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Ahead of IPO, Vonage Faces User Complaints
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Internet phone-service provider Vonage (whose planned IPO was mentioned on Slashdot last week) is confronting complaints of poor sound quality, dropped calls and other glitches, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Customers who try to leave are complaining of bureaucratic hassles and snafus, particularly when they seek to switch services and take their numbers with them. Ironically, Vonage has long complained that local phone giants drag their feet in releasing the phone numbers of customers who want to leave.'"
Tried Vonage; didn't like it; walked away and left my money on the table. The money lost wasn't significant enough to warrant the time.
Pull my finger for my public key.
Had Vonage for over 6 months. Very satisfied here.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
I signed up for the Vonage service, tried it, didn't like it, tried to leave. I went through a bit of a nightmare trying to cancel the service and ended up needing to resort to the BBB. I wrote up the experience here: http://david.weekly.org/writings/vonage.php3 - apparently from the comments others have had similar experiences.
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
..except that they can't get local numbers everywhere yet, but that's the fault of the smaller telco's who aren't under the fed's microscope.. and don't let 3rd parties in the door.
did have a call quality problem initially, but that ended up being the connection it was using; 128k upstream was too slow, even though it's only supposed to need ~90k or less. upgraded the dsl to 256k upload and everything is perfect (aside the fact from our telephone number being based in a city on the other side of the state).
But when you listen to their commercials, you might get the impression that VOIP and Vonage were the next best thing after sliced bread!
Of the 3 problems, the first was by far the biggest. The quality just wasn't professional some of the time, and it repeatedly emabarrassed me with customers (I'm a software contractor). Also, when the audio was breaking up, I could never tell. The person I was talking to had to inform me. At a minimum, Vonage should make some sound happen on the your handset to let you know something's not right.
Free Conference Call -- No Spam, High Quality
Does anyone know how to unlock the newish vonage/linksys combo Router/VOIP units? I have one from a client that refused to pay me (Hi Dave!) and would like to do something with it.
This is only going to get worse if the FCC or (your govt' branch here) allows tiered internet service with the telcos NOT giving preference to competitors', such as Vonage's, traffic.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
I've got 2 VOIP providers (one at work and one at home) and the tech support is awful and I have reliability issues. That said the price is right and when everything is working it works well.
Always be polite.
I have vonage, and I'm pretty happy with the service. I'd say 8 out of 10 calls are good enough. I use the service more as a 15 dollar voicemail service. As I don't like phones, this is a cheap and easy solution for me.
However I've had some odd experences. For instance a friend of mine had it, then canceled it. When he had vonage, he setup call fowarding to his parents cell phone (they all lived in the same house). Well, they canceled for a bunch of reasons (mostly quality). Now when I call their house the call gets automaticly fowarded to the cell phone, since I'm a vonage customer. They've called them about the problem several times and there's "nothing they can do".
How much of this is the ISP's fault and not Vonage's, I wonder?
I kind of feel sorry for Vonage on this one. I've had their service, and while I'm about to switch (to free true VoIP services), I've had no problems with their service at all. That said, I also know how to manage a stable Internet connection.
The fact of the matter is Vonage is too hard for most people. All the things that can go wrong with a regular cable/DSL Internet connection now suddenly affect their phone service.
I work for a VoIP phone company. We get people calling in because after they unplug their modems to move them downstairs, they have no phone service. They're angry and mad and just don't understand how that would cause them not to have a dial tone. This is only one example, I'm sure you can think of others. Their old Bell South phone service 'just worked', and now they are having to reset routers and make sure the MTA is plugged into a phone jack/NIU. It's really complicated for the average person.
To make it worse, some Cable/DSL ISPs throttle their own VoIP traffic above all other traffic, and it's my beleif they have a way of changing the priority of other carrier's VoIP traffic to boost the quality of their own service (in comparison). Even if they don't admit to it or not, I wouldn't put it past them.
Add all this to Vonage's off-shore support who are at times hard to understand for the average 60 year old customer and you have some very miffed people. They feel the phone service is at fault, when they actually need to reboot their modem.
I'm sure Vonage has even more problems than I do, because we happen to be both the ISP and VoIP provider. I can only imagine what unknown variables they have to deal with, which are 100% required to deliver a quality, stable service.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I use Cox cable and I'm not having any problems with Vonage yet. I'm so happy with it I'm going to use it as the main line for my home based business.
I haven't noticed any quality issues, however this may just be because my ISP isn't a telco. I wouldn't have bothered posting to the forum except that I am interested to know how many people are unhappy with Vonage and if those people's ISP's are all telcos.
This is probably the biggest network neutrality battle that there is today and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the majority of people with complaints have all had their service screwed with by those telco based ISP's.
John the Kiwi
I had a similar experience with Cablevision/Optimum Online, and Skype, and Vonage...now I just use a pedestrian POTS line again. I resent having to pay all the BS fees and taxes, but it simply works and I don't have to take time out of my day chasing around my service provider when my incoming and/or outgoing phone service just stops for no apparent reason.
I had vonage, tried to cancel after 11 months of mediocre service. Refused to cancel without charging a $42 cancelation fee even though they claim month-to-month with no contract. I charged it back and luckily mastercard is sticking up for me, but an incredible hassle! Avoid Vonage like the plauge
All I know about Vonage is the horrid, obnoxious commercials that have made sure I'll never use the service. From those commercials, it seems they sell you a box that lets you use your own broadband connection for voice and then charge a high monthly fee to use it. Wouldn't it be the same as using Skype for free (or very cheap if you want a phone number)?
I don't have a VoIP system, and at this rate, never will.
A friend of mine has it, and every time I talk to him, it annoys me to no end. There is anywhere from 1/4 to 1 second delay, and very often, I can hear the "echo" of my own voice. This is regardless of whether he calls me, I call him, or where I am when the call is made! (Work or home, two different towns.) The audio quality is not as clear as "POTS" (Plain Old Telephone Service) either. Granted, it's better than most "cell" calls, but it's still got that "digitized sound". 90Kbps? Why does it need *that* much bandwidth? I've heard better quality audio from 12Kbps "RealAudio" feeds back in my dialup modem days!
Then you have the power failure and 911 issues. No thanks. I'll keep my old fashioned, highly reliable "twisted pair", thank you. After all... "It just works!"
Willie...
Your problem with faxes was probably user error - you can't use fax machines with Vonage (or any other VoIP, for that matter) voice lines. Those routers use audio compression to send your voice over the internet, and audio compression is lossy. Trying to send a fax transmission over a VoIP voice line is like trying to compress the data on your hard drive into an MP3. Audio compression isn't bit-for-bit equivalent, and fax transmissions will error when bits change.
You need a second line to send faxes, and most of the Vonage routers have a second jack labelled FAX specifically for this. The fax line doesn't use audio compression, it receives the fax transmission as data instead of audio, and forwards it over the internet as data instead of compressed audio. The fax line is not active by default though - it's an entire second line (2nd phone number, can be used simultaneously with your voice line if you have the bandwidth). I have it and it's worked flawlessly for me.
Of course, that doesn't excuse the hoops you had to jump through to cancel. Maybe they've been subcontracting their cancellation service to AOL.
