Happy VOIP users?

[Ed_T]

Anyone using VOIP? I've been cking it out and some of it looks fairly complicated.

Callcentric has some good reviews. Nettalk's T6000 device looks easy, but their support forums show problems...

Would like to chop the 'phone bill w/o having to take a course, of course.

 

[rshaw125]

I have been using Vonage for 3 years. I have their Vonage world service for $24.95 a month. Works very well.

 

[jeepman]

I have VOIP through Time Warner cable. Even though I hate the company, I love the service. Nationwide including Long Distance for about $20 a month. And they wired it as a loopback through the existing wires in my house, so I am able to use any standard phone in any jack. The quality is crystal clear and indistinguishable from standard copper line service IMO.

On the flipside, I had service through Lingo.com a few years ago and it was very choppy and unreliable. They may have gotten better, but I guess lesson learned was stick with the larger players in the market to get good service. But no standard phone provider can touch VOIP on price.

 

[labman]

I wish I knew more people in Europe. Vonage is higher, just over $300 if you pay a year in advance but we have all the USA, Canada, and half of Europe as our free call area. We switched in 03, and I have never regretted it. Biggest problem is the lousy Bright House internet service. I don't think Vonage was ever off when we had internet.

Our internet service varies. At first, we had a couple of bad modems. Just like our former phone company, Bright House gives us the ''Its all in your equipment'' nonsense. After putting up with outages for a couple of years, they finally replaced one modem. The technician said, yes, we have had a lot of trouble with them. We had several good years with the new modem, but we are back to the same thing. I wish I could figure out how to tell if the problem is the incoming signal, the modem, or the router. We have the phone and 3 computers on the router. We have a second router, and changing back and forth between them doesn't help. It seems the modem doesn't like to talk to a router. The last 2 times we had trouble, I didn't get things working again until I plugged the phone adapter directly into the modem. I was then able to get everything working off the router when I moved things back to it.

I can actually use the phone and internet now when the power is off. Bright House has fitted their boosters with UPS systems. Once I crank up my generator, I can go on line. I have a UPS system, but I think the battery is bad. It dies real quick.

 

[youdontwannaknow]

can any of you VoIP users say anything about the voice quality of the line ? Is it clean and clear like a landline ? or is it like the typical low bandwidth highly compressed warbly wobbly cellphone/digital reception ? or somewhere in between ?

 

[Bill in Utah]

Vonage here. Pay a year in advance so its a little over $22 per month for everything.

Quality is as good if not better than any POTS line I had. I'd NEVER go back to traditional phone company again. If I lost the Vonage I'd go to pay as you go cell.

I refuse to pay all the fees that contract Cell phones and land lines have.

Bill

 

[CivicFan]

I don't remember how the landline voice quality was (have Vonage at home and VOIP service at work) but I can say that Vonage quality is good as long as there is not much traffic on my internet line (a couple of computers using the internet and a download going on). But that's a bandwidth problem, not a Vonage problem.

 

[labman]

We have always had good voice with Vonage. In some ways it is unfair to compare it to our old phone company. We made the mistake of buying a house served by a small independent company with third world service we paid through the nose for. About $40/month for local service lacking many common features. The far side of the county and the rest of the state were long distance at $.10 a minute. On dial up, half the time the modem couldn't connect. I think Bright House could do much better, but the old phone company was 100 times worse.

 

[rshaw125]

The quality of my Vonage service is very good. No complaints.

 

[ddrumman2004]

I had VOIP here with Cableone and the only complaint I have is that they went up in price. The monthly total for just phone went up over 12 dollars.
The quality of sound was great and they fed back through the house wiring also.
I switched from Cableone to Vonage and they could not provide me a local number. So I canceled them and just use a cell phone now.

If Vonage is ever able to provide a local number, I will use them.
For some reason, Cableone would not release my old home number and they had acquired it from Bell South.

 

[labman]

My daughter recently had her Sprint cell phone number transfered to Vonage. She has a work cell phone and I guess wanted a land line work like for the baby sitter. My reaction was ''There are baby sitters that don't have a cell phone?''.

I was not able to keep my old number. I think more people in the county may be able to call my new number for free than the old one. It is a toll call for those still mired in my old phone company. They also own the cable service in much of their phone territory. Oh, still analog. They are making DSL available in more of their territory now.

 

[blupupher]

I have been on Vonage for about 5 years now and have no real issues. Line is crystal clear (better then the land line we had).
I have had 1 VOIP adapter die on me (lightening strike) but found a replacement linksys router/VOIP box on e-bay for $10.

 

[TooManyWheels]

When we had VOIP the call quality was very dependent on the internet quality. In bad times, incoming calls would be told our number was out of service. But even in good times, the bi-directional signaling was bad - there was a noticable hiccup between when one person would stop speaking and another could start.

I recall that as being a signal strenth or bandwidth issue of some kind. When you complained, the company would make some kind of account adjustement and things would improve temporarily, before returning.

 

[Papa Bear]

The latest Consumers Report gives Magic Jack a good grade

 

[javacontour]

Does AT&T UVerse count as VOIP?

I've had my telephone over the Fiber to my home for two years now, and we just went to UVerse after my two years of DirecTV were up.

It works great.

I like being able to manage my phone from my computer.

 

[Cutehumor]

I had voipyourlife for 2 years. excellent call quality. Only reason why I got rid of it because I got a free business landline from my job since I work at home. I got a google voice account so when family calls long distance, the call is forwarded to my free business landline. if I call, I use google voice to call me, then it will call my family long distance in U.S for free. this system has allowed me $0 toward home phone service.