Vonage Broadband Phone Service
About six months ago a friend of mine introduced me to a service called Vonage. Vonage uses the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) standard to place phone calls over the Internet. I knew a little about VoIP, because our phone system at work uses this technology, but I didn't know VoIP was available on a consumer level. I was intrigued. A day or two later he sent me an email from his Vonage account, which, if I signed up with him as a referral, we would both receive one free month of service. I signed up for the service, and during the same weekend, moved into a new place. My Comcast cable service technician was scheduled and showed up the day we moved in to install our Internet and cable TV service. Later that week we received the Vonage phone adapter in the mail. It came with easy to follow instructions and a calling features booklet that describes how to use services like 3-way calling. I plugged in the phone adapter to my cable modem, and my wireless router into my phone adapter. Once I plugged the adapter into the power outlet, the green light began to flash. After about a minute, the light stopped flashing. I picked up the phone, and, sure enough, I could hear a dial tone. I dialed my cell phone number, and my cell phone began to ring.
I just moved into a newly-constructed house, and rather than calling the local phone company to hook up our outside phone line, we began using the Vonage service over our broadband Internet connection. I disconnected the line that runs to the outside of the house, and plugged the phone line from the Vonage phone adapter into the phone jack in the wall. This allows me to plug a phone into any of the other phone jacks throughout the house, as if I was using any old phone service.
When you sign up for the service, you can choose your area code and prefix. This allows you to obtain an area code in California, even though you may live in Utah. The benefit of being able to choose your area code is that if you have relatives or friends in California, they will only need to dial a local phone number to call you, and not have to pay long distance charges. Because you can choose any area code for your phone number, 911 service will not work from your phone. No problem, your account on Vonage's website allows you to provide your home address to activate local 911 service.
Pros: Free features including caller id, free long distance in the U.S. and Canada, call forwarding (rings another telephone number, such as a cell number, at the same time that your Vonage service rings, or instead of going to voicemail, which comes in handy when we are going out of town so that when someone dials our home number my cell phone also rings), voicemail delivered as an attached wav file to an email address, access to account information and configuration via the Vonage website, sound quality being the same with regular phone service, and one flat rate of $27 per month for local and long-distance calls.
Cons: Our caller id stopped working one weekend. I sent an email to Vonage's support address, and within 24 hours I received a reply to my email and caller id began to work again. Also, on occasion, after placing a phone call where the other party was busy, when you hang up, our phone will ring, but nothing appears on the caller id and no one is on the other end. I've had this issue with regular phone service, so I'm pretty sure that this isn't an issue with Vonage.
You can transfer your current phone number to Vonage. I chose a new phone number when signing up with Vonage because we were moving to a new area, but I have a number of friends who had their existing phone numbers transferred over to Vonage. The process took aboout 3 weeks from the time that they submitted their request until their phone number began to ring through their Vonage phone.
To use the Vonage service, you will need a high-speed Internet service, such as a broadband or DSL Internet connection. If you already have a high-speed Internet connection, I suggest that you consider signing up for Vonage to lower your monthly telephone bills, and be sure to contact me if you would like a free month of service!
Benefits: Cheap local and long-distance telephone service
Requirements: High-speed Internet connection, regular telephone
Links:
Vonage: http://www.vonage.com
CNet's Review of Internet Phone Service: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-9140_7-5131535.html
I just moved into a newly-constructed house, and rather than calling the local phone company to hook up our outside phone line, we began using the Vonage service over our broadband Internet connection. I disconnected the line that runs to the outside of the house, and plugged the phone line from the Vonage phone adapter into the phone jack in the wall. This allows me to plug a phone into any of the other phone jacks throughout the house, as if I was using any old phone service.
When you sign up for the service, you can choose your area code and prefix. This allows you to obtain an area code in California, even though you may live in Utah. The benefit of being able to choose your area code is that if you have relatives or friends in California, they will only need to dial a local phone number to call you, and not have to pay long distance charges. Because you can choose any area code for your phone number, 911 service will not work from your phone. No problem, your account on Vonage's website allows you to provide your home address to activate local 911 service.
Pros: Free features including caller id, free long distance in the U.S. and Canada, call forwarding (rings another telephone number, such as a cell number, at the same time that your Vonage service rings, or instead of going to voicemail, which comes in handy when we are going out of town so that when someone dials our home number my cell phone also rings), voicemail delivered as an attached wav file to an email address, access to account information and configuration via the Vonage website, sound quality being the same with regular phone service, and one flat rate of $27 per month for local and long-distance calls.
Cons: Our caller id stopped working one weekend. I sent an email to Vonage's support address, and within 24 hours I received a reply to my email and caller id began to work again. Also, on occasion, after placing a phone call where the other party was busy, when you hang up, our phone will ring, but nothing appears on the caller id and no one is on the other end. I've had this issue with regular phone service, so I'm pretty sure that this isn't an issue with Vonage.
You can transfer your current phone number to Vonage. I chose a new phone number when signing up with Vonage because we were moving to a new area, but I have a number of friends who had their existing phone numbers transferred over to Vonage. The process took aboout 3 weeks from the time that they submitted their request until their phone number began to ring through their Vonage phone.
To use the Vonage service, you will need a high-speed Internet service, such as a broadband or DSL Internet connection. If you already have a high-speed Internet connection, I suggest that you consider signing up for Vonage to lower your monthly telephone bills, and be sure to contact me if you would like a free month of service!
Benefits: Cheap local and long-distance telephone service
Requirements: High-speed Internet connection, regular telephone
Links:
Vonage: http://www.vonage.com
CNet's Review of Internet Phone Service: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-9140_7-5131535.html
posted by Kevin at
1/24/2005 08:02:00 AM
2 Comments:
We actually signed up for Vonage a few days before we saw Kevin's article about it. We installed the service this weekend, and it's working great. It's a great way to save money on your phone bill.
Brent
By
Anonymous, at 2/19/2005 8:22 PM
Brent and Anissa have been singing praises about Vonage. When our current cell phone contract is up, we may well consider it. Right now we do ALL or long distance with the cell phone, but we could lower our minutes on that and have the ease of the land line with this--it's sure worth considering!
By
Candy, at 2/19/2005 9:21 PM
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