First of all if your home phone is still tied to the local phone company and your phone bill is over $20.00 a month you need to take a look at digital phone service!
Since both of our parents live out of state we have a lot of long distance calls. Another issue and the one that helped to motivate my wanting to change is the insane way the local phone companies hose you on local service. So here's my story on Vonage digital phone service.
My friend Aaron from Ti2TT turned me onto Vonage a few years back. He was using it for Ti2TT's phone service and he loved it. Although I was reluctant to move forward, having heard stories of dropped calls, noise on the line, setup issues were way off base. I'll admit that the price of $24.00 a month for unlimited calling nationwide with select overseas calls free as well motivated me to try it out.
So when we signed up Vonage was having a rebate deal on the Linksys VoIP box which made the hardware a freebie. And we got to keep our old number. So for little investment it seemed worth giving it a shot.
Installation was a breeze. Getting everything going was a non issue.
Two years later and I am still a very satisfied Vonage customer. Yes when the cable system (Comcast) is down we have no phone. But that goes for any digital phone service including Comcast. So if your your Internet service isn't working your digital phone service does not work. Internet connectivity is a typical problem with Comcast, so it's not a Vonage issue. Besides today most folks have at least one cell phone in the family. Also Vonage offers outage forwarding to your cell phone in the event that your Internet is down. 911 service, call forwarding, 3 way calling, email forwarding are all included.
The reality is that we have only lost service when Comcast is down, which happens far to often. Noise on the line has been minimum if at all. The bigger bonus is that with Vonage, instead of charging us more when we are up for a contract renewal, when we renewed our Vonage contract this year they helped us to further lower our rate by offering a "pay for a year in advance". So we now pay $220.00 a year instead of $288.00.We saved another $68.00.
I just hate to see people get roped into the latest Comcast advertising BS. That being the Comcast ad with the chick who acts like she has a clue, hawking the same type of digital phone service that Vonage offers. The Comcast commercial acts as if their digital service is better, and that they giving you some kind of deal at $33.00 a month. And they don't mention the additional taxes involved which get it up around $37.00 per month WOW. What a bunch of BS!
So if we look at the bottom line, the two services function the same, both are digital, both run through your cable line. With Comcast you pay $396.00 a year or $33.00 a month before taxes and additional network charges. With Vonage you pay $288.00 a year or $24.00 a month. Pay a year up front with Vonage and it's $220.00 a year or around $19.00 a month. Bottom line is you save $108.00 if you pay monthly and $176.00 if you pay a year up front with Vonage.
I am going to throw in this link to the bad press Vonage gets, you should read it before you sign up with them. I have not personally had any problems with my service. Click Here to read the article on Vonage and their current problems.
My comments on this article. Well, I have never had to use Vonage customer service other than to sign up and get my setup on the grid. It did take a few days to transfer my number, no biggie. Overall I have had far more issues with Comcast. Our Vonage box is the original, unlike Comcast where I have had at least 5 or 6 cable modems and endless amounts of downtime. Bottom line is that I have not had an issue with my service with Vonage.
I'm not getting a dime for this hyping. It just seems like the right thing to do when two competing services offer the same "EXACT" product for drastically different prices. And we all know Comcast. First they rope you in, and then they start taking away features and jacking up the price!
Jim