Any Vonage users?

[klw]

We are getting a little tired of the phone company where we live and cell service does not exist. Has anyone used Vonage as their primary home phone? If so what is/ was your experience like?

[medford]

Can I jump in w/ a similar question. Anyone use Magik Jack? I know one person that has it and they say its sometimes spotty, they occasionally miss calls. If it was up to me, I'd dump the home phone completly, but my wife is convinced she'll get brain cancer using a cell phone for extended use, and wants a standard home line to call from.

[RBA]

A few years ago, I started out with Vonage, moved to Packet8, moved to Voicestream, moved to net2phone, and for the last 1 1/2 years been on Ooma. Most of my moves were for trying to reduce cost. My monthly phone bill is now $0 a month, I spent $129 on the equipment for Ooma initially.

Vonage was good and I would rate it very good quality. On par with Ooma. Vonage service fees are not that bad. But like I said, I like $0 a month for Ooma compared to $24.95 for Vonage. I think Ooma is charging newer customers for some enhanced services, but I am grandfathered into my cost.

[JaxRed]

I"m on Ooma last few months. I get charged for 911 fees, etc. $3.47 a month. I recommend it.

I use it in conjunction with Google Voice which is now my main number. And I can forward calls at will. I no longer worry about some VOIP company going out of business and having to change my number (again).

[remdog]

I've been using magic jack for a couple of years now. It's not perfect in the sense that it breaks up from time to time. However, I like that I could customize the phone number I wanted (one time fee), I own the number and it's transportable and, when I come home, if the computer is on, any new calls are showing on the screen.

For $20.00 a year, I'm happy with it plus I use my cell phone when I'm on the road so I don't make a lot of calls from home so it's really cost effective.

Just as a clarification, I think it cost me about $50.00 for the first year with set up fees, paying for a personalized number, etc. Still, really cheap.

Rem

[Unassisted]

Another Ooma user here. I used to work for a different VoIP company, so I could explain in excruciating detail why Ooma's combination of hardware, software and protocols and codecs is best, but I'll resist the temptation. The fact that it's cheap is icing on the cake.

One major caveat, though. Any VoIP provider will pale in comparison to analog phone service if it's connected to an Internet connection that is lacking in some ways that don't necessarily show up in other uses of the same connection. (Latency and jitter, for the technically savvy among us.) I pay Time Warner an extra $10 month for their higher bandwidth Internet option because it makes my Ooma service work better. If you cheap out on your Internet service, you'll make ANY Internet phone service sound awful.

[westofyou]

I had it for work a few years ago, it sucked. Depends on a constant stream of data to be successful, however my cable sent my data in packages, so there was a constant break in the voice stream, just brutal. I finally dumped it and then they hounded me for 2 years to reupp

[JaxRed]

Ooma down nationwide right now. Happened in 09 also. Hopefully it's not lasting very long.


It's back up!!

[RBA]

Doesn't look good. Did they close up shop? No communication from them and their website is down too.

[RBA]

Looks like some people are reporting their service is coming back. So, probably just an outage.

[JaxRed]

Nope.... people are talking to support and it's technical issue. Mine has dial tone now but call not going through yet

Was just able to place call. Took a while to go thru. Everyone probably hammering system at once to test.

[RBA]

I am back up. A couple hour outage every two years? I am fine with that.