*MY* big problem with Vonage is that the online voicemail retreival is SLOW AS SHIT. But it still beats trying to retreive voicemail over the phone, at least online I can just click on all the message buttons, open them in new windows, then come back and listen to them all 5 minutes later when they've finally downloaded. At least with online voicemail, even if there's a 30-120 second latency to get a message, I can easily rewind/fastforward/replay/save to computer.
paintball
I have been relatively pleased with Vonage. I have had various call quality issues, but I installed OpenWRT on my Linksys router and now use a QoS script to prioritize VOIP packets. Call quality is much improved as a result.
I have experienced an interesting problem, however. Several of my customers used Vonage and were very displeased with it. After a while, they switched back to POTS. Problem was, Vonage didn't release their numbers. So, when I called them from my Vonage line, I was not able to get through to them. Callers from outside Vonage had no trouble. It took several months and numerous calls and tickets to resolve the issue with Vonage.
I've had Vonage for over a year and now have two lines. I used to complain about the quality as did others on the other end of the call. I recently rebuilt my network (and got rid of my PoS netgear FSV318) and now the quality is absolutely flawless. I'm on a 15mbit/2mbit cable link and I can use nearly all of my bandwidth without even a hiccup on the line. Here's the trick:
I ordered a 2nd IP from my ISP and separated my data network from the voice. In other words, I stuck a switch behind the cable modem with my router (p3 866 running pfsense Freebsd 6) in one port and the motorola vonage box in the other. The difference was absolutely amazing even though there's no prioritization of the SIP and RTP packets. Since pfsense has pretty good QoS capabilities, I might eventually stick the vonage box behind the router and get rid of the 2nd - we'll see.
For those of you who have your vonage box behind a cheap linksys router, forget it. The consumer-level devices simply can't put out the pps to support network usage and simultaneous VOIP usage.
Hope this helps.
Even if you cancel your POTS, as long as the line is connected, you can dial 911.
It's the law. That's what they based the requirement that any cellphone be able to call 911, even if it isn't signed up for any service.
Calling 911 isn't a problem. The only issue I can see is that if someone is breaking into your house, you might not be able to get to the land line.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I have had Vonage for two years and have no complaints. Also, I know a few customers of Vonage, and they are pleased with the price/performance of their service. It is what it is, and people should realize that the quality and reliability of VOIP services will depend on the quality and reliability of their internet services. That said, Vonage services should be compared to other VOIP services. Based on price, performance and service, Vonaage is the king of the hill.
I've been using an old pentium 2 with 2 nics I bought for $5 as a router for a few years now, rather than a traditional cable/dsl router. It does traffic shaping, and works very well.
With my old router, I'd have to turn off bittorrent whenever I wanted to play a multiplayer game. Now, I just leave my client running full speed all the time, and don't notice any extra lag, either in games or in teamspeak/ventrilo.
IMO it's not worth the effort for linux novices. But if you have a bit of experience I'd thoroughly reccomend it. It's cheaper and works better; but administering it can be difficult.
One thing to note is that you can't do anything to shape your download traffic. You can't control the modem sitting on your ISP's end. This is fine though, since download speed is almost always vastly in excess of your upload speed. Other people not understanding what you were saying is evidence of that.
You'll also, in general, decrease your total uploading bandwidth. One of the goals of traffic shaping is to keep the buffer in your cable modem empty; most modems have rather large buffers, which generally makes for a bigger number they can advertise as your uploading bandwidth. However, when the buffer fills up it makes for awful latency.
I can't speak for its effectiveness in reducing Vonage dropped calls or latency or other problems, as I don't have Vonage, but it works great for Teamspeak/Ventrilo, which does pretty much the same thing.
Had Vonage for years and love it.
I suppose it makes for a better story to claim Vonage has a million problems. I'm sure they are not perfect, but many of the problems mentioned in these comments are not Vonage's fault. If your ISP can't keep a connection alive or provide sufficient bandwidth, theres a separate issue.
I absolutely love my Vonage service. I've been a customer for almost a year.
* It works quite well (I have my internet service via a cable modem with Charter)
* I love that I can control forwarding, voicemail functions, etc online (moreso than bellsouth)
* I get my voicemails via email. SO much nicer than having to use ANYONE's phone-based voice mail. I don't even bother checking the VM on my cell phone because its such a pain in the ass.
* Its less than $28/mo taxes and everything included per month for unlimited local and long distance, plus they just started where they include free calls to Canada, UK, Ireland, France, and there may be one more country im missing. Bellsouth after taxes would cost me $64 and that's only domestic calls.
And I tell people, on those off occasions my internet service happens to be down or there's a problem, there are two cell phones in this house. They make fine backup.
One thing I have noticed from my adventures in techsupportland, is that not only are most people getting subpar phone service, but also an unexpected side effect of no internet. I suppose this could directly correlate with the lack of tech knowledge for some people, but with VONAGE in particular... I've had far to many instances where a customer will have great phone service, but the voip modem/router provided to them acts as a very effective web filter. NO internet whatsoever. From most of them that i've ended up talking to again, vonage actually had to ship a new unit to them to fix the issue. Now that could be partially due in part to their tech support, but whatever.
It all sucks imo.
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
I work for TimeWarner cable. We've got the digital phone product (not true voip, btw, but voip thru the cable system before it's handed off to Sprint).
We are happy to port numbers from other providers... the "normal" is 7 business days to get the number from Verizon.
It takes TWENTY business days to port a number from Vonage. That's a full calendar MONTH.
And they have the balls to bitch about telcos dragging their feet??
At least they don't do what Frontier (smaller local telco in upstate NY) does; Give/Sell your number to telemarketers before porting it! Nothing like a little "fuck you!" as you leave them...
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
I have had Vonage and Callvantage and I am still using callvantage. IMHO its worth the extra few bucks. It was flaky in the beginning but I haven't had a problem in well over a year now.
So who /should/ I be using as my VOIP provider if I don't want my phone records recorded and scoured by the government, want 911 access, and want my techno-phobic aunt to be able to call our house? I'd take 2 out of 3 (meaning I don't /really/ need to talk to my aunt).
As serious a question as it comes, I'm afraid.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
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My Vonage service has been rock solid. But then it seems like Cox has its shit together in RI and I'm pretty competent at keeping things running.
That being said, I really don't think VoIP is quite ready for the average user. Hell, wireless networks aren't even for the average user. I can't tell you how much money I've made fixing botched up networks, both wired and wireless.
And lately I've been absolutely LOVING Skype. So much so that I think I'll part with the $38 and get my own SkypeIn number. Talk about a cheap second business line.
... when I had to replace my wife's iPod they shipped the replacement the next day, but it took DHL like a week to understand that I will frigging stop by their office to pick it up, rather than pay non-return fee to Apple -- "No, we can not deliver to locked apartment buildings, and if we were to leave a notice that it arrived, it would be lost anyway..." -- at list this is my experience after moving to Vancouver, Canada.
Paul B.
Same here. No problems with fax over Vonage.
