OK, I finally decided to try Vonage. So far, so good. The quality is great, can’t tell the difference between it and my Verizon land line. This will save me a lot of money in long distance calls! I don’t use my cell phone that much for talking long distance from home because the coverage from AT&T wireless is not very good in my house in Somerville. So now I’m using Vonage. And when I move (late July), I’ll keep this new Vonage phone number and not get a land line at all from Verizon. My cell phone will be my backup if my Internet connection is down.
One thing I really like is that you can set it to send you an email whenever you have voicemail. Then you can go to your Vonage web page and listen to your voicemail online (and save the file if you want). So that’s cool. It also has a lot of extras included with your account, such as 3-way calling, call forwarding, etc.
There is a little box that plugs into your router or cable modem that has a phone jack on it and that allows you to plug any regular phone into it. Or multiple phones, with adapters from radio shack.
The only thing that was a pain is that when you call to sign up, they automatically send you a free router with a Vonage phone port, but I already have a wireless router and you can’t use both their router and your own without a hassle (disabling DHCP on one of them). What you need instead is a little Vonage box that plugs into your router, but they don’t send you those. (called a PAP2 phone adapter) Instead you have to buy one in a store (such as Best Buy, for $60) and deal with their rebate system (which makes it free in the end). So that was a hassle. They weren’t clear about that when I signed up and they won’t even send you the box (do they assume that most customers don’t have routers already? or at least don’t have wireless routers?) They tell you to go to a store and buy one! (crazy marketing schemes) They also won’t send you a wireless router with the Vonage port. Only the wired one.
Other than that, I’m very happy with Vonage so far. I have the $24.99/month plan which includes free long distance to the U.S. and Canada with unlimited minutes. Free voicemail included. Here’s a photo of the adapter. I like the little blue lights shining when it’s dark in the room.
