 Review by Eat Me 
UPDATED: 281 days ago
member for 7.1 years, 998 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Ozone Park,Queens,NY
 $16 per month
 about 2 days
 "Cheap, nice website, keep your number, move with your number"
 "Phone tech support can be a pain (how ironic), new motorola adapters are junk, DirecTiVo doesn't work, fees, fees, fees"
 "Get vonage if you want to save money"
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(ratings match consensus)
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At my old apartment I had DSL from Verizon and later Earthlink. I got fed up of seeing my monstrous phone bills every month, which came up to almost $100 for DSL and a basic phone line with caller ID. Cable internet soon became available in my neighborhood (RCN), so I decided to get vonage at the same time. I kept the Verizon line for a month just to compare.
I placed my order and the Cisco ATA pretty much arrived the next day via UPS. Vonage is in NJ, and I live in NYC so no surprise there. I made my first test call to my girlfriend (also in NYC) and she couldn't tell the difference between the regular phone and vonage. No echoes, no chopping, no metallic compression sounds. Full duplex crystal clear communication. I later called my dad in Trinidad and Tobago and spoke with him for a bit. I paid only 17 cents/minute and the call cost less than two dollars (10 minutes of talking). He sounded like he was right next door! I was really happy.
However, a month later I was having problems dialing Trinidad. I had to call tech support. I waited FOREVER for a live person to answer the phone and finally gave up. Ironic that a phone company won't answer the phone! I emailed tech support instead and got a quick response. Within a week or so my international dialing was fixed.
I had an unlimited local plan for $24.99, which was fine for me since I didn't do much long distance calling (except to mom in Florida).
I ordered vonage for my girlfriend. They sent her a motorola telephone adapter. She hooked it up and we were talking. I dropped my plan down to 500 anytime because I mainly called her, and vonage to vonage calls are always free. Vonage charged me a fee ($10 I think) to change my plan. Now don't get me wrong, I paid the fee, but I hate when companies nickel and dime their customers. Vonage also has an activation fee and a termination fee. Plan changes incur a fee. So much for your "free" telephone adapter!
Her motorola adapter died a few days ago. I called tech support and they're sending her a new one. I asked them if she could get the cisco box, but they said they can't guarantee it. The motorola boxes are a piece of JUNK. Everyone is complaining about them. They're the only thing that has gotten worse.
Vonage is a pretty good value. I haven't tried the other providers (Packet8, broadvox etc) but I think I'll stick with Vonage. They were one of the pioneers after all.
One drawback that any VoIP provider has is how it interacts with the other telephone users in your house. I'm not talking about your teenagers, I'm talking about the numerous consumer electronic devices that use the phone line. I have two DirecTV with TiVo PVR's. They simply will not work with Vonage. One of them, I was able to hack with a TurboNet card (so it connects directly to ethernet and doesn't have to dial in to TiVo) but the other one is a problem. DirecTV hasn't enabled the USB port on it to plug in an ethernet adapter yet, so my second TiVo (an HDVR2) isn't dialing in at all.
UPDATE 02/10/09:
I've cancelled my vonage service because they jacked up the price for the basic 500. Seems as though they want to sucker people into their "unlimited" plan which is basically overkill for my needs. Switched to callcentric (after not having success with VOIPo) and used BYOD with an ex-Sunrocket AC-211.
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