Tried to get Vonage Canada service. Endless series of rude techs, and discovered that they're about twice the price of any other VoIP provider. I've been on http://talkbroadband.ca/ (Primus) for almost 3 years now. I pay CAD $35 a month including taxes for my base fee, which includes long distance in Canada and the US. $5 a month for an extra number in Vancouver, and $10 a month to cut my overseas rates to 30 countries to 2.5/minute. Couldn't be happier.
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You can get them to change the codec you use to a less bit-hungry one. That has helped a few people I know who have Vonage.
You can test your connection to see how it will behave http://testyourvoip.com/ and you can try different codecs to see what the difference is. Try it a few times throughout the day to try to characterize your line better.
-ben
Hate to sound shillish, as I've spent the past 4 or so years just lurking /.
I've had vonage for the past year. The only problem I had was when I first got the service, the friends of the person that had it before didn't inform them up the change.
Other then that, the sound qualities great, and it doesn't choke my DSL (2.5mbps down, 384k up), and I've never had a problem with it. The voice mail, for me, has always been quick, and I love having it delivered to my email, as well.
I currently have 2 providers, Vonage and Sunrocket.
If it wasn't for Vonage giving me some credits recently, I would already have cancelled. My bill keeps going up as they raise their fees, and now they are charging me local taxes, too. If I wanted to pay unknown taxes and fees, I would have stayed with my telco.
But anyway, Sunrocket has been great. While their Customer Service is notably lame (but I expect nothing less), they have better features than Vonage, including E911. Plus, they give you some pretty cool free phones when you signup, and there is no signup fees, or wacky charges.
What does it cost? $199 for an entire year (or $24.95/mo) with no other fees/taxes. And, since I know Slashdotters are too lazy to type in a URL, here it is for you: http://www.sunrocket.com/
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However, I tried out their competitor, Packet8, for a month because Vonage couldn't get me a local number and Packet8 could. Packet8's technology is much worse. Their website is not as feature rich as Vonage's. Their phone functionality isn't as slick either. Vonage is great a figuring out what your'e doing when dialing a number. Dial a 10 digit long distance number without the "1", no problem. Dial with the "1", no problem. Dial 7 digits for a long distance number in your same area code ... and no "1", no problem. Packet8 was real simple. If you wanted to dial long distance, it was "1" plus the 10 digit number, period. If you wanted to dial a local number, dial the 7 digits only, period. Anything else was borked. Oh, and by borked I mean get a busy signal, not the "we're sorry, I couldn't connect you" message. I pissed away a whole afternoon waiting for someone's phone line to free up, only to realize they weren't on the phone .... it wasn't actually busy.
Almost all of my calls on packet8 had echo's etc. on the line during the call. I'd have to wait 30 minutes on hold to speak to a customer service rep with Packet8 as well, and while they'll happily take and email from you, they don't respond.
Packet8 also holds you to the terms and conditions, no exceptions, period. You get a 30 day grace period to return the equipment with no penalties. That 30 day grace period starts when you order the service, not when you get the device and plug it in. So, not realizing the 30 days started when I ordered the service,I called 2 days too late and got nailed a $65 cancellation fee plus I have to ship them back their equipment. "Too bad, so sad" was about all the sympathy I got from them. They know when your equipment hits the door, because you have to jump through hoops to get it hooked up and get a working dial tone etc., so they use the order date just to screw you out of a week of trial period.
Oh, and of the 4 times I called them they hung up on me/connection was dropped twice (I think accidently both times). So, it took three phone calls and over an hour on hold just to find out how bad I was going to be takin' it in the rear to cancel the service.
Is Vonage perfect? No. Are they as good/better than their competition? In my experience yes.
I use Vonage and love it. I can't say I've never had a complaint about voice quality, but it's pretty rare, and for 25 bucks a month... unlimited long distance in US + Canada is awesome. I'm also a network admin, maybe it simply requires more administration than the average user can supply?
I can only imagine a network infested with spyware, zombie PC's, and of course every P2P app running trying to provide enough bandwidth for VOIP.
On a side note, I maintain a Cisco VOIP solution at work, and it's amazing.
Maybe the technology isn't quite right for the average user, but its coming, and I can't wait.
Not that happy about it. Serves me right for going with this type of provider.
I have vonage, and currently love it, but I have to say getting into it was an incredible pain.
I got Vonage 3 years ago. I decided to port my local number so people could still call me. Well, the FCC says this should take no more thn 3 days or so (I forget the exact number of days)
It took Vonage 2 months.
I called them repeatedly to check on the status. They had the fucking nerve to lie to me and say it was verizon's fault for not releasing the line. That was the initial response, but then as I pressed them over days they admitted they had no idea why. I insisted several times for a supervisor and finally one day got one.
I learned that Vonage used a third party company to grab the line and pull it over. Somewhere in that chain, things broke down and my request to port the number simply never happened. 3 days after my last over the phone fit to them for not changing my line, the one where I got ahold of the supervisor, it was changed.
That experience is the only thing that has prevented me from overwhelmingly recommending Vonage to all my friends, even after 3 years. I stay with vonage because I don't have problems with it, it's cheaper than any plan I could find through a traditional land line, and it has nice interesting features that are very useful to me.
If it's that hard to get in, I'm not surprised people can't get out. Vonage has a suspicious problem with number porting, and I think its because current law covering number portability doesn't cover them. That's one law that should be changed to extend to them.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, but my Indian friends (as well as friends from other countries, but particularly India) tell me that a lot of people are getting Vonage units here in the US, with a US phone number, and using them in India for low priced/easy phone calls to the US (not to mention an easy way of taking calls from friends/family in the US.)
I hear their pleased. After all, what number do they have to port-over?
I've used Sun Rocket for two years. Never had problem one.
Just like my anlog phone. Everyone I've tipped to this company has had the same experience.
VOIP can be done right. SR is also cheaper than Vonage ($199/year full service - $10/month limited service)
Two numbers, web configuration, all the bells and whistles.
I've been using fonelogic http://www.fonelogic.com/ for about 4 months now. It's $25 a month for unlimited US calling, 1 month free when I signed up, they sent me the box, and with the QOS in the box I don't notice quality problems or transfer rate issues on my comcast service.
Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
I use my local cable companies VOIP serivce. Sounds great, but puts a dent in bandwith. I'm glad I don't have Vonage after hearing this. One thing that I've noticed is that the number of telemarketing calls I've gotten in the past few months since the switch from regular land line to Voip. I've been getting 5 a day, before hand one a week if that. Any one know if when you have an un-listed number and then make the switch to VOIP does it become listed? Or is there some way that they can scan for peoples numbers because they are using VOIP. I mean some sort of port sniffing deal?
I got Vonage in early 2005, and they were going to give me a $50 rebate if I bought the phone adapter at Best Buy.
Sent the rebate in, making sure to copy all of my forms.
A few months later I get a letter saying I forgot to write the MAC address on the form.
Send in a photo copy of my copies, along with a letter giving them the details.
No $50.
I was debating buying into the IPO, but I guess since I'm not a happy customer I'm not sure I trust them.
I use http://www.packet8.net/
The price is great. The voice quality is good enough. Occationally I will get a blip in the conversion where it's like you lose the connection for a second.
