Voip ??

[Matt Heebner]

What do you use and how do you like it ?
I am kind of tired of my AT&Tphone bill being almost as much as my Directv bill so i am looking into getting  voip service. I have looked into Vonage, but I kind of see that there are cheaper providers out there.
I am kind of thinking about phone.com...anyone have any input on them ? all reviews seem favorable.

[kevbeck122]

Vonage... works great... customer service/tech support sucks in my experience.  When I first got it, my phone adapter would cut calls within 10-15 minutes and reboot.  I was on and off the phone with tech support for a good 4 hours... 10PM - 2AM, until they finally said they'd send me a new unit.  Also tried to cancel a couple months ago, but apparently there is a year contract on the service that is extremely hard to find.  That would have set me back over $100 IIRC.  They gave me two free months and then dropped my bill to $10/month for 100 minutes which was good enough until I cancel in August.

I'm switching to Google Voice/Gizmo, which is free... though 911 obviously doesn't work for that combo.

[Ralph Kramden]

We've used Lingo for a few years now. It's worked great and saves us a lot of money. It's unlimited local and long distance for $27 a month(including fees and taxes). But you need high speed internet to use any VOIP. And obviously when your internet is down, you have no phone service.

[duncantuna]

About 2 years ago, I tried Sunrocket for a few months .. was not ready for prime time.  Then Sunrocket went bankrupt.

Last week, I tried again.  This time, with VoipO.com (part of the enormous hosting company HostGator).

Got the adapter last week, so far, the voice quality has been perfect.

Cost is $135/year, which comes to $11.25/month.

One of the nice things is I got a 2nd number .. in Michigan, where my in-laws live.  So now, when they call us, they use a local Detroit number, saving them the long distance, and it rings our phone in Wisconsin.

At the moment, I haven't pulled the plug on the AT&T land phone, but if VOIPO keeps working well, I'll be ditching my $27 local bill, plus my $10 long distance bill every month.

[LoadStar]

I've been with Vonage for 5 years now, and been rather pleased. The only issues I've had with the service are ones I caused myself (a router was causing odd packet drops... switched back to my WRT54GS running DD-WRT, and that fixed it).

I only had to call Vonage support once over the 5 years, and that was when I applied a firmware update that was incompatible with the telephone adapter; they stayed on the line with me as they manually pushed down a new firmware to the telephone adapter, a close to 45 minute process to update then test.

[Matt Heebner]

duncantuna....
Checked out the service you are talking about and I think I might go with them. You should check to se if there is a referral credit for yourself, I didnt see anything on the website.

Price is right for sure.  It will be a while as I am switching to roadrunner as well for internet, then I will be ordering voip service so probaably looking at about 2 weeks or so.

I tracked 9 months of my  AT&T with long distance and DSL and it is averaging about $80/mo...and we are light phone users !
Going with 15 Mbs roadrunner and $10/mo voip, I should be saving apprx. $15-$20/mo

I am also using this cost savings as a way to show my wife that 'yes we can get that blue-ray player'.

[duncantuna]

@Matt - Indeed there is a referral credit .. 1 free month for the referrer, and 1 free month for the refer-ee, so both make out.  You enter my 10 digit phone number when you order the service.  PM me when/if you take the plunge.

One of the things I like about Voipo as well is .. they have a forum (forums.voipo.com) and the president (?) of the company posts in nearly every thread.  

You post a question, bang, someone from the company answers it in public within a few hours.

There's no doubt that Voipo is not the most wiz-bang cutting edge service, as they are somewhat new.  But what's kinda nice too, is they roll out new features every month.

I can't give them a solid review yet, since I've only been using them for 2 weeks, though.  So far so good.

I thought about Vonage, knowing they are the biggest, and should be high quality .. but wow, $11.25 versus $24.95 per month?   -- Might as well TRY the cheap service first.  -- I did NOT port my local number yet.  I will if/when I decide it's working 100%.

[Matt Heebner]

I will definitely do that when I get to that point.

[AndrewP]

I am with Teleblend, which picked up SunRocket. It is $15/month. Service is fine, but sometimes it is breaking up, the problem is with RR connection, which can be checked with online tools. I think TWC is doing it (you know, big conspiracy:D).

[Matt Heebner]

@ duncantuna....PM'ed you.

[Danno321]

I have VoicePulse.  I use to have Vonage originally for VOIP, but when they made their first big marketing push years ago my service deteriorated so I switched to VoicePulse.  VoicePulse has real tech support, a big plus when TWC is trying to play funny with your Internet connection.

[LoadStar]

I have VoicePulse.  I use to have Vonage originally for VOIP, but when they made their first big marketing push years ago my service deteriorated so I switched to VoicePulse.  VoicePulse has real tech support, a big plus when TWC is trying to play funny with your Internet connection.

VoicePulse is on my short list of services to consider switching to, if I ever had to, simply because they have an Asterisk SIP origination/termination service, which is probably what I'd consider if I had to.

[Bebop]

I had Viatalk ever since Sunrocket folded. It has been 99% reliable.

http://www.viatalk.com/