Vonage...the good , bad and ugly..Let me hear it all!G

[WebmasterAlex]

We used Vonage many years ago. It worked flawlessly for voice conversations. It was practically useless when devices (like our old satellite receiver) needed to make a call. I assume that it would also not work for a fax machine.

Our alarm system is wireless, so it isn't an issue. Our current satellite receivers connect over the internet, so they don't need to make phone calls. So there is no reason why we can't use Vonage.

We dropped it because we didn't need it. Our Vonage box was fried by a lightning strike, so we quit using it for a week. We had the phone number forwarded to my wife's cell phone. After that week, we realized that just having cell phones was fine. We didn't really need a house phone.

That's pretty much the future, according to the FCC land line phones are down from 192 million in 2000 to 163 million in 2007 the last year they released numbers for.. I bet it's way lower now
ATT has already started asking the FCC for permission to start shutting down their copper phone service and completely transition to VOIP

 

[MarkBarbieri]

That's pretty much the future, according to the FCC land line phones are down from 192 million in 2000 to 163 million in 2007 the last year they released numbers for.. I bet it's way lower now
ATT has already started asking the FCC for permission to start shutting down their copper phone service and completely transition to VOIP

It works for me. Our home doesn't talk, so it doesn't need a phone. It makes more sense to me for the people in the house to have phones.

We did have a portable phone where the base station synced with the cell phones by blue tooth and let you make or receive calls on the base station or any portable phone around the house over the cell lines. For people with big houses that don't want to carry their cell phones around the house, it would be a good solution.

 

[jme829]

Wow thanks for all the replies .

Golfgal...we have Verizon for our cell phones. Maybe I'll run over there and see if we can add a new phone with a Wisconsin number...that may be a better option yet! I wonder if we can use our current home number so I don't have to go through and give a new number out to people....that's one draw to Vonage, we can keep our # (I checked).

We do have ATT for our internet and phone service. It does not go out during storms. Vonage does say on their web though, that you can set up an alternate # (such as your cell) that they will route calls to in case of power/internet outage so thats not a concern. We don't use our home phone much, just for local people (mostly the kids friends) to call us so they don't have to call long distance.

I'm not much concerned either about it being affected by downloads or satellite service. While our DTV is hooked up to our internet (somehow....to download movies, which we never do..we use netflix for that) and we don't download a whole lot on a regular basis anyways..usually just a document here and there for the kids school/sports.

I'm not an IT person, but I'm not afraid to mess around with things to make them work.

We don't have an alarm system so again, not an issue.

WMAlex..I did do the test on the Vonage site and got a superb rating, so my connection should be OK. We have ATT (I assume DSL) with a 2Wire modem (wireless) it sounds like all we need to do is hook the vonage box to that and then the phone line and we'll be good to go.

Vonage is also offering an instant rebate for the router so we won't have any out of pocket equipment fees, which is also a plus.


Thanks again for all the info...we have some thinking to do now!

 

[golfgal]

Wow thanks for all the replies .

Golfgal...we have Verizon for our cell phones. Maybe I'll run over there and see if we can add a new phone with a Wisconsin number...that may be a better option yet! I wonder if we can use our current home number so I don't have to go through and give a new number out to people....that's one draw to Vonage, we can keep our # (I checked).

We do have ATT for our internet and phone service. It does not go out during storms. Vonage does say on their web though, that you can set up an alternate # (such as your cell) that they will route calls to in case of power/internet outage so thats not a concern. We don't use our home phone much, just for local people (mostly the kids friends) to call us so they don't have to call long distance.

I'm not much concerned either about it being affected by downloads or satellite service. While our DTV is hooked up to our internet (somehow....to download movies, which we never do..we use netflix for that) and we don't download a whole lot on a regular basis anyways..usually just a document here and there for the kids school/sports.

I'm not an IT person, but I'm not afraid to mess around with things to make them work.

We don't have an alarm system so again, not an issue.

WMAlex..I did do the test on the Vonage site and got a superb rating, so my connection should be OK. We have ATT (I assume DSL) with a 2Wire modem (wireless) it sounds like all we need to do is hook the vonage box to that and then the phone line and we'll be good to go.

Vonage is also offering an instant rebate for the router so we won't have any out of pocket equipment fees, which is also a plus.


Thanks again for all the info...we have some thinking to do now!

Yes you can-at least you can around here.

 

[jme829]

Yes you can-at least you can around here.

Cool....we have a Verizon here in Hudson...I think I'll run over tomorrow and see what I can do. That may be the best option yet..Thanks!

 

[creativeamanda]

There's a reason for the divergence of opinion on this. Any VOIP service, such as Vonage is 100% dependent on your internet connection. If you have a good one it can work very well. If there's a very long lag (such as the poster with satellite would have) it just won't work.
First stop is to test your line, which you can do for free here:
http://myspeed.visualware.com/indexvoip.php
If you can't get a decent score, don't waste your time.

And all of this is the basis for my frustration.

In the neighboring town, basic phone service is $20 (3 miles away). In my location, basic phone service is $130. The landline goes down at least twice a month. If it rains, we didn't have service.

Satellite internet is our only choice--DSL is estimated to come in 2015. We just had county water piped in to the area this summer.

My point is, why do people who live in rural areas have to pay more for poorer service?

Don't even get me started on AT&T. They continue to have a monopoly on rural areas and therefore jack up the prices. Verizon has been a godsend to us--our "home" phone now costs $9.99 per month, as opposed to $130. Sure, there is a situation with 911 (pulling the address from the nearest tower--2 miles away), but since our neighbor is a policeman, he gets all the emrgency calls for this area anyhow and knows where to go. VOnage's customer service was the major problem with the company. I was told I would be fine with satellite internet using the system, even though they knew I wouldn't be. The company uses a lot of false advertising and even if I were able to use it after that, I would not, because I simply don't trust them.