I am satisfied. Does any one else use anything besides Vonage?
I love my vonage service. I had a quality problem early on and it turned out to be a bad Netgear router not Vonage. A very patient, polite vonage tech helped me debug it. No problems since. I swear some of these people writing these articles got paid off by Skype.
BTW.. I send faxes successfully over vonage all the time.
I Use Vonage and got it before the silly commercials a year ago. I have not had any problems but I also have a private network provider (not a regular ISP) that provides near lan speeds to the internet. I am not surprised by the complaints, this time last year when they started he advert campaign I was thinking "hmm, so they are going to spend all this money on commercials to grab market share and then skimp on customer service and raise rates to make up for all the money they blew". Well, I was almost right...they blew money on commercials and instead of raising rates to make up for it they are doing the IPO thing.
...net neutrality. What we need is a tiered internet, where Vonage and other companies can be free to provide guaranteed service. Yep. That's what we need. We need it like a hole in the head.
Not Always the Company's fault. Some people have spyware on their PC and refuse to acknowledge it. Viruses and spyware can use up resources on the network, and yes one PC commected to the modem is a network on the internet. Try disconnecting the PC from the network and if your phone call is clear, then it yopur fault. Other people get a wireless router and plugg it in with out securing it. Treaying it like an appliance. It is not your toaster oven, refrigerator, nor microwave. It is computer equipment. All computer equipment requires YOU to LERAN about it maintain it and manage it. If YOU choose NOT to do any of those it is your fault. IF 30 people are using your wireless router for internet you did not do the right thing. Too mant people buy these things and do not even learn what they actually do, Do you buy a car without looking at it's options? Do you sign legal documents without reading them? apparently many do. The number xfer process is called LNP, Local Number Portability, or transferring your number. As I have done this before the LOA, Letter of Authorization does ask if you have DSL service and if so you can not xfer thre number because it will disconnect the internet service. When the LOA returns with and error that you can not xfer the number because of DSL, many people go back and answer no to that question. WHY would YOU do such a stupid thing. You have been told NO and you chose to do it any. Is not that the behavior of a child not an adult. READ the pages when you sign up! Sign up yourself and not let the CC agent do it for you, it is the same process and you won't mis-spell anything. To be an adult is to be responsible.
I signed up for Vonage in January 2005. The Vonage enabled Linksys router/firewall worked fine when I plugged it in and everything worked fine except for the occasional dropped call. The frequency of dropped calls was less than cell phone service and the audio quality was much better than typical cell phone service. Service remained good until late 2005 and became increasingly worse in the first months of 2006. More frequent dropped calls, chronic audio cutout and distortion made the service nearly unusable. I once had to listen to the outgoing message on a colleagues voice mail four times just to get the number where I could reach him. I spent about two hours on the phone with Vonage a month ago regarding these problems. They claimed to have changed some settings. I did not see any immediate change after this call but my impression is that the service has improved from nearly unusable to barely usable. I found it curious that Vonage thinks so poorly of their own customer service that they registered http://www.vonagesucks.com/ but didn't rub enough braincells together to register http://www.vonageblows.com./
I've had Vonage for almost a year now and am having 0 problems with them. I can't actually believe that my situation is not the norm? Their service has been excellent. I use them along with cable service and QoS actually works, and works very well. I can literally watch myself downloading a large file, pick up the phone, and see my transfer rates drop. And I rarely get dropped calls.
I have a Vonage business account and use a fax line as well, and basically turning ECM off fixed all the problems I was having with it not wanting to talk to some fax machines.
Happy customer here. And no, I'm not buying into the IPO but I'm so happy with 'em I got my parents to switch to using them as well. VOIP is cheap now, take advantage of it while you can. And all the cool call routing features and voicemails in my Inbox are clutch.
I'm not rushing to Vonage's defense or anything, just figured I'd share my experience with them. I live in West L.A. and I have Comcast as an ISP. I pay $25 a month for Vonage. I've had it for two months, and it's great. They mailed me a router, I plugged it in, plugged in the phone, and moments later I had a phone signal. I was actually VERY surprised by this, I didn't have to set up ANYTHING. I've had no dropped calls. The voicemail works really well. (Being able to download your voicemail through the net is damn cool.) Caller ID works. I used a referral and got the first two months free, plus the referred person got a month of service free. Went very well.
I've only had one problem. I was talking to my mom on the phone when I absent-mindedly decided to upload a file. I could hear her, but she couldn't hear me. When I aborted the xfer, the call went back to normal. File this under D for Duh. If anybody has any tips on how to deal with this (i.e. a Windows FTP client that limits upload bandwidth...) I'm all ears.
So, yes, you need a good internet service. Yes, the same bandwidth rules still apply. Yes, your mileage may vary. It is a good service, especially for somebody like me who doesn't want to have a landline.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.intel.com/network/csp/resources/white_p apers/4631web.htm
This is a standard for sending fax data over VoIP (or any packet) networks. Many VoIP systems have DSPs that can detect fax tones and automatically switch to T.38 over RTP mode where non-lossy fax data is bundled into RTP packets.
I know that at least the Linksys WRTP54G wireless Vonage router supports T.38 and other models may do as well.
And behold, a command prompt and he who sat upon it, his name was shutdown and -h 3:11 followed with him
Get a router that can do QOS, or, get a program for windows called NetLimiter, it allows you to set maximum bandwidth usage per program.
I am NaN
I've been using Vonage for something close to a year now. I believe it's worked quite well for me. I've never had any outages or major problems. There has been a time or two where it's dropped during a call to my wife's Verizon phone, but I called her from a POTS line and found that it happened from it as well, so I'm thinking that it's not Vonage because it doesn't happen when I can anyone else.
I have just one big complaint about Vonage. They're pretty lax when it comes to transferring numbers to their service. Even if their automated system tells you that your number can be transferred, it's not always correct. I (and others) have been placed by Vonage phone exchanges that they lease (in my case, McLeod USA) where they simply do not allow phone transfers from a cellular number. This is not a limitation of Vonage itself, but rather the company that they lease the exchange from. Regardless, Vonage should *be aware* of this before they make their customers jump through hoops for two months to get a number transferred (and fail).
Another thing I don't like is that they tend to decide to update your router with new firmware any time they please. The problem with that is that they often break things because the firmware still seems to be a bit experimental in some respects.
These two issues aside, I've really liked my Vonage service. I would suggest it to anyone that wants a reasonably priced phone service, but doesn't feel like having to pay the POTS phone companies and fight with long distance providers. Also, they claim that they won't ever share your call data with the NSA without a court order, so I guess that stands for something.
pretty satisfied, we've missed some calls because of having VOIP (Vonage) but it wasn't vonage's fault it was Adelphia's fucking inability to correct line problems to our house despite 4 trips to our house... which kept making my internet connection drop out.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
First generation (pre-ISDN) FAX used modem. The modem will convert the binary data to waves. Waves that can be conveyed as sound over the very same copper wire. You can't call an analog phone conversation as lossless.
