Elhombre

http://www.vonage.ca/services_premiu...ink_id=premium

Hi all,

This looks interesting. $39.99 per month apparently gets you unlimited calls anywhere in Canada, the States, Puerto Rico, the UK, Ireland, Italy, France and Spain. It sounds like an excellent deal.

Has anyone used them? Interested in how they stack up against Bell canada, Rogers and the other competition in terms of price and service quality.

Cheers.

H

Pony

Hmmmmm, it seems Canada pays a lot more than the US, and for no valid reason!
Vonage USA pricing

I use Vonage here in the U.S. and can take the adaptor anywhere in the world and use it just the same - your only requirement is an internet connection.

Vonage requires an internet connection so its hard to compare with Bell canada, Rogers who use normal fixed line connections.

Vonage quality is acceptable. On the whole the technology is in its infancy, but is good enough to use as a replacement for your old phone line. If your internet connection goes down, your Vonage line does too - important to remember if you don't have a cell phone. If your internet account were to develop a fault it would be impossible to report it using your Vonage line.

Pony

My link was dead, here is the correct link for the the US pricing

http://www.vonage.com/services_premium.php


http://www.vonage.com/services_premium.php

Elhombre

TD, thanks for your response. Allowing for potential fluctuations in currency exchange raes I would say that the prices are quite similar. I am attracted by Vonage's product and coverage. With regards to service have you found any significant differences between Vonage and any traditional service providers that you may have used in the past? Also, do you have any links to consumer pages that give unbiased comparisons?

Cheers.

H

Pony

I personally found it cheaper to use the $14.99 plan and pay for my international calls, it takes a lot of calls to use the $10 price difference. Adding an international number (in my case a UK one) works well. I have my Mac set to answer incoming calls, the caller can dial an extension number and transfer to my or my wifes cell phone. That means friends and family back in England can call our home or either US cell phone for free! Caller ID, 3 way calling are all great. My Mac handles my voice mail and emails it to me, but you can set something similiar on Vonage.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-9140_7-5131559-1.html

http://www.consumersearch.com/www/internet/voip/

http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/voip_reviews.htm

Pony

If you buy the VOIP adaptor from Vonage it comes crippled and tied to the Vonage network. I'm not sure the legality of this one, but I found it extremely easy to find the unlocked firmware for my LinkSys WRTP54G wireless router (the router which I purchased from Vonage). Meaning if I ever want to change VOIP provider I don't need to buy a new adaptor, I can use any provider - extremely useful should Vonage service become problamatic.
I couldn't find any mention of the fact the router was locked to Vonage when I purchase it from them, and could not find anything in the T&C's stating I could not unlock it.

wizzard

We got the Vonage service when we moved house recently in Toronto as Bell wouldn't let us keep our number and wanted to charge us $55 for the privilage where as Vonage let us keep our number and gave us a month free, plus their monthly fee was cheaper when going for the basic 500 minutes anywhere in North America.

I really don't use my home phone that much so I didn't see the point in paying for unlimited but it's a good deal if you us ethe phone a lot. The 500 minutes are anywhere in North America so no long distance and the International calls to the UK aren't too expensive at 5c/min. Cheaper than Bell was. If you want to go all out you can pay an extra $7.99/month for a virtual number with any area code in the world, so you could get a UK area code number which would forward to your main number in Canada but means anyone calling from the UK just pays the local rate. Only worth it if people from the UK call you a lot though.

We haven't had any service issues yet after several months but as said before it's dependant on your internet service so bear that in mind for things like your ISP going down and you need to dial 911. So you either take the risk or have a back up. We have 2 cell phones in the house so I figure between three separate phones one of them should work.

I have no idea about the router being locked to Vonage but the router was free so it doesn't really make much difference. You can buy now cordless phones that have the VOIP adapter built into their base unit so you can plut them straight in and all sorts of other things. You can allegedly use them with your home phone wiring but I found our wiring introduced a lot of interference so it wasn't usable, but ours is an old hosue so new wiring might be ok.

All in all it's saved me a bunch of money so far, so I can't complain.

I was talking to my parents in the UK and they said Tesco is doing a pay as you go VOIP phone that plugs directly into the computer via USB. Kinda like Skype I guess and you always have to have your computer running but it only costs £15 and calls to other phones on the network are free. So I might pick one up in the UK when I visit next month and bring it back to Canada and see if I can call my parents one for free. Might save a bit there.

Drew