Review of Vonage's VoIP broadband phone service

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

The real review is on their web page djf


------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>


Feature: Review of Vonage's VoIP broadband phone service

Article posted by: Bill_Royle on 2003/3/14 10:21:21
<http://techfocus.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3091>

These days a lot of people use their cell phones for long distance
calling, choosing to utilize their free long distance from their cell
provider versus paying by the minute for calls made using a
land-based phone provider such as AT&T, or Sprint. While the sound
quality isn't always as good with a cell phone and calls occasionally
do get dropped, the rates phone companies charge for land-based lines
are often unreasonable for medium to high-usage users of long
distance services.

Upon moving to the Bay area, I found myself in this situation. With
phone bills ranging from $80-150 dollars, it was clear that the phone
companies were draining my wallet like there was no tomorrow. I ended
up picking up a cell phone finally, and haven't looked back. For
quite a while, I kept the analog telephone "just in case," and then
finally stuck a pad of paper next to the phone and made a mark each
time I used it. After noting in the space of a month that I'd only
used the land-based phone twice, I relegated the handset to a box in
the garage and shut off the service. Since that time I've enjoyed a
steady phone bill of approximately $55 a month.

Last month I was contacted by Vonage, a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service
provider, and was asked if I would like to review their product. I'd
seen some of the enterprise-level VoIP products coming out of Cisco
and had been interested in those, so I agreed to take a look. The
package reviewed was the 39.99/month unlimited local and
long-distance package, their most popular option.

I was definitely skeptical, as I've tried other services for
communication over the internet, such as Net2Phone and NetMeeting.
Both of those products are software-based solutions, and you must
have a microphone and speakers at a minimum, in the case of
Netmeeting you can also have a webcam. The drawbacks to these? Well,
Net2phone's voice quality was absolutely sub-par even on broadband
connections - there were a lot of echoes, voice cutouts, etc.
Internet traffic notwithstanding, if I'm going to switch to a VoIP
solution, that hurdle should be cleared before I even make the call.
NetMeeting provided more features, however you still had to either
put your name out on a directory and leave it on all the time if you
wanted calls, or you had to call the person on the phone, give your
IP address or vice-versa, then make the call. That kind of defeats
the purpose if you're just trying to make a phone call.

<snip>

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/