Anyone here use Vonage?
 

I'm considering www.vonage.com we don't use our home phone too much it's mainly for our satellite systems.

14.99 a Mo? thats CHEAP.

Be very careful just like tkamiya said. You saves a few bucks on phone bill but may have to forego the safety of your family. Vonage claims that they disclose this information 3 times when you sign up and it is up to you if you want to give up your 9-1-1 ALI capability.

I personally will not do it. There are better ways to save. Verizon has Freedom package with unlimited intra and inter state long distance, including Canada. Why would you want to use Vonage and take the risks?

Vonage's 911 system does work. What your are doing is allowing them to register your number with the location it is at - so 911 goes through correctly.
See, with Vonage, your "local" number can be anywhere in the country - so you have to tell them where the number is based out of.
I have it, love it (especially the online convenience), and wouldn't go back. We take advantage off all of their services, too. For example, when we go to our vacation home, one click routes all of the calls to that number, or we can change the greeting for a certain number of days (to tell folks we are away), etc. For 5 bucks a month, my grandmother now has a local number (for her) to call, yet the calls come to me - and she doesn't have to worry about paying for the call.

chris74,
I don't think you understand the seriousness of the 9-1-1 issue. It's true that you can tell Vonage where your local phone number is based out of, but the actual call doesn't come with the attached date and therefore PSAP has no way to register the ALI. Vonage has no ALI database, and has no plan to maintain one.

This is a HUGE problem with the public safety community, along with wireless Phase II. Don't buy on what Vonage tells you. I work in the industry and know the danger of Vonage, i2 and others VoIP carriers.

NENA and APCO are trying to get FCC to regulate companies like that because we see too many people die becasue the EMS cannot get to them. Look at two cases happened in NY and you will change your mind.

narwhal,
Hope you will never have to dial 9-1-1 from your office. If one of your employees got hurt and the EMS can't get there on time to help, I am afraid the law suite will be far greater than the savings of your monthly phone bills.

You need to look into that in depth before you make such move. Remember....you get what you pay for.

Narwhal:

If you are spending 1200/mo in phone stuff, you must have a healthy practice. Thats a lot of dough. I spend less than that a year for my home/cel phone, and when I practice, eventually, that would cover me for almost three months worth of my fledgling overhead!

$1200 a month is not all that bad in fact it seems pretty average for un leaned small businesses with less than 5 employees.

I used Efax, maximized long distance the best I could for what we needed, which in fact is the operitive phrase, if your not in a metropolis business internet runs over $100 a mo. Cellulars averaged 500-800 mo. and the land line averaged $300 mo. I wish we had Vonage and unlimited plans like we have today (it was only 4 months ago) I'd have an extra 10K in my pocket.

In Narwhals case if those phones aren't doing the Ol' .2 ;) the lights go out, so $2500 a Mo. gets you 25K+ thats not all that bad.

Medmech:

I don't mind saying that I have no idea what you are talking about. Please don't try to exaplin it to me-my minds screwed up enough as it is! I do have one question, though. What is "un leaned"?

Un Leaned = Slang for expenses not being sorted out to achieve the lowest costs.

That was a pretty cocky reply I might add, are things going OK for you:rolleyes:

No need to explain I don't care.

How does this affect my dsl service? I currently have bellsouth fastaccess, so I am wondering what happens to that deal.

Medmech: If my message came off as cocky it was unintended. I really didn't know what that meant.
Things could be better but they're pretty good.

To the uninformed, you have to have a DSL/Broadband connection in order to use this company.

I have bellsouth and I have put out an inquiry to them to see if I can cancel my phone service and just use their dsl.

We'll see what happens.

I just hooked up my digital converter and the phone sounds great. Huge savings as well. At least 75.00 per month.

More money for beer and scotch. Yeahhhhhhhhh.;)

What about 911 service? I'm pretty sure my alarm company uses cellular.

911 service will be available in a few days. You have to set it up after the initial install.

The problem some people may have is this:

I can keep my Miami # and live in Buffalo. If I were to call 911, it would show up that I am in Miami, but I really am in Buffalo.

If you configure the service to reflect your acurate address, you can call 911 w/o problem. Theoretically.

The only problem would be if you were to have a power outage.

In this case, your broadband connection would be dead, so no phone. No big deal really as I woud use my cell phone.............