The problem doesn't come from the lossiness of the VoIP lines. It comes from the fact that the modem is optimized for a specific kind of lossiness that is characteristic of analog lines (transmited sound are muffled - some frequencies are lost, other have reduced strengh).
Voice CODEC used on VoIP are different (some frequency MAY be changed, phase MAY be lost in a different manner than analog lines, not all the same frequency will be muffled/lost because VoIP CODEC are optimised to carry as much as possible in the frequency used by speech, etc...)
And therefor, some of the hacks used to try to pack more data in the same wave (like V.92 for 56k modems) DON'T work, because the waves gets damaged in a different way, beyond anything that can be repared by error correction (be it in the analog wave or in the FAX data). But overall it's just similar to a very noisy analog line (the difference is the noise isn't caused by interferences but by the codec).
So if you use a slower and therefor more noise resilient speed (9600 or even slower), it may work thru the voice port.
Your example is wrong. the hardisk data isn't in audio form att all it just sounds as white (random) noise. Compressing data in MP3 is like connecting the digital stream of the fax to a DAC and trying to get anything meaningful out of it.
The FAX over VoIP analogy will be more like using data stored on an audio tape (like the first generation of home computer - it IS in an audio form), and trying to compress this audio.
- It will work using lossless compression and if the DAC and ADC stages are precise (very low distorsion of the sound on the audio tape)
- It may work using high bitrate MP3s (if the distorsion aren't too much for the quality of data. Like sending 2400 data on an VoIP line with good error checking)
- It won't work using too low bitrate MP3, using Speex, or if the DAC or ADC introduces too much distorsion. Because the audio format on the tape makes some assumption about how the sound will be distorted on the tape, and your compression setup distorts the sound in a different maner. (56K analog gets fucked up by audio quality of VoIP)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've had a problem with Vonage, and I don't even subscribe!
A few weeks ago Vonage had a promotion in the U.S. where select individuals received a solicitation in the mail to sign up with Vonage, and giving them a special 1-800 number to do so.
Only one problem: it wasn't Vonage's 1-800 number.... It was mine.
I think my business received over 1000 calls. At some times, all three incoming lines were in use. Since my business sells IC design consulting and training services, callers were confused with our call routing tree. But, the director of sales, director of training, and the admin clerk got their share of irate callers, many of whom tried to call multiple times.
And Vonage? Their legal department is pretty hard to get hold of. We tried. The president of the company finally got through to them, only to be told that nothing could be done. Which is likely true - it would have been too expensive to due.
Anyway, the calls have abated now and all is well again. But I'll never subscribe to Vonage.
I have had good experience with Vonage. I have been paying about $15/month and cannot complain. I have been using Vonage since you used to be able to call their offices in New Jersey and a person would answer the phone. She was the one who returned my calls and e-mails too. The old APs were not routers and my gf & I each have one BEHIND our own router w/out QoS on it (and we have to use it to access her work VPN [sucks]). Considering no QoS, the quality is not bad using RoadRunner cable modem. We brought her device to Japan and it worked great. I send/recieve fax's all the time on my plain old account and it looks fine.
and am happy with it. For less than $20 a month, relatives in Europe can cll us; the quality and clarity is fine and the price is a lot less than calling via a landline. Would I use it for a primary line in the US, no; but as a secondary line installed overseas it is great.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I lost my phone number when I switched to Vonage. The carrier I was then using wouldn't release it, saying they never received a request. Fine, maybe something got lost in translation, but they more or less refused to help me get the issue resolved when it was brought to their attention. Other than that I've had no complaints with Vonage. No issues with dropped calls, sound quality is within reason. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones.
The current state of VoIP technology is not good enough for normal telephone users to use. When PC users can't secure their wireless network and have malware clogged PCs, how can they be expected to be able to successfully use VoIP telephone service at home?
I think that mass market home VoIP service is doomed, at least in it's present form. People have been conditioned to expect to be able to pick up their home telephone handset and hear dialtone, they don't need a phone system that has to be rebooted on occasion to make it work. When the power goes out with VoIP, the entire telephone line goes down unless you have battery backup for the modem and the router. I have had to remind several family members with POTS that they need to have at least one regular non-wireless telephone in the house for when the power goes out. I understand that many VoIP routers have backup batteries and broadband providers provide battery backup for the customer prem VoIP telephone equipment that they provide. How long do those batteries last?
How long does a broadband connection last when the power goes out?
Recently there was a large storm that caused the power in my neighborhood to go out for almost two days. If I had Vonage, it would have only lasted for as long as the cable TV broadband lasted. My cable TV service and broadband connectivity lasted just a few hours after the power went out. The batteried in my UPS, which powers the cable modem and router lasted for much longer than the broadband service did. My cell phone went to analog roam after 8 to 10 hours (and that signal was essentially unusable). My wired POTS phone worked fine the whole time. I had neighbors who were surprised that my phone still worked because their (cordless) phones were dead. The same neighbors were later grateful that I could stop the beeping noise that was coming from their cordless handsets -- they also didn't know how to put the batteries back in after the power came back.
I doubt very much that any network info is adding to your amount of phone calls. One goal of VoIP is that the Internet element is transparent to callers. If the volume of calls has increased, it's a safe bet that your provider is 'providing' your number to some list. Have you registered with the Federal Do Not Call Registry? You should check if your state has one too.
http://connect.voicepulse.com//
http://asterisk.org//
http://store.voxilla.com/customer/home.php/
If their CSR's bite, then all the technical prowess or excuses won't help in the slightest. They still can't understand why I left.
I recently quit Vonage. Had no trouble with the service (other than when I was making heavy use of my bandwidth for other things) but the issue was that I have DSL and the govt lets the phone co get away with forcing me to have a land-line even though I get my DSL throught a totally different company. It just simply wasn't worth the extra money to pay for long distance. I ended up just getting my wife a cell phone on my plan and everyone's happy.
If the government gets its finger out and stops allowing the phone company to force services on me that I neither want or need, Ill probably go back to VOIP. Though it would probably be Gizmodo or Skype since we have no need for an incoming number (the mobiles take care of that)
Rich
I have a Vonage line I use from Argentina. The quality is good enough so far.
The bad part is that I get telemarketing calls any time of the day offering mortage and stuff.
