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Review: Vonage VoIP Service
By Dirk J. Hedlund
Originally Posted June 23, 2005
It's been well over a month since
the day I brought home the Vonage VoIP subscription kit, and let me
tell you, it has permanently changed the way I look at my telephone
service. In fact, my wife and I like it so much that we have
decided to take drastic measures against our old telephone service.
We're pulling the plug on our local phone company.
Let me backup and explain what I'm
talking about, for those that don't know what VoIP is. VoIP is
short for Voice Over IP, which in simple terms means to use the
Internet to place telephone calls. Vonage is one of several
companies offering such a service at the moment, but from my research
seems to be the fastest growing.
Why would anyone want to do this?
Easy, to save money. My local phone company charges me about $60
per month just to get basic services such as dial tone and limited
long distance calling. Features such as caller ID, call waiting,
and 3-way calling, not to mention long distance calls, all cost extra.
With Vonage, I get it all, plus unlimited long distance anywhere in
the United States (plus Canada and Puerto Rico) for just $25 per
month. That's saving me at least $35 month, not including
whatever long distance calls I make. (Did I mention my wife's
family all live out of state?) Of course, you have to have a
broadband Internet connection, but I get that from my cable company.
If I had DSL, I'd probably have to keep at least basic service from
the phone company to keep the DSL. Luckily, that doesn't apply
to me.
I purchased a startup kit with
Linksys (Cisco) PAP2 phone adapter at Staples for about $59.
That's before a $50 mail-in rebate that I picked up in the store,
which puts the cost down to just $9. Why did I buy the PAP2 when
other models are also available? My home office is already
equipped with the features available in the other adapters, namely
router, firewall, and wireless adapters. Since I didn't need
those extras, I didn't have to pay for them.
Out of the box, I was a little
surprised at the size of the PAP2. It was a lot smaller than
expected. I don't know why I thought it would be bigger, it only
needs room for a power cord, a network connection, and two phone jacks
(more on that later). As this was a new type of equipment for
me, I broke out the documentation that came with it and gave it a
quick review. Boy am I glad I did, as I soon found a potential
pitfall. People, follow the directions when setting this
thing up! Apparently, if you remove power before the setup
is 100% completed, you might end up with an unusable box. Yikes!
Setup was pretty basic.
Before plugging anything in, I logged onto the Vonage signup web page
and entered the appropriate information. Part of this step
requires reading a number, called a MAC address, off the PAP2.
It's basically just a serial number, which lets Vonage know which PAP2
is yours. You see, since we're using a broadband Internet
connection instead of the telephone wires to your house, you could
take your PAP2 anywhere there is broadband, and your calls will still
be routed to you. So we can take our phone with us on vacation,
or a student could take it with them to college, and STILL not miss a
call.
Next, I chose the area code and
local area that I wanted my phone number to be found in. That's
right, you get to choose. I could have chosen any area, but I
picked one that was local to where I live. For an extra $5 per
month you can add additional numbers from anywhere you want. We
could, for example, add a local number for my in-laws so they could
avoid paying for long distance when they call us. (But why would
I do that?) ;-)
Soon after that, the instructions
had me plug in all the cables to the PAP2, which took all of about 30
seconds. I read through a bit more of the documentation while
the lights on the PAP2 blinked happily. A few minutes later, I
was done reading everything I wanted to read, and decided to test the
system. I picked up the phone I'd connected to the system and
was greeted by a familiar dial tone. I tested it by dialing my
regular "local phone company" number. My old phone rang, and I
had a brief, if somewhat bizarre, conversation with my wife, who was
sitting in the next room.
What happens if the Internet
connection goes
down? The Vonage service allows me to setup the service to
automatically forward calls to another number, if we lose our Internet
connection, for example during a power outage. I just set it so
it forwards to my cell phone. The service also includes
voicemail, which, my wife was happy to hear, can be disabled if you
want to use your own answering machine. If you use the voicemail
service, you know you have a message waiting by a distinct-sounding,
broken dial tone when you lift the headset.
How is the sound quality?
Surprisingly, it's at least as good as our old phone, and our
old phone service included fiber optics to the home. It's so
good, in fact, that I unintentionally fooled my wife. Her sister
left a voicemail message on the new phone. I was listening to
messages, heard the message from her sister, and took the phone to my
wife. I simply handed her the phone, and told her to push 1.
She did, and when the message started playing, she thought I had done
something weird to connect her to her sister. It took a few
seconds for her to realize she was listening to a recording.
Other people that I've talked to on the new phone system have been
unable to tell anything was different, or some have said they thought
the new system sounded better.
There is a second phone jack on the
PAP2 that I am currently not using. According to what I've read,
the second jack is for a dedicated fax line. Vonage offers a
business services, which includes the voice and fax lines, for about
$50 per month. I suppose you could use both lines for voice, but
I'm not 100% certain of that. If you're looking to save even
more money, and you don't need unlimited long distance, you can get
their "Small Business Basic" plan for about $40, which includes 1500
minutes of long distance per month. Similarly, there is a
cheaper home plan that costs about $15 per month, for 500 minutes of
long distance per month on a single line.
What's it really cost?
Unlike my old phone system, there aren't a lot of hidden costs.
On my last bill, there is a $1.50 "Regulatory Recovery Fee" and a $.75
FET Tax, but that's it. We just pay the flat rate, and there
isn't any surprises. Even
international rates are unbelievably low. Would you believe
$.03 per minute to the UK, Paris, or Hong Kong? Since I know I
never make international calls, I logged into my account on their
website and put a block on them. Now I don't have to worry about
my 2-year old daughter calling the Philippines if she gets a hold of
the phone.
What about 911 calls? This
question actually made me a little nervous. You have to activate
the 911 service, it isn't turned on by default. If you travel
and take your system with you, you will need to update your location
information with Vonage. (This can take several days, so you
should do it ahead of time if you can.) This ensures that
calling 911 connects you to your local emergency services. I
don't plan on traveling with my system, so it wasn't too much of a
concern for me. Recent legislation is trying to make sure e911
services will work on VoIP systems no matter what. We'll find
out later how well that works out.
In summary, we are very happy with
our Vonage VoIP system. I'm am excitedly looking forward to
"firing" my old local phone company for over-charging me and
under-delivering on service.
Note: Vonage is offering (for a limited time) a
Refer-A-Friend Program. Basically if I refer you as a
"friend or family member" and you end up subscribing to their service,
we can each get a nice credit on our bill. If you're interested,
please let me know and I'll send you a referral.
Links:
Vonage
Features
International Calling Rates
Refer-A-Friend Program
Dirk Hedlund is a computer consultant with Klatt
& Associates, CPA, PC. He can be reached at
dirk.hedlund@klatt-assoc.com
, or by calling (515) 232-5642. |
