I have been on Vonage voice over ip for a couple months now and wanted to share some experiences in case it will help others making their decisions.

Quality Issues

I have been amazed by the audio quality of Vonage - you cannot tell that you are on Voice over ip at all. There is no delay and no distortion. I also did not have any problems when someone is using the Internet from a computer and a phone call is being made. At home we use a high-quality speaker phone system for the kids to talk to Grandparents and there are no quality problems introduced with the speaker phone.

Multiple Lines - Beware

There are two problems I have been experiencing. I added a second Vonage line to my phone adapter and two phone conversations cannot happen simultaneously. If a second call is initiated, the first call suffers and will likely be disconnected, the second call cannot be completed successfully. This includes if the second call goes to an answering machine in your home. If you must have more than one line, you might be stuck with retaining regular land lines for your additional lines. It may still make sense to have Vonage running on your primary line, especially if you can route outgoing calls through the

Need a Solid Connection

Installing Voice Over IP has confirmed an earlier suspecion that my cable modem or connection have some reliability problems. It isn't very often - but it is amazing how irritating it is to pick up the phone at 9:30pm and there is no dial tone and have to reboot the cable modem. I am fairly sure that it is my cable modem and I have a replacement ordered. The reliability issues do not seem to be linked to placing or having a phone call online.

Financials and Features

I had been paying Verizon about $80 a month for unlimited local, regional and long distance. Vonage's $30 plan covered the same calling plan (including free Canada) and had very good international rates. Vonage also includes many features that are normally an up charge by the phone company - these include voicemail, caller id, call waiting, 3 way calling, etc.

There are also some very unique features as well. One of these is Call Hunt. You can have your Vonage number forward to another line (like your cell phone) if it is not answered at the primary phone. You can also have Vonage ring many lines at once - so it can ring your home phone and cell at the same time and you pickup which ever one makes sense - this can be handy to create a sort of universal phone number for yourself. When combined with Vonage voicemail you can have a universal voicemail box as well.

Other ways to save money include unlimited free calling to other Vonage customers and the ability to have a additional phone numbers that are local to someone you know - this second feature is $5 month.

One of the neatest things is being able to take your phone adapter with you to anywhere you have a broadband connection and bring your call plan and local phone numbers with you! I used this recently and it works great!

The voicemail is handy, however, I am disappointed that there is no way to know I have a voicemail when I pick up the phone (such as a stutter dial-tone offered by phone companies). You can be notified of voicemail via email and retrieve it over the web - very handy for grabbing messages when you are at work or travelling!

Some Stuff You May Not Discover on Your Own

The phone adapter can be installed through a home router or between the cable modem and your PC or router. This is significant because your phone base must be located by the phone adapter. If you have an existing hardwire ethernet network you may have greater flexibility of where the phone and phone adapter are located.

Since the phone adapter is plugged into the phone base, you can only have one phone connected. I already had a cordless phone system which only has one based and four cordless extensions, so this wasn't a problem for me. Aparently some folks have had luck running their home wiring "backwards" by plugging the vonage adapter into their entire phone wire system. The phone adapter is not made for this and it cannot necessarily generate enough line voltage to ring every type of handset - but it might be worth a try. I used a 80 foot part of the current phone wiring system to connect the vonage adapter from the cable modem location to the cordless phone system base and it is working fine.

Use of the forwarding features of Vonage can dramatically reduce your overall phone costs if you can reduce your cell plan minutes by not taking cell calls at your house. When selecting your plan, just be mindful that forwarding a call is the same as taking it at home and it counts against your minutes. Also, if you choose the 500 minute plan, you have no free local calling area - so every outbound call counts against your minutes.

Incoming calls are free just like a regular land line and in most places you can transfer your current phone number to a Vonage number. But before you transfer you number you can also try Vonage without interrupting your current phone service. For $15 you can give it a test drive for a month. You might even try forwarding your regular phone company line to your Vonage test line and see if it holds up under your calling habits.

Vonage is much cheaper and very feature rich compared to the local phone company and you can easily try it without the hassels associate with changing traditional local and long distance phone service!

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Topic: "Just For Fun"