I had Vonage for less than a year. The experience was less than thrilling, though I was quite excited by the potential. Before I transferred to Vonage, I had a bare bones line from Bell ($27/month) and a 3Meg DSL Connection from Execulink ($29/month). When I switched to vonage, I dropped my Bell line and the execulink account and got a Rogers Lite (128k) account ($20/month) and the vonage unlimited account ($40/month). The Rogers Lite service was a problem when I used my phone and surfed at the same time, so I upgraded to their 3Meg service and was now paying $44/month. So, to save money on my phone bill, I went from a monthly base cost of $56 plus long distance charges to $84. To add insult to injury, the adapter that they sent me died in the first few weeks and needed a replacement. It took 5 days to get a replacement, which resulted in my not having any land line services at home. This was disturbing, as I had a pregnant wife with my 6 month old baby at home. After the adapter was replaced, I constantly had to reset the new adapter, as I kept losing my service (sometimes during a phone conversation). To pile it on, my baby was sick and I tried to call Telehealth Ontario and found out that I could not reach that toll free number from my calling area. Now I'm quite upset. In the process of moving, I decided to go back to Bell for my basic phone service and Execulink for my internet & long distance service. When I called to cancel from Vonage, I was told that I had to pay a disconnect fee, as I didn't keep the service for a year...and they say, "no contract." It took me a couple of months to cancel and I was getting more upset by the minute. Hours on the phone and nobody with answers. I finally broke down and e-mailed one of the VPs here in Canada. A week later, he called me and listened to my concerns. He seemed to be interested and said that he'd send me something in the mail. That was way back in January...still nothing. So, now that I'm back with Bell & Execulink, I now pay $30 for phone , $34 for 3meg DSL and 4.9 cents a minute any time any where in North America long distance with no base costs. That is my 2 cents worth. Cheers! Luke
ive had vonage since november. consider me a happy customer. i have no issues with them, service is great. no dropped calls, and quality is dandy (except when I upload a huge file at a large outbound rate, and that's more of a cable modem issue than a vonage issue...
.. they would not release my phone number due to a mistake on their part. vonage had nothing to do with that.
the only switching problem i had was with MCI
= Grow a brain...
I drive on a heavily traveled road every day to and from work (read: lots of cell towers), and every day that I make a call along these roads using my cell phone my signal drops, or the quality degrades, or I endure 15 seconds of silence followed by perfect quality. All this while I can see the cell phone towers along the sides of the road and I know that they belong to my carrier. The quality and reliability of my cell phone is probably 1/8 of my Vonage phone at home.
:)
Regarding the power outage problems - buy a UPS. Go to Best Buy, put down $75 to buy an APC UPS, and plug ONLY your cable modem and Vonage router into the UPS. Those two devices consume so little power that even a low-end UPS can keep them running for a long time in the event of a power outage.
It strikes me as odd that people are so up in arms about paying $15 or $25 per month and hearing "echos" and nobody is kavetching about the $80 per month cell phone bills where calls are always dropped or degrade.
I know that Vonage isn't perfect by any means, but for $15 per month I'm quite happy. If they charged $50 per month then I wouldn't be so happy...
Do it for da shorties
Same here. I don't completely blame them for the quality issue, as I knew it would be a bit of a risk to expect VoIP to play nice on a consumer DSL line, but to have low expectations and still be disappointed is ridiculous. The scenarios could be summarized like this:
1. Computer downloading large file = VoIP quality at 25% (no way to carry on a conversation)
2. Computer engaged in a VPN session = VoIP quality at 50-75% (sometimes conversations are ok, but the chance of quality degradation increases exponentially as the call/session continues)
3. No computer traffic whatsoever = VoIP quality at 60-90% (always some line noise, and occasionally a callback needed to establish a clear connection)
My DSL line shouldn't be completely to blame though, as I've run heavy VPN-encrypted remote windowing sessions for hours without comparable lag. I had my suspicions when I looked at the install guide and saw that they recommended dog-legging the VoIP router off my existing network. I thought for sure they would have it funneled through their own device for traffic shaping, but I should have sent it back then and there.
None of this compares to their horrible customer service though. There's really no excuse for treating customers like that, and I haven't even started trying to cancel my service yet. (Not recommended until after you successfully transfer your number back.)
I also am going through the line-transfer tango with them. Despite their claims that it's "instantaneous," it's been several weeks and their phone jockeys don't know much. However, I did just speak to what could be summarized as a "third tier" jockey (had sort of a clue) and he finally told me something useful. A company called Focal technically owns the number, and they lease it to Vonage. To hasten your departure (and this works both in transferring to and from Vonage) you should call them directly at 866-362-2567.
I tried the whole Vonage revolution, and it kicked my arse. Inbound sound quality was great, outgoing sound quality was atrocious. Vonage blamed my ISP, and my ISP blamed Vonage. Neither side was interested in working out the issue. To cancel the account, I had to call their phone number, where I waited in the queue for 43 minutes before talking to someone. Then, they charged me $39.99 to cancel the service that never worked correctly. Buyer beware...
I've been using Vonage for the past 8-9 months now with no show-stopper problems. I went to them because I was moving my business from California to Arizona and wanted to maintain the same numbers I'd been using for the past ten plus years. Customer service was very helpful during the initial setup. Transfer of both my voice line and fax line number from Verizon went without a hitch. I haven't noticed any issues with latency or poor sound quality. My cellphone has far crappier performance and cellphone companies screw you eight ways to Sunday.
Now from a application software-developer/user standpoint, their interface leaves a few things to be desired and really these are easy things to implement.
1) When you're in the voicemail web-page (aside from it being dog slow), they need to add a button to download all messages or all new messages at once.
2) Be able to see the caller ID floating text in the voicemail page just like you can in the Dashboard page. Duh.
3) When they send you an e-mail telling you that you have a new voicemail, they include the phone number but not the caller ID text. Duh.
4) In the above e-mail, the phone number should be formatted so that you could easily do a Google search on it or better yet add a hyperlink to do this automagically.
5) There's a bug somewhere that leaves the "You have voicemail" light on your phone blinking even after you've listened to the message. You have to delete all the messages before the light will go out.
All of these things should be fairly easy to implement/fix. Why they're not doing that (I've sent this list to them twice) is beyond me. Other than that, things work well. I use their hardware as a router with an Airport Extreme on it. I also forward fax calles to the free eFax service.
I just have it forward my voicemail to GMail. No slow download problems there. I used to also have it simultaneously ring my cellphone and send a copy of the voicemail notification as a text message.
My *BIG* problem with Vonage is that after looking at their absolutely dismal financials, I'm left wondering, IPO or not, whether they're going to be around much longer.
"When he finally got through, a representative said he wouldn't cancel the service until Mr. Orszag gave Vonage a chance to repair the problems. Mr. Orszag says he had to "forcefully" insist before he managed to cancel."
That right there burns me up. Here Vonage is trying to play the "we the people" game by setting aside shares for the public and trying to be the customers best friend. They try to represent themselves as the David to the telco's Goliath. That they are on the same level as the everday customer. (Think Dan Akroyd's character from Tommy Boy.)
However, that is just a carefully crafted corporate image, created by a bunch of suits in a high rise office building. Which works great for getting people on board. But then those exact same suits have to tackle the issue of defections. Instead of holding true to their "everyman" roots, they contradict themselves by sticking it to the little man. "Why, we can't let them leave so easily. We have to make it complicated to leave. In fact, when they try to cancel, we should instead offer them more services. Every cancellation order automatically gets a free upgrade on the service."
It is the same old corporate B.S. that has been going on since the dawn of modern business. It just exposes Vonage for what it really is. Just another "fat cat" corporation.
There are a lot of complaints about Vonage in the comments right now, and I am sure that most complainers are being serious and truthful in their own experience with Vonage, but...
/that/ easy.
What about the hordes of people with o real problems? I've had Vonage for a while now, I know several others who've had it for differing lengths of time. Each of those experiences has been overwhelmingly positive.
1) The service is cheaper.
