Vonage Telephone Service, 25.99 a month instead of $60+, save lots of $$$! Edit: people reporting their experiences

[neils]

Originally posted by: vortix

Originally posted by: orion7144
Nobody has answered the question about mutiple phones in the house. How can you have more than 1 phone throughout the house. Do I need to run more cables?

You can either hook up a line splitter to the Cisco, or possibly hook the Cisco up where your landline phone line comes into your house. Then every phone jack in your house would be hooked up to this. You may need a little experience w/ phone wiring to do this though.

I have a friend who did exactly this - apparently somewhere in the vonage documentation it says that this could cause damage to his phones, so he went out and got one of those surge protectors for phones. According to him he just plugged it in to a regular outlet and all of the other outlets in the house worked.

Also.. even though your phone may not have a dial tone (land line that is) you can still dial 911.... yes even with out a dial tone.

-neil

 

[sk3tch]

We had this at my house, it rarely ever worked and it was so unreliable we (luckily) never cancelled our POTS line.

Anyhoo...try it for 30 days, but don't get your hopes up too high. A lot of ISPs are blocking these things.

 

[kermalou]

but can cable ISPs block this

 

[isaacmacdonald]

is the signup promotion still running?

 

[MazdaMP]

Originally posted by: isaacmacdonald
is the signup promotion still running?

yes, PM or email me your email and i'll send it to you

 

[LowKeyInLV]

You're having problems with Vonage?... maybe you are thinking of net2phone or something. You do realize that SHOULD have broadband, right? Although, there is an option to turn down the line quality... to something like 30 Kbps - its called bandwidth saver.

I have a 3Mbps/256Kbps and Vonage works great.

PM me your email address for the coupon.

 

[crowderd]

I'm a little confused.

* Monthly landline bill is approx. $50.
* Wife's all-you'd-ever-wanna-talk cell phone plan is approx. $70.
* My cell phone is approx. $10.
* Don't have DSL or broadband - just DUN.

Is Vonage for me?

 

[MazdaMP]

Originally posted by: crowderd
I'm a little confused.

* Monthly landline bill is approx. $50.
* Wife's all-you'd-ever-wanna-talk cell phone plan is approx. $70.
* My cell phone is approx. $10.
* Don't have DSL or broadband - just DUN.

Is Vonage for me?

i would get braodband...first

 

[isekii]

someone send me a referal ?

jlee4781(NOSPAM)@nj.rr.com

 

[Solari]

Originally posted by: theedge
Got mine connected a few days ago... Really sweet!

I went to the incoming phone line from Verizon in my home and made a wire that went to the ATA-186 to the main house connection. All phones in the house now use the Vonage service!

Neat! How do you do that - any suggestions or tips as well as what you need to do that?

Ray

 

Will that VOIP thing slow down INternet connection?

 

[sat4fun]

Do they have 911 service yet? No 911 is the dealbreaker for me.

 

[sat4fun]

Originally posted by: sat4fun
Do they have 911 service yet? No 911 is the dealbreaker for me.

Answered my own question by looking here. They do have 911 service but you must register your location with vonage. The 911 call is routed out of vonage to a center that has your registered address.

 

[HarryK]

Originally posted by: neils

Also.. even though your phone may not have a dial tone (land line that is) you can still dial 911.... yes even with out a dial tone.

While you may very well believe that to be true, more than one person in this thread disagrees with you.

You may be thinking of your cell phone, but when I last moved I tested this (before my phone was hooked up) and found you to be incorrect. If there's nothing listening on the other end of your phone lines, it doesn't matter what you dial.

 

[Gungnir]

I've had this for two weeks now. Imperceptible from regular phone. It does use 90k I think on the upstream- saves me money and lets me justify upping my bandwith. Yipppeee.

 

Somebody was saying here how to wire the whole house to use VOIP. Any idea how to do that?

Thanks

 

[cdc2000]

To wire the whole house, you have two options. In either case, you need to disconnect the wires that lead outside of your house to the telephone pole. Those carry some current, and could fry the ATA. After you have done that, you can do one of the following: Use a regular phone wire coming from the ATA, and cut off the other end. On the other end, punch down the two wires in place of where the phone company wires were. The second option is to just plug the ATA into any unused phone jack. Any phone in the house that is on that same line will automatically get a dial tone. Option 1 is "cleaner", option 2 is easier.

 

[Scyber]

Just got my signup package last night. Took 5 minutes to setup and have made a hlaf dozen or so calls with no problems what so ever.

Gonna test it out for another month or so and decide whether to cancel my Verizon line after that point.

 

[ldulitz]

I have had vonage for 2 months in nyc on road runner, and it works like a champ. I had to have vonage lower my check in time from 15 minutes to 5 because of not recieving calls in the beginning, but now its great. I had them switch my verizon number over as well. PM me if anyone needs a referrel as well!

 

[smilesdotCom]

I have Verizon DSL, so I don't think this makes sense for me for my primary line.

I have a secondary line which I use very lightly, does it make sense for that?

 

[UNCjigga]

We've been using this service at work for over a year now, with pretty good results. Initially we had a LOT of dropped calls and people complaining that we sounded like "robots" on the other end. Turns out the problem was with a router somewhere in our office. We also sent back the Cisco to get one with updated firmware and that fixed the dropped call issue. Even though we're in Charlotte, we got a line with a 212 area code since a lot of our bank clients are in NYC. We use it all the time and don't get charged any overages for excessive use. It is only a secondary line though...we primarily use it for incoming calls from NYC and ld calls to the north east.

 

[MazdaMP]

Originally posted by: smilesdotCom
I have Verizon DSL, so I don't think this makes sense for me for my primary line.

I have a secondary line which I use very lightly, does it make sense for that?

if you actually place calls with the line, it might make sense
otherwise maybe not

 

[MisterMe]

Originally posted by: markgg
Will that VOIP thing slow down INternet connection?

Only if you talk real fast, and real LOUD

 

[MazdaMP]

they now have a fax line for $9.99 a month:
https://secure.vonage.com/vonage-web/account/fax/fax_r.dohttps://secure.vonage.com/vonage-web/account/fax/fax_r.do

 

[NarsDaD]

Ok, I'm about to sign up to Vonage, someone PM me so we can use referral,1st person to pm me.
Also I live in a large building, super/doorman will not let me mess with wires in basement.
Can someone explain in DETAIL how to use existing wiring by plugging into the apartment wall jacks. I read somewhere that I can use the 1st jack entering my apartment, but I have to disconnect some wires. WHICH wires? thanks for any help.