a coworker who recently bought one from the local BestBuy didn't get any months free or a rebate. Also, the no activation fee is kind of a scam. I paid an activation fee but got me unit for free, same thing. Either way you pay for the unit. It's the free month that you want to make sure you get.


Just shop around! B)

KC, things do change really fast, My wife has family in Hong Kong, we were paying .02c per minute now it is .03c with a disclaimer on the website that as of 5/28 rate subject to change without notice. So I guess the price reduction had to be paid for some way. What is really bad is some guy is getting referals using e-bay It comes up top in the search on Google even ahead of Vonage



I wish I had been thinking like this guy below (see attached). I think that they are going to make some customers mad with all the differnet programs.

Here is a copy of my bill we got billed because of international calls (first 2 months free (other than international calls) & no activation , no recovery fee, no FET, No shipping. ( from the website without a referal or from a box store : Start up is $73.23 (but if you ever cancel you have to ship the unit back)

My 2 months were before the price drop so It was about $ 37.54 per month credit plus the activation and a $50 MIR. I learned about the free activation and the 2 months free and the Mail in rebate from an article in USA today here:

I got this and the $50 MIR. BTW when I signed up niether the CC rep or the vonage rep knew anything about this. So go figure. Here is a screen shot of my bill with the international long distance. So I guess that it is dynamic, but for thoose of you who live far from Best buy or Circuit city, or would just prefer to go through someone on the board I would contact KC or wase4711 for a referal link.

I've always thought of taking the pludge...

Though so many ISP have an upload cap. I'm curious how long you have.. a local ISP "Novus" ( offers 10mb wan link ) However the have a bi-directional cap.

Since Vonage create a constant stream of packets.. that would munch on the monthly limit.. :(

Do you have a calculation of how much bandwidth is used for this application? ( a 15KB/s stream? )