anyone have vonage, or comparable service?

[Straight-Shooter]

I have Vonage and if I'm downloading or online gaming I have no issues but if i'm heavily uploading then the quality of the phone goes bad. It will start to breakup and get static. Fortunately i don't upload so i'm pleased with the service here.

[saltysquid]

I had vonage for quite some time, but my biggest complaint here was that I coudn't get a number that was local to everyone here. Some people could call me locally, but some just accross town had to call long distance. I got tired of waiting for a local number they kept promising.

I had very good quality though. The sound at first would deteriorate when I was downloading, but I got a router with qos and never had any problems after that.

[rockrock004]

Just wanted to say I have comcast for internet and phone. I love the internet speed and the internet phone works good, too. But...... COMAST, YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE IS TERRIBLE. I am a customer service trainer for my work, call me sometime. Hell, I'll hook your Atlanta office up for free. It'd be worth it

[Vtwin]

And a word from your local cable tech....

I install digital phone(VOIP) as well as RoadRunner and cable. I've met plenty of Vontage customers that were happy. BUT a large part has to do with the reliability of your broadband provider. For me, I have to adjust transmitts and recieve levels, check packet loss, and some other things... Another thing is if you want to connect your phones to the whole house or just to one phone. Digital phone signal in a home can be cut short due to the shorting of lines. This could be due to bad phone wire, poor connections, and even crossed lines.

So what's this mean for you... Well, if you decide to go with a cable company, make sure you get the levels they're using and ask lots of questions. If you get a good tech, they'll walk you through it. If you're using vontage, make sure you remove the LEC's (telephone company) feed to the house because this can cause poor recieption etc.

Sorry I could go on more and more... If you have any questions feel free to PM me. Good luck!

[rimfire]

Originally Posted by aching_nutz

Thats the other thing about a setup like that, if you take that modem with you, whever you reconnect, and dial 911, it will show your home address, no matter where you are. Misleading......

Yeah but usually you are in a hotel room or something and just dont want to pay their rates.

911 only works in NA anyhow. I dont think they are required to provide any other emergency number service.

[Majk]

Originally Posted by Vtwin

Digital phone signal in a home can be cut short due to the shorting of lines.This could be due to bad phone wire, poor connections, and even crossed lines.

Well I've never really seen this, I've seen it if the voice port is bad or to much draw on the amp. I've got that in my area. We are at over 80% saturation when it was planned on 25% maximum. I've never seen home wiring short out a fuse. Now I've seen myself blow many a fuse putting a tap in.

Allot of your voip has to do with the quality of your broadband isp to begin with.

[jednp]

one thing that I don't like about phone service coming through the cable company... how many times has your cable gone out in your life? how many times has a direct land line failed you in your life?

I hadn't ever thought of this.. but our cable went down for a few hours.. I wasn't aware of the problem, until I went to make a phonecall and the phones wouldn't work.

with landlines you can't be failed by power outages.. the phones will still work as long as they aren't cordless. This has got me thinking of switching our phone service to a provider that comes through on a normal land line. Had I been aware that the phone would go down when the cable goes down.. I never would have made the switch.

[Majk]

Originally Posted by jednp

one thing that I don't like about phone service coming through the cable company... how many times has your cable gone out in your life? how many times has a direct land line failed you in your life?

I hadn't ever thought of this.. but our cable went down for a few hours.. I wasn't aware of the problem, until I went to make a phonecall and the phones wouldn't work.

with landlines you can't be failed by power outages.. the phones will still work as long as they aren't cordless. This has got me thinking of switching our phone service to a provider that comes through on a normal land line. Had I been aware that the phone would go down when the cable goes down.. I never would have made the switch.

Trust me jednp, qwest has their problems too. Cox has 24 hour service. I can't count how many times I've fixed someone's phones in the middle of the night and they never knew I was even there or that their phones were down. With a digital phone the provider can tell when your voice port isn't communicating with the soc, so we can fix it. Qwest will never know your phone isn't working until you call them and tell them it's not working.

One problem Cox has had which is good if your them but bad if your a customer in that area, is that they never anticipated the amount of saturation they have in certain neighborhoods. My neighborhood is approx. 80% cox phone. The amplifier can't handle that much load when so many are on the phone or when it gets really hot in the summer.

They are trying to get approval from the city to add another power supply and split the node, bt so far it's slow go.

I do know what you mean about it being down. But as someone who has sold quest service and worked for cox, by far cox is the better way to go.

And that's from someone who was fired from cox after turning down a settlement offer after a on the job auto accident that wasn't my fault.

[Vtwin]

Originally Posted by Majk

Well I've never really seen this, I've seen it if the voice port is bad or to much draw on the amp. I've got that in my area. We are at over 80% saturation when it was planned on 25% maximum. I've never seen home wiring short out a fuse. Now I've seen myself blow many a fuse putting a tap in.

Allot of your voip has to do with the quality of your broadband isp to begin with.

When I talk about a short, I meant the shorting of the signal inside the home. Not blowing fuses etc, but the signal being killed.

Originally Posted by jednp

how many times has your cable gone out in your life? how many times has a direct land line failed you in your life?

I hadn't ever thought of this.. but our cable went down for a few hours.. I wasn't aware of the problem, until I went to make a phonecall and the phones wouldn't work.

Do you have a cell phone? While installing Digital Phone, I've met only 3 people out of probably 1000 that didn't have a cell phone... Also keep in mind Digital Phone is a 2ndary phone service.

[Broadside]

We made the switch from Qwest to Comcast this weekend. So far so good. We have 2 cell phones in the house so it made a ton of sense to move to VoIP. We are going to save $60 a month by bundling with Comcast. We already had Cable TV and HSI from Comcast.