 

[WebmasterAlex]

I totally understand your frustration, it's a very well known issue in the IT world known as the "last mile problem"
The construction costs for the last mile between the endpoints of any high speed system are HUGE compared to cost of the backbone.
If it cost $100,000 dollars to put in lines that will only service 10 houses..well you can see where it's not economical compared to a city where a single line might service 1000 subscribers.
Satellite was one attempt to get around this. You are also seeing WiMax radio based solutions in some areas
There is also a bunch of experimental stuff in the works but that doesn't help you now.
I guess the short answer to your question of " why do people who live in rural areas have to pay more for poorer service?" is because it cost a LOT more, in some cases 100's of times more to provide service to rural areas

And all of this is the basis for my frustration.

In the neighboring town, basic phone service is $20 (3 miles away). In my location, basic phone service is $130. The landline goes down at least twice a month. If it rains, we didn't have service.

Satellite internet is our only choice--DSL is estimated to come in 2015. We just had county water piped in to the area this summer.

My point is, why do people who live in rural areas have to pay more for poorer service?

Don't even get me started on AT&T. They continue to have a monopoly on rural areas and therefore jack up the prices. Verizon has been a godsend to us--our "home" phone now costs $9.99 per month, as opposed to $130. Sure, there is a situation with 911 (pulling the address from the nearest tower--2 miles away), but since our neighbor is a policeman, he gets all the emrgency calls for this area anyhow and knows where to go. VOnage's customer service was the major problem with the company. I was told I would be fine with satellite internet using the system, even though they knew I wouldn't be. The company uses a lot of false advertising and even if I were able to use it after that, I would not, because I simply don't trust them.

 

[creativeamanda]

I totally understand your frustration, it's a very well known issue in the IT world known as the "last mile problem"
The construction costs for the last mile between the endpoints of any high speed system are HUGE compared to cost of the backbone.
If it cost $100,000 dollars to put in lines that will only service 10 houses..well you can see where it's not economical compared to a city where a single line might service 1000 subscribers.
Satellite was one attempt to get around this. You are also seeing WiMax radio based solutions in some areas
There is also a bunch of experimental stuff in the works but that doesn't help you now.
I guess the short answer to your question of " why do people who live in rural areas have to pay more for poorer service?" is because it cost a LOT more, in some cases 100's of times more to provide service to rural areas

I have no problems with paying more for internet. I paid more for internet because it cost a lot less to get the satellite than it did for me to conitnue driving to work to do work.

In most cases it does cost more to provide rural service to areas, but you can't tell me that there was a lot of upkeep in my area. Do you know how they added phone service to me? The guy from the phone company said they should have done a dedicated line (that's what we paid for) from the hub at the end the driveway. That's not what they did. They cut the line for my neighbor (who also lives down our driveway) and spliced in our service. There is a regular phone line (like the kind you plug into your phone, mind you) from his house to mine spliced together. His house is almost a quarter of a mile from my house down this driveway. Every time it rained, too much water would get into that line that they put together with electrical tape.

That works fine with things that are electrical, but the farther you get away and the more times the line is spliced, the poorer the service. That line is spliced (we counted it when they put in the water line because the county water had to dig up the phone line) 8 times between the hub and my neighbor's house and at least one more time between out neighbor's house and our house. If I have to pay more, then it should be properly maintained based on what I paid for. When we had landline service, we rarely went a month where I did not have to put in a claim to BellSouth, then AT&T for 24 hours or greater of loss service.

 

[Chuck S]

When we had landline service, we rarely went a month where I did not have to put in a claim to BellSouth, then AT&T for 24 hours or greater of loss service.

I hear you. We are in a subdivision in a rural area, the entire area would lose phone service for days whenever it would rain, and when you called Southwestern Bell to report it, you got...go outside and unplug the phone from the main box, plug in another phone to make sure it isn't your inside wiring...uh, hello, what part of...the entire subdivision is out of phone service did you not understand?

And while our entire subdivision doesn't have cable TV, we are the lucky ones at the very end of the cable...so I have a decent internet connection and switched to Vonage. Even with the occasional problems, it is far superior to SBC/AT&T.

 

[creativeamanda]

I hear you. We are in a subdivision in a rural area, the entire area would lose phone service for days whenever it would rain, and when you called Southwestern Bell to report it, you got...go outside and unplug the phone from the main box, plug in another phone to make sure it isn't your inside wiring...uh, hello, what part of...the entire subdivision is out of phone service did you not understand?

And while our entire subdivision doesn't have cable TV, we are the lucky ones at the very end of the cable...so I have a decent internet connection and switched to Vonage. Even with the occasional problems, it is far superior to SBC/AT&T.

LOL, we got that all the time, too. Our house was a new construction and we had Bellsouth do all of the wiring. The 2nd month we were in the house, the lines went down. It was so funny when I called them and they asked me to plug the phone into the outside BellSouth box. I felt like I was on the Andy Griffith show, climbing up the telephone pole for service. I said to them, "If there's a problem with the inside wiring, I'll have you know your contractors put the wiring in." She was quick to change her tune after that. It's still funny that the first thing they try is something to waive themselves of liability. Then they want you to buy the interior wiring plan. Load of hogwash. I can take care of the inside now that the wiring is in--you take care of the outside.

People in rural communities don't have a snowball's chance in a CAT scan (to use the phrase from the Big Bang Theory).

 

[Chuck S]

I remember dwhen I first started driving my Grandma on vacations from Califirnia to TX to visit her family. There was a rest area in the middle of the desert of CA that had a public phone with a crank, no dial. Crank it and an operator would answer. Calls had to be collect or credit card. That was in 1980.