Vonage, CallVantage, or other VoIP?

**yourbeliefs** · 07-09-2008 09:21 AM

Originally Posted by JAG72

Your download speeds should be fine but I would be a little concerned going VOIP with only 40-60 upload speed. Follow this link to test you Internet connection.

How Can I Test My Internet Connection? - VoIP Internet Phone Support: Vonage – A Better Way to Phone for Less

Hmmmm... I'll have to look into that after work. I'll be very depressed if I find out that my connection is too slow to handle VoIP.

**thecristman** · 07-09-2008 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by yourbeliefs

My mom recently passed away, and I am living in the house until we get it ready to sell it and move out. As a result, I not only am responsible for upkeep, but paying bills (or sending them out to the executor of the estate) as well. Also as a result, I have been doing a lot of cost cutting, and one place that could use a LOT of that is the phone bill. Currently I have to pay about $100 a month for phone and DSL, and only $30 of that is for my Pro DSL service. I use my cell phone for 95% of my communications, but I don't want to just cancel the house # since that is the only point of contact to the house, and also want to keep it open for any communications from companies/people about my mother.

At first I was looking at Vonage and that looked very appealing, and then I saw some people here had "CallVantage" by AT&T and seemed to enjoy that, although
I just read a story

that said that CallVantage will be phased out very soon in favor of another offering by AT&T. I looked around at a few other services that have been mentioned on this site, and it seems like all of them are "award-winning" in some way (according to the respective websites.) ViaTalk and MagicJack looked very appealing, but the inability to transfer my existing number over rather defeats the purpose of this.

A few other comments/questions about my situation:

The Pro internet speed is about 280-300 kb/s down and about 40-60 kb/s up. I often download over Bit Torrent network, which usually sucks up my bandwidth. The speeds get down to old school ISDN speeds sometimes. Would that cause a problem with talking to people on the phone, and vice versa, would talking on the phone have a major impact on my download/upload speeds?

Is transferring your phone number over a pain in the a**? As I said, I have AT&T currently.

People have mentioned issues with Vonage where you can't make some 800-number calls, especially 866. Can anyone attest to this, such as is this a problem on their services? The range of VoIP services people use on this site seems to be rather extensive.

Any thoughts/experiences on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

The lowest cost service I have tried is called Magicjack.

magicJack

It costs just $29 the first year and includes a full year of long distance. I have used it for almost 5 months now and it works great. The only problem I have had with it has been the lack of local numbers in my area.

I think a while back there was a link somewhere here in the group for a special deal, but I may be wrong. But anyway, give it a try, it works great and you can use it anywhere there is a high speed internet connection.

**Thoreau** · 07-09-2008 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by yourbeliefs

Yeah my router is rather old. I think it's a WRT54G (or whatever the popular Linksys router is) version 2 or 3, and I had to use a modified firmware in order to get it to download BT stuff without taking major nosedives in speed.

I run a Linksys WRT54GS (rev 2 or 3 i think) and can't recommend DD-WRT firmware enough. I use torrents heavily as well, but the QoS in DD-WRT has had no problems taking care of that. Just tell it your actual speeds in the config, and from there you can prioritize things very easily. Port-based priority is by far the easiest to set up. Plug your VoIP device into port 4, and tell DD-WRT to make that the highest priority port. Xbox 360 on port 3 with next highest priority, PC on port 2 with standard/normal priority, etc. Works like a champ!

I'll mirror the concerns voiced so far about the upstream bandwidth on your connection though. After factoring in overhead, packet loss, jitter, etc. I wouldn't want to run any VoIP service without a little more breathing room personally.

**digiblur** · 07-09-2008 11:54 AM

I've been using VoicePulse for almost 5 years and love it and QOS on a router is a beautiful thing.

**yourbeliefs** · 07-09-2008 05:23 PM

Originally Posted by JAG72

Your download speeds should be fine but I would be a little concerned going VOIP with only 40-60 upload speed. Follow this link to test you Internet connection.

How Can I Test My Internet Connection? - VoIP Internet Phone Support: Vonage – A Better Way to Phone for Less

Well I ran the test and here were the results:

2482 kbps down, 431 kbps up. My available bandwidth is superb (according to them.)

So I think I'm going to go with them. I want to transfer my AT&T Number to them though. (How ironic, literally as I started typing that last line a Vonage ad came on TV) Where do I go from here?

**digiblur** · 07-09-2008 05:46 PM

Watch out for the other fees they tack on.... not sure if they still do it but Vonage tags on tax and some other fees.

It isn't about bandwidth for VoIP. All it needs is 90kbps up and down. It's all about packet loss and packet jitter. You could make it run just fine on a 128kbps line if their was no packet loss and the jitter was minimal.

**yourbeliefs** · 07-09-2008 05:59 PM

Originally Posted by digiblur

Watch out for the other fees they tack on.... not sure if they still do it but Vonage tags on tax and some other fees.

It isn't about bandwidth for VoIP. All it needs is 90kbps up and down. It's all about packet loss and packet jitter. You could make it run just fine on a 128kbps line if their was no packet loss and the jitter was minimal.

Well that's true for every sort of service nowadays. Also, at this point, even if I were to go for their best package of $24.95, that's still cheaper than the ~$50 that I'm paying to AT&T for the same services. I'd be going for the $14.95 plan anyways.

I do find it somewhat funny that I'm basically canceling my phone company's phone service so that I can use their DSL service to get phone service from someone else. Nice little f-u to the company that for years could simply just screw over their customers and simply say "What are YOU gonna do about it?" Hell they could have made T-shirts with that on them and put them on their service people.

**Bulldog** · 07-09-2008 06:33 PM

Originally Posted by Neutron

We just reordered Vonage after not having it for 2 years. When we had it before we had it for 3 years. It's pretty dang reliable, and if it goes out you have the option to have those calls forwarded to another number automatically.

I agree, Vonage is very reliable!

**digiblur** · 07-09-2008 09:10 PM

Originally Posted by yourbeliefs

I do find it somewhat funny that I'm basically canceling my phone company's phone service so that I can use their DSL service to get phone service from someone else. Nice little f-u to the company that for years could simply just screw over their customers and simply say "What are YOU gonna do about it?" Hell they could have made T-shirts with that on them and put them on their service people.

My boys just released their shirt with this

"What are you gonna do about it" shirts