Does anyone use Vonage VOIP?

[Baconbonce]

Morning all,

Very tempted by the small business unlimited plan which Vonage are currently offering for a new business venture.

Does anyone here use them? Interested in hearing all opinions - good and bad before - deciding to jump onboard and give them a try.

Thanks
Paul

[roadsweeper]

I use them for my home phone and separate fax line over a NTL cable broadband connection. This means I don't have to pay line rental for the presence of a phone line - I don't actually have an active phone line in my house any more.

Initally I found the service only OK - sometimes the phone wouldn't ring and calls would go straight to voicemail. Equally, people had difficulty hearing me when I was downloading, etc.

I solved the above problems by turning down the voice quality so it required less bandwidth when in use. Since then it's been fine and £9.99 for unlimited national and local calls is difficult to beat. I also use the service extensively to call the USA, both landlines and mobiles, and it has been exceptional and very cheap.

Overall, I recommend it, though I would suggest it is less suitable for work if you're having multiple lines. You'll need to make sure you have a fast enough *upload* speed on your braodband connection (mine is 2Mbit/s doown, 200Kbit/s up) to support VoIP in addition to other Internet usage.

[omohat]

My brother uses the Vonage home service in Canada. Its good enough that he isn't bothered with a landline. While cutomer service and other business related issues might be different from country to country, the basic technical service is going to be the same. I have to say that whenever i call him the voice quality is fine (no delay or break up at all and he's only on a 512k broadband service).

[Baconbonce]

Thanks for the quick replies!

I have a 2Mb NTL line also and it would only be for 1 phone line - and would probably add the fax line also - so maybe I would be ok.

Do you know if it works with an existing wireless router in place or would I need to replace the current one with their box?

Cheers
Paul

>> Edited by Baconbonce on Wednesday 26th October 11:14

[Plotloss]

Freetalk, the DSG offering looks pretty good as well.

£80 for a year, unlimited local and national and mobiles at 15p

[roadsweeper]

Baconbonce said:

Do you know if it works with an existing wireless router in place or would I need to replace the current one with their box?

Vonage will provide you with a Linksys RT31P2 VoIP Broadband Router. All you do is plug your wireless router into that (I use a D-Link DI-624). Make sure you put the wireless router *after* the VoIP router though as the VoIP router has QoS (Quality of Service) functionality that will try to ensure VoIP traffic takes priority over downloading, etc.

[Baconbonce]

roadsweeper said:

Vonage will provide you with a Linksys RT31P2 VoIP Broadband Router. All you do is plug your wireless router into that (I use a D-Link DI-624). Make sure you put the wireless router *after* the VoIP router though as the VoIP router has QoS (Quality of Service) functionality that will try to ensure VoIP traffic takes priority over downloading, etc.

Excellent, thanks for the reply - just what I wanted to hear!

Have gone for Vonage - will give them a try and see how it goes. That Freetalk looks good to though.

[roadsweeper]

Baconbonce said:

Excellent, thanks for the reply

No problem. Good luck with it.

[catso]

I have Vonage phone/fax, it was discussed in an earlier thread;

www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=212706&f=95&h=0

[xm5er]

Thought I'd revive this oldie rather than start a new one.

Right, is anyone using Vonage for business use, and by that I mean lots of telephone calls to customers. I intend to ramp up business a lot this year and need a clear time delay free line for natural conversations. I tried skype last year for call to the folks in SA but found it to be fairly poo in this regard, there is no way the standard would be good enough for business (unless I want my clients to think I'm retarded or deaf).

Is Vonage any better? I called their customer service line today and it was quite disjointed which puts me off a bit.

Also another question, the where could I get a usb to ethernet converter from for my USB adsl modem (thats with a small (ie the squarish one) male USB plug on one end and an ethernet socket on the other)?

Alternatively anyone using Primus LCR for their business lines? Any good?

Ta!

[Plotloss]

If you are going to run any sort of VOIP through a DSL router you want one which is QoS aware so voice traffic takes priority over data.

[JonRB]

Plotloss said:

If you are going to run any sort of VOIP through a DSL router you want one which is QoS aware so voice traffic takes priority over data.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is an inexpensive device now available that sits between your ADSL modem and your ADSL router (for those of us who run separates) that bumps up the priority of VoIP and game packets in order to reduce lag. Or somesuch.