Lynne

Thanks for all the comments. Right now I pay $70 for two lines with BellSouth or ATT whoever they are right now and that is just rental charge. I also have ATT long distance which adds a bit more each month. Like a lot of comments, if I had something like Vonage I would be phoning the UK more often and keeping in closer contact with friends rather than just the odd call and email.

The big thing now is convincing the "other" half . Maybe if I offer to make him toad in the hole for dinner he may be convinced. lolol

freezerman

I have had Vonage for some time and like you have a local Manchester number. The only problem I have had is that the Manchester number they gave me used to belong to an I.T. company that went out of business owing a lot of people money and so for the first six months or so I was getting phone calls from creditors. They were calling at around 10 a.m. UK time which is the middle of the night here. I'm pleased to say that they seemed to have tailed of in the past couple of months.
Apart from having to stop uploads when I am on the phone, I am delighted with the service.

Tracym

How do you wire it into the house wiring?

I'm wondering, because I have an alarm system, which requires the phone. Also the satellite box is hooked up to the phone wires, in case we want to order movies.

Sounds like the 911 thing might be a serious drawback though, I'd have to think about that one.

jumping doris

Yes we have one of those too but no-one seemes to call us on that. With Vonage you choose a number from one UK area and so we chose the area we used to live in and so the number seems just like a regular local number. The BE one looks different and I think some of my kids friends thought it was a premium number ....I'm not sure but they phone more with the vonage number.

BritGuyTN

I would look at another voip provider personally - maybe lingo - fatbrit uses this....

franc11s

I actually think the Vonage / Verizon IP issue might be quite big. The courts have absolutely sided with Verizon, including appeals. Unlike Blackberry (RIM) fiasco which was settled, Vonage is not that profitable as I understand it to withstand having to pay "license" fees. However, switching from Vonage to someone else if the walls fall in, is no big deal.

I too had 2 lines with Bellsouth upto 3 months ago. I switched to Comcast. Unlimited National calls $39.99. 5c a minute to the UK and PERFECTLY crystal clear digial calls. the first time I called my father-in-law, seriously it sounded like he was in the same room. I guess you get what you pay for. For the difference in cost with Vonage, I wouldn't switch now from Cable as the quality is superb and I too make business conference calls crystal clear. Also, they come out and wire it into your existing house wires (alhtough it's easy to do).

I was worried at first too about the Brinx Alarm connected to the phone line but Comcast stability has been 99.9%. Nothing as reliable though as a 100% "baby bell" phone company so we charge both our cell phones by the bed at night as added backup.

Tracym

Just can't resist here - if both ends have some form of broadand, webcams with voice are free...

Paul S

yeah, I'm keeping an eye on this and if we have to change , we will!

Still using Skype for now to call my sis in zoo neeland as its cheaper than Vonage (same goes for calling me Dad as he insists on using a mobile only:curse. Had meddled with voip phones using the 'free' services but with no great sucess as i believe our router is screwing things up

Bob

To wire it in, it's a few google searches, but there's a few threads on the US and lab section about Lingo with links on how to do it.

As for the 911, depends on where you live and the service, but best to have a mobile phone for a backup, but most wireless phones won't be much use without power anyway, so that'd leave the mobile wouldn't it.

Tracym

Yes, I know it's recommended to have at least one wired phone just because of that reason.

My alarm system has a button for fire and one for police too, guess that's an extra protection.

ironporer

We love it. 99% of the time the call quality is perfect, only had one day with an example of really bad quality, a few othes with slightly less than perfect.
$28.48/mo with taxes, no LD charges anywhere except to cell phones in Spain my wife may call.

dunroving

I had Lingo when I was in the US, and liked it pretty well. Never had any technical problems with it.

They did p*ss me off when I canceled though. As already mentioned, you can't call and give them a date you want to cease service, they cancel when you call. What wasn't mentioned is that they don't stop billing you when you are cut off - they bill you to the end of the current billing cycle. I can't remember exactly why, but you also can't call and cease service on teh day the billing cycle ends.

So, I ended payng for a whole month of service AFTER I had been cut off. Gits. I suppose if you look at it over the course of several years' service, it isn't that much, but still, it's the principle of the thing.

angelman

I use another VOIP company called Packet8. Except technical customer service, great service a little cheaper than vonage and vrey few outages. Also speaking to their tech support about the vonage patent problems they were very confident they would be OK since the founder of the company had been very thorough in making his own patents to avoid this very problem. He reckoned that vonage had it coming to them and knew full well what they were doing.
Another company that also gets very good reviews and is cheaper than both of these is www.sunrocket.com
more info and reviews at dslreports.com

HunterGreen

We have Lingo as well, pretty satisfied with it. Although I think we're going to need a new Lingo modem (yeah I know it has some kind of different name but whatever ), this one seems to be acting up lately. (I don't know what it does, but when it does it I can't use my phone for a few minutes, not too bad but still not good either).

angelman

Dont forget that with all these services you get a little box of tricks which you plug into your router/modem. This box in effect is your phone. You can take this box wherever you go and plug it into any broadband modem/router. Then you have your telephone. ie. your phone and number travels with you. So if you take your US box to the UK you can then have a US number while you are in the uk!