Internet Telephone service

[ecampbell]

Anyone tried it? Vonage has a 500 minute/month plan for 14.99 that would work for me. If so, how did you hook in all of your phones? Is it reliable?
I'm with Comcast, but their phone service is $40, and my average Verision bill is $32.

Ed

 

[Ben Ruset]

Anyone tried it? Vonage has a 500 minute/month plan for 14.99 that would work for me. If so, how did you hook in all of your phones? Is it reliable?
I'm with Comcast, but their phone service is $40, and my average Verision bill is $32.

Ed

Cell-phone quality, at best. Really it's dependant on how good your internet connection is, the latency of the internet, position of the stars, etc.

 

[davensj]

Anyone tried it? Vonage has a 500 minute/month plan for 14.99 that would work for me. If so, how did you hook in all of your phones? Is it reliable?
I'm with Comcast, but their phone service is $40, and my average Verision bill is $32.

Ed

A friend of mine has it, It`s ok till your cable or elec. goes out. Check it out real good...$14.99 I don`t think includes 911 service.

 

[Boyd]

It`s ok till your cable or elec. goes out.

That's the real issue, isn't it? The old analog phone system was designed to be really reliable with its own power. Of course most people have some kind of cordless phones or digital answering machines now which probably defeat that anyway (I always keep one old cheap analog phone around just in case). And as the phone system itself moves to digital I suppose we'll lose this advantage. I use my cell phone for everything personally. I have an analog line but it's connected to a fax machine with the ringer off. Still there if needed in an emergency however.

Last weekend at the office our internet connection went down. We couldn't reach the IT guys who aren't usually available on the weekend anyway. Our CFO was getting frustrated by this and I pointed out "just think, if we had VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phones then they'd also be down"...