neil

The only time we have problem with quality with connections with Lingo is when I have torrents uploading as that takes a lot of the bandwidth; otherwise perfect as you say.

C.C

We changed to Vonage 2 weeks ago and its great so far. I love that there are no extra charges to call the UK (unless you call a mobile). Being able to see your bill online is great too, though we have got the first 2 months free.

Dan725

Same here. Had Lingo for 3 years, for the first 6 months it was a bit choppy at times, but ever since then they've really had their act together. Lingo recently won a test in wired magazine, its cheaper than Vonage and you can call many more countries for free as well.

neil

The same is true of Lingo, and it's slightly cheaper than Vonage. We've had it for about 4 years now.

RoadWarriorFromLP

This is a critical part of the equation, and a potential disadvantage of a voip phone.

With voip, you need a fast, highly reliable internet connection, otherwise it will not work well. The disadvantage of this is that if you have a problem, complaining to the phone company often won't do much good, because they can't do anything to help you with your internet connection.

That being said, I have VoiP and there's no going back to regular phones. The main advantages: lower costs, bundled features, flexible service options (such as the ability to have multiple phone numbers in different countries at minimal cost), and number portability (you can move, even abroad, without having to change your number.)

The disadvantages are that it doesn't work if your internet or your power are down (you need to have a mobile as a backup), and that it can be a PITA to set up for the first time. If you know absolutely nothing about computers, it might help to have a friend on hand to help in case you run into problems, and you may need to call technical support to get things going.

Bob

Other issue might be setting up 911 calls, unless they've sorted that out, but it's more the problem of them being able to trace location if you call and the call drops, which is another reason a mobile phone is a handy back up.

RoadWarriorFromLP

That's easy to do, the phone company's website makes this easy to set up. But you do need to make a point of setting it up.

smoskow328

I use Packet8.net. I tried Vonage and they were OK, not great but OK. However Packet8 had special business packages for multiple lines and stuff, but there service hasn't been that great either

cpe111

I work from home and use voice conferencing extensively. I found that my Vonage service with a wireless 2.5 Mbs broadband connection was often choppy and would sometimes drop. This may have been due to me doing other internet related things at the same time and also oversubscription of my local cell by my ISP.

I've recently moved to 10 Mbs cable and the quality and reliablility has been excellent.

It is essential that you have good quality broadband and that the local ISP has not put too many subscribers on the local loop you are using in the case of cable or wireless type services. Many problems with voip services can often be attributed to the quality of your internet service.

Now if I could only get fibre directly to my home ....