Vonage Review
By Bill Kirk

I decided to try the vonage digital voice phone service and write a review for other people thinking about using the vonage digital voice phone service.

In general the vonage service works well.  I have phoned many people using vonage and no one knew I was calling though the Internet.  For $40 per month you can have unlimited local, long distance, voice mail, call forwarding, caller ID, any phone area code you what and most importantly the sound quality is very good.  Once in a while I hear a very light echo on my end.  The people I call say it sounds excellent and make comments to me like "it sounds like you are right next store".  Vonage also has a $26 per month plan with all the features mentioned above, except you are limited to 500 long distance minutes.  You just use your current phones and there is no need to buy any phones or equipment.  If you what to have several computers and phones networked together like I do, you need a router.  I already have a good linksys router so no problems for me.  Vonage will sell you a router if you need one and extra connectors if you want to hook up a lot of phones.  I live in a Verizon service area so for local phone service and voice mail, I pay $32 per month plus tax.  I have several phone lines and I think I will switch more of them to vonage.

Thank you for reading this article, I would appreciate it if you sign up for vonage from this link.  You will receive a month of free vonage service and it will help me too.  Just click here, thank you.

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1.  You can call 911 from a vonage phone line.   Update: 4-13-03

Dialing 911

Your Safety Is Important
Vonage is proud to offer 911 dialing.  When you dial 911, your call is routed from the Vonage network to your local emergency service dispatcher. There are several important differences between our Emergency Services dialing and traditional 911 dialing that you need to know:

You Must Pre-designate the Physical Location of your Vonage Line for 911 Dialing to Function.

• Remember that unlike traditional phone lines, Vonage service is portable to any location with broadband internet access. For example, you can have a New York number and receive calls in Texas. You can also take your equipment with you on a trip but, when you travel, 911 Dialing will not function at your temporary location because when you dial 911, it will be automatically routed to the local emergency personnel location for the address on file.
•  
• When you sign up for service, you fill out a short form that tells us your actual physical address. When you dial 911, the call is routed to the local emergency personnel location designated for the address you register on file here.
•  
• When you move, you MUST provide your new location. You can conveniently update your new location online.
•  
• Because your 911 call could be from anywhere, we need you to verify the physical location of your phone in order to activate this 911 dialing feature from your phone.

911 Dialing Isn't Automatic. You Must Pre-Activate 911 Dialing.  You May decline 911 Dialing.

• We STRONGLY urge you to activate 911 Dialing.  Even if you don't plan to make 911 calls from your Vonage line, there may be others who do. You can't plan in advance for all conditions, but for example, a residential line could be used by babysitters, young children, in-laws, and others who may not know that you didn't want to make 911 calls. If you decline, you or others will not be able to call 911 from this Vonage line. Don't play games with your safety.

Service Outages Can Prevent 911 Dialing.

• 911 Dialing and Vonage Service DO NOT function during an electrical power or broadband provider outage.

Important Note
Please refer to the Dialing 911 section in our Terms of Service for important information on potential limitations of this 911 feature, including the differences between our 911 Dialing feature and traditional 911 dialing.
 

2.  When you make a local phone call you have to remember to use 11 digit dialing, it is not a big deal, you just need to become use to it.

To use the vonage digital voice phone service you need a broadband (DSL, cable modem, etc.) connection.  I use a cable modem from adelphia.net . 

Vonage also offers very low per minute calls all over the world.

Another cool feature of vonage is Flash.  You can call one person, hit the flash key on your phone and dial another person, hit flash again and you are talking to both long distance parties all on your flat rate long distance charge of $40 per month.  How many people can you call and link together at once?  I am still testing.

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I am done testing.  The problem is if you have a cable modem with 128k uplink and it really works at 90k, when you multiplex the uplink (e.g. a three way conference call) it is GARBLED.  Bumper.

This is not a problem if you have DSL or a cable service with 200k+ uplink.

Once in a while the vonage system does not work, you get dead air space, this only happens less than 1% of the time, so very rarely.

I will publish more details and update this vonage review weekly, also I will provide links to other vonage reviews if they are interesting.

Overall, I do recommend the vonage service.

Kind regards,

Bill Kirk

For those of you interested in the technology issues regarding vonage, I talked to an engineer who told me the following.  If you are not interested in the scientific details of how VoIP works, then do not read any further.  People who are interested should see the following web site it provides outstanding information.

Excellent VoIP and other protocol information
 

I would be interested in seeing how a technical expert at vonage would respond to the comments below.  One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that I can follow up with new information if vonage does supply a technical response.  I do not agree with what some of the following says.  Vonage definitely sounds better than a cell phone.  I would like to understand the other technical issues this person raises however, especially the cable modem upstream path issue and the delay in the ADSL.

The following is from another person:

Vonage digitizes your voice, then puts the digitized voice into TCP/IP packets and sends them over the Internet to a VoIP gateway at the destination.  From the VoIP gateway it is connected to a traditional telephone system so that you can make calls to anyone in the world.  The problem with this approach is delay.  ADSL can have a significant delay in the ADSL connection itself, due to interleaving of the packets, and further delay of the Internet itself.  Cable modems do have delay in the upstream path, e.g. the modem has to bid for use of the upstream channel and be granted access.  If you ever have the opportunity to talk over a VoIP phone service, ask the person you are talking with if you may do some testing.  Ask the person you phone to count with you.  You say "ten" and they reply "eleven" as soon as they hear your "ten".  Count from ten to twenty, you will quickly obtain real data about the amount of the delay.  Some people learn to tolerate this delay.   However some vonage users, accustom to the traditional phone system will have problems and not be happy with the VoIP service.

Again, I do NOT agree with this, it is an other persons opinion.

If you can tolerate the delay, which can lead to double talking and talk over, this product may be of some value to you.  However, you can find traditional long distance telephone service at very low cost, especially if you are willing to use a prepaid calling card.  Also MCI and Verizon are offering flat rate unlimited calling in many areas today.  The price for MCI or Verizon unlimited flat rate is a little more than vonage, and sounds great.  Maybe vonage will be useful in order to apply competitive pricing pressure to the major land line phone services.  I think in ten years everyone will have a unlimited flat rate phone service.

Others have pointed out some of the additional problems of vonage: loss of service during power failure, no 911 service.  Lack of 911 service can be life threatening, so if you sign up for vonage please make sure you have an alternate way to dial 911, either a cell phone or another land line.

The lack of location information can be an advantage (as a second line). You could establish a phone number in Texas (for example) even though you live in Boston.  You could have a Texas phone number, without a physical presence in Texas.  This is useful if your family lives in Texas and calls you all the time, they may do so without running up long distance charges.

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