2) The service "just works" in my experience and the experience of everyone I personally know. Plug it in and if you have a broadband connection, you get a dial tone. No complicated set up[1].
3) The voice quality is good enough. Is it as good as Verizon's dedicated POTS line? Nope. Is it good enough for talking? Yes, and more. For less than half the price, I get about 90% of the service quality. That is a good deal by most estimations.
4) As a company, I've had no troubles with Vonage at all. Not one.
Now, this is not to refute the complaints posted here so much as to counterbalance them. Too often, we only comment when we have a complaint. The complaints you read are probably legit, but so is my good experience. Your experience will vary, but for the chance to cut your phone bill in half, it behooves you to try it out.
I'd venture to guess that the bulk of their customers are pleased with the service, so roll the dice. your chances are good that you'll be in the majority, but yes it is possible that you aren't and you have some of the problems listed here.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
[1] Set up is easy as pie if you have a hub and just want to plug one phone into it. If, however, you want to "take over" your home phone wiring so you can plug a phone into any jack in the house and get a dial tone, there is more work. I did it in about half an hour, but it's more than just "plug into router and plug into phone". It was easy, but not
-Tom
Of course you can fax with VoIP -- it's called T.38. It works very well because it's engineered well.
T.38 is an example of the Grown Up approach to telephony. Vonage is not the Grown Up approach.
But anytime voice works with vonage, you just got lucky. They're depending on *luck* to be sure you get low-enough, consistent-enough latency to handle the telephone call. Many new VoIP service providers are trying the luck route, instead of engineering a network with something like Diffserv.
Of course, if the "Net Neutrality" folks get their way, it'll be illegal to use Diffserv to deliver prioritized service necessary to do VoIP. So it'll be back to BellSouth/AT&T/Verizon/Ameritech/etc TDM-based service for all of us!
I was initially attracted by the low cost international calls, but unlimited long distance is pretty good. All of their features have worked fine for us (over cable -- we briefly tried it over DSL and it was terrible, with really wierd lag in the audio) and even large file downloads don't seem to be a problem.
That said, Vonage looks to me like a financial train wreck. The fact that they're making it hard for customers to leave seems to be indicative of a company that has lost sight of its true goals. (You mess around with customer retention AFTER you get the core stuff right -- you don't tie customers into a broken product. The "one mad customer tells ten people" problem is surely magnified by such shenanigans.)
After reading their IPO prospectus, I wouldn't touch Vonage with a proverbial 10' pole. I will, however, continue to use them for my home phone for a while since other investors seem to be happy to subsidize my phone service.
Ultimately, Vonage is doomed. They don't own the "last mile" or any other key infrastructure so basically once their business model becomes profitable they will be annihilated by low cost competition that isn't servicing $???B in debt (they're already a few hundred million in the hole).
I use Sun Rocket - $199 a year + 3 free months = $13.26 a month including all taxes and fees. The calls sound great after I setup QoS on my Linksys router. And Sun Rocket gives you an extra free phone number, most charge $5 for this service. Also no contracts, no signup fees, no charges for the equipment.... I don't know why anyone chooses Vonage... I've had one small outage of 30 minutes or so. Other than that the only problems I have is when my internet connection gets flakey.
I've had vonage service for about a year now, and I have few complaints.
I've had trouble phoning some 1800#'s in Canada (tax information lines)
getting ahold of customer service was for a period of time seemingly impossible.
(Not that it's much better with the alternative provider Telus, I would be on the phone for a minimum of about an hour to an hour and a half)
Vonage doesn't like you accessing the router... I say too bad, I own it, go suck rocks.
On the bright side, I saved a little over 250$ in that year, which more than makes up for any hassle.
The disconnection fee is stated in the signup agreement, dont sign things that you won't like later. The disconnection fee has already paid for itself with my year of service.
I initially signed up with a non-local number, and had my number as soon as I had my router delivered, which took 2 1/2 days from the eastern states somewhere (Im in western canada)
I recently changed to a local number as vonage bought up some, and I also had no trouble, and didn't have to wait.
I love the features with vonage, they kick a typical phone service into the ground. The regular POTS provider (Telus) charges 6$ for voicemail, 5$ for call waiting X$ for any other service...
While you can buy bundles with Telus, it brings the price up from a minimum of 40$/mth to 60-70$/mth. (or roughly 3 times what I pay)
In short, Vonage is sweet, and all the people out there talking trash are just helping prolong age old monopolies. Support VOIP providers, it doesn't matter which one. The fact that vonage is having an IPO is encouraging. We should all support moves in that direction. Furthermore, look at the revenues for vonage over the last three years. Sure they are still outspending their income, but their revenues are exploding.
I think there is definitely some room for short term volatile gains with Vonage, and the potential for long term growth after the initial hiccups is also impressive.
Does nobody read the TOS when they sign up for service? I am with another VoIP provider, and I see this common theme in VoIP TOS disclaimers: Upon the disconnection of your Service, we may, in our sole and absolute discretion, release to your new service provider the telephone number that you ported (transferred or moved over) to us from your previous service provider and used in connection with your Service if: * such new service provider is able to accept such number; * your account has been properly disconnected; * your account is completely current, including payment for all charges and applicable disconnection fees; and * you request the transfer upon disconnecting your account. My take on that is not to give a VoIP provider my number. They are reserving the right to keep your number. Vonage's failure to release the customer's phone number was one of the primary complaints in the WSJ article -- he should've read the TOS before porting the number in to try the service out!
What average consumer is EVER going to go through all that crap just to get decent call service. I have Vonage and my girlfriend complains sometimes but I'm saving almost $40 a month so I'll listen to some griping every now and then. I admit, I do need to check the setup...I'm sure it could be better. Right now my Vonage supplied Linksys box sits behind my WRT54g. Maybe if I assign the vonage box a static IP and put it in the WRT's DMZ, that may help. Not sure...still need to do more research. I sure as hell am not going to go the extent you have though, as impressive as it is.
I implemented Vonage a few months ago on my home phone. Now, granted since my wife and I both got cell phones we rarely use the home phone except as a voicemail box... but my wife still likes having a "land line". So be it, I don't use it much.
Now, when I implemented I had a 600/128 ADSL connection from Speakeasy. Worked OK at first, but I was hit quickly by the fact that I host my own email and web server... so that every time I received an email or someone hit my website I was suddenly struck with breaking up of the connection. This happened quite a lot as my web site is actually hit frequently. The whole setup was behind a rather aged but effective D-Link DWL-6xx router. I started to research and realized that QOS was probably what I needed.
Went by Best Buy after a little research and made a point of buying a Linksys WRT54GS... one that I could put Linux on. As a test, I hooked it up when I got home, configured it all similar to the D-Link. Better, but still not 100%. At the same time I also upgraded my DSL connection to 1.5/512 (cheaper... go figure), but I still had dropping problems. I put DD-WRT on the router and after a little playing I set up my BitTorrent (for Linux ISO's, silly!), FTP and other serious download protocols as a "Bulk" rate, set Vonage ports as "Premium" and generally did some load balancing (SMTP became bulk as well now I think about it) to set up what I thought was important. Plus I reduced my total speed on the QoS to 90% of my advertised connection speed. Voila, problem fixed.
