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Review by Phatty 
UPDATED: 155 days ago
member for 8.5 years, 4092 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
 Valley Park,Saint Louis,MO
 $18 per month
 about 5 days
 "Cheap, Great Call Quality, Reliable as long as your ISP is"
 "Only as good as your ISP"
 "I will never own a POTS line from my phone company again"
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
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(ratings match consensus)
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Well when I moved to a new place I contemplated what I should do as far as having a home phone line. I seriously considered just using my cell phone, but then I figured I really didn't need all the utility companies, or credit companies or whoever else needs something from me bugging me on my cell phone. That is why I decided to try out VOIP service with Vonage. I went with the cheapest plan they offered since I really do not talk much, and just wanted a number to give out when needed to non-personal contacts. The setup was a breeze and all I did was plug it into my network and it was up and working without doing a thing 5 or so minutes later. I love all the features that are included with the service, especially being able to send it to another number but then sending it to voicemail if nobody answers at the other specified number.
The only complaint I have is not even Vonage's fault and that is the service is only as reliable as your internet connection. I do not think I know of anyone who has an ISP that provides perfect rock solid performance like a regular POTS phone line would. So your VOIP reliability and performance will depend on how good of an ISP you have. I figured that my ISP is reliable enough, and if something is wrong that is where my cell phone comes into play as a back up.
The few times I have emailed support with Misc. questions and such the turnaround time was within a day or so. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a budget phone line, or if you use a lot of long distance VOIP service can't be beat. If you are thinking of giving vonage a try send me a message and I can send out a referral so that we each would get 1 month free when you sign up.
Update: 7/21/04
Well I think I have had one outage that was Vonage's fault now. Nothing to big of a deal for me. I also tend to forward my vonage number to my cell phone, and it seems like my forwarded calls are often garbled up and sound like a bad digital cell phone breaking out or something. This happens maybe 20-30% of the time on forwarded calls only. I have only noticed this once or twice when using my home phone connected to the Vonage ATA. And both those times were during heavy internet downloads. Other than that one outage, and my complaint on some problems with forwarded calls all else seems well and I would still recommend the service for others to use.
Update: 9/9/04
No additional service problems to report. I would say I am liking this service more and more now. They also added the feature of 7 digit dialing. This is nice, although my area has multiple area codes so only comes in handy on about half my calls. I haven't had any recent outages, and call quality has been great.
Update:4/29/05
Had a couple vonage related outages since my last review update.But I do not talk enough on the phone that I never even noticed that I was having a problem. I love having my voice mail messages emailed to my phone so I know when to call in and check them. I have had some phone quality issues that were not directly related to my current downloads, or my specific ISP. But it still could have easily been related to some routing somewhere along the line when going over the internet. Overall I still would recommend this to anyone who wants to save some money, but can put up with a few bugs that for the most part are not directly Vonage's fault. For the money I save the service is just outstanding. But nothing will compare the reliability of a POTS lines. My main complaint is how about some new features Vonage!!! E911 would be top of my list, along with maybe anonymous call rejection or something like that.
Update: 7/2/08
Still going strong with Vonage with nothing bad to say. I will admit I am not a heavy phone user but none the less I can't recall the last time my Vonage line gave me any problems that were not the fault of my ISP.
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