Now, a couple of months later I'm VERY happy with Vonage. My call quality is as good or better than my land-line phone... I have a Belfast phone number as well as my US phone number so my mum and brothers (and anyone else from my family) can call me at local rate to a local number... my connection barely suffers and everything works great. Well, the only problem I have now is that my cordless phone interferes with my wireless internet connection when I'm using my laptop... I'm working on that.
So is this a total success? Not really. I'm not an average consumer. I'm Cisco, Microsoft, Novell and Redhat certified, I work with technology for a living and have servers and stuff at home. The average consumer running the same DSL connection and router as I had originally would have given up in disgust... me I took it as a challenge to get things working normally.
Nowadays, I can have a download running (BitTorrent), pick up the phone and still be surfing the web... and despite the obvious drop of BT traffic, I barely notice that the line's being used. Would the average consumer have the time or energy to do any of this? No, of course not. Vonage is a nice idea, but the implementation needs some work. If your VoIP connection (not just Vonage) isn't managed at the router or in front of the router then you'll never get what you want from it. At least at the router level, traffic can be controlled. If you're behind the router then you're relying on another piece of equipment to manage traffic properly for your VoIP connection... not something that's going to really work well.
I think once we have routers that prioritize VoIP by default (many of them do these days) then the problems will be lessened... but a lot of whether you can use Vonage or any other VoIP service depends a lot on the quality of your Internet connection and infrastructure you've implemented to support it. I wouldn't recommend it to the non-technical.
As a front line employee at a Cable ISP I can say that I have lost count how many Vonage customers have been told that thier poor quality and dropped calls are the fault of the ISP. We started handing out our in house VOIP services for testing and a very large portion of them have switched to our voip services as a result. THANKS FOR OVER SUBSCRIBING VONAGE!
We use to use vonage on a daily basis, we had to stop
this last week because the connection "drops" (where
you have 20s of silence in the middle of a call) got
so bad (once per minute) that it was hard to have a conversation. We are now using skype, and although
the sound quality isn't quite as good, we no longer
have huge lag-spike/drops.
This might not be Vonage's fault, we are using Verizon
and they seem to have been building-in lag spikes to
discourage movie downloaders, etc.
I use Vonage (3yrs) and Sunrocket (6mos). I finally ported my POTS number over to SR end of last year and canceled my POTS line. Quality with SR was spotty, but has been steadily improving. Quality with Vonage has not been an issue. I do not miss my POTS line at all.
:-)
The catch is that I'm in FIOS-land, so having 2Mbps upload certainly helps (not to mention 15Mbps down
(I have both because I use Vonage for my business 800 number, which SR does not offer. SR offers better pricing for my residential # usage, however at a slightly reduced, yet improving, quality level.)
I do plan on buying into the IPO. I think. Maybe.
I was going to sign up with Vonage when you could get $50 back in cash after all the rebates were filled out. However, before I went to sign up, I wanted to know if E911 had been implemented for my telephone exchange yet.
Pretty simple question, right? You would think that Vonage would have an interface on their website where you put in a phone number, and they tell you if E911 works yet.
Nope. Nothing.
I called their customer service line twice. The first time I was cut off when the first rep tried to transfer me, the second time, I gave up after it took me 10 minutes to describe what it was I was looking for, and then I was put on hold for 20 more minutes while she looked for the answer. I hung up when I got tired of waiting. In any case, if they couldn't answer that simple question in a reasonable amount of time, my confidence that E911 would actually work was not high.
Each time required 45 minutes on hold to reach somebody.
If their customer service couldn't handle all the new subscribers, they should have paused the ad campaign, period. There is no excuse, when you are running huge ads, for not having the staff to back it up.
SirWired
I'm not surprised to hear this. I had the same problem with Vonage and I'm glad its being made public. I had a bad router and could not get them to replace it for 2 months after calling several times and being hung up by their foreign customer service folks several times. Decided to switch over to another company (unnamed to be neutral) and had to wait 2 months to get the number ported over to the new VOIP service. Of course, they snatched another $80 from me during that time (thats the goal right? tear your shirt off you). I will never go back to a company that will screw me over and over without any hesitation. I hope their IPO tanks once true word of their operation gets around. If you're a consumer, don't let corporations treat you this way. Make sure the market place is always filled with choices so we can easily keep our options open. And file complaints when necessary. Its easy now-a-days with most federal agencies online.
Pretty weird comments here about how "bad" Vonage's service is.
I've used Vonage in my house for a year. In my house, I have a 17 year-old, 14 year-old, and a wife with all her family overseas (in Vietnam). Needless to say, we have heavy phone usage. So heavy that it only took a year for most of the numbers to be rubbed off the buttons of the phone, and the earpiece is similarly rubbed down (cordless phone).
I use Comcast cable Internet in California with 6 mbit down, 768 kbit up connection. Half of that year I had 2mbit down and 256k up on my Internet connection, but upgraded this year. I'm a computer/I.T. geek, and use the Internet connection *heavily*. I run a web/backup/mail server for 4 domains in my house office over this connection. Both teenagers use the Internet heavily as well (music, movies, etc.), although not quite as much as me.
All this stuff has worked flawlessly over the last year except for two incidents when Comcast had big latency problems, which caused voice delays with our phone. That was a little bit painful, but not a big deal for any of us since the problems were resolved in a day each time by Comcast.
My point? A person who has real broadband plugs in the Vonage box, and generally has good, idiot-proof, plug-and-play performance. There are idiots who are going to try to use Vonage over crap DSL connections, and of course it'll be Vonage's fault because they don't know how crappy their connections really are. I've never met any non-techie who had DSL that actually verified what they were being told their connections speeds are -- techies like me do, and I get what I pay for.
The truth is there's no way to know how many of these complaints are due to ISP problems or just plain underhanded ISP practices. SBC and MSN DSL both lie to their users about the real bandwidth they are getting -- they oversell their bandwidth to get more customers, lower prices, etc. Maybe you could say they were isolated incidents, but I've talked to literally dozens of people I work with who are surprised to discover how they're not getting what they're paying for.
Anyway, I think the point is that if broadband companies won't be honest with their customers about their real available bandwidth, the government needs to step in to deal with it.
Companies like Vonage are going to continue to get black eyes if they have to depend on their customers buying their products/services based on specs that are out-and-out lies.
My mom just left Vonage and she had the same complaints everyone is having. They finally released the number after her arguing the point - and not with any delay, pretty much. She did have to hand them her heart on a platter though. ;-)
;-). It seems as though, while the VoIP service providers are scrambling to do what's best for their customers (other than Vonage, of course), and find a solution that may not leave a customer without phone service if the ISP's service gets lost for a while, ATT.COM or whatever their name is now comes in with a closely-competitive product that allows the customers to have regular phone service, DSL, wireless, and I believe even TV service (in some markets) all for a low price. I will probably switch my cable to DSL because the price is less than half! We shall see what the competition holds, it may get ugly... ;-)
Also - I'm about to rid my life of Vonage too - and possibly go back to POTS with ATT.COM/SBC.COM or whatever they are calling themselves these days