Thread: Vonage, CallVantage, or other VoIP?

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.

I have had ViaTalk for nearly 4 years without any issues; effectively under $10 for a full featured service, unlimited local and LD product.
Internet Phone Service & Broadband Phone Service by ViaTalk VoIP

Speed should be fine for VOIP.

I had Vonage for quite a while .. zero issues whatsoever .. might be worth getting the "500 min" plan if it is not going to be used all that much - $14.99 + fee's per month .. (i assume you don't want to get locked into a long-term contract.

I moved form Vonage to Sunrocket a few years ago - again zero problems .. unfortunately - they went bust .. so last year i moved to Viatalk ... which for the most part has been working - however its been MUCH more spotty and troublesome than any other VOIP service i have ever had over the past 4-5 years.

I'm now mainly using a pay as you go provider .... callwithus.com or future-nine.com and viatalk as a backup (as it is not exactly reliable for me)

If i were you - i would stump the few dollars extra for vonage .. it just plain works - its solid - its idiot proof - the control panel is much better than any other out there - and for a new VOIP user its probably all you could ever need. ... if you can find someone on here to give you a referal - you should be able to get your first two months free ...

Xfer of the phone number will probably take a couple of weeks ... make sure you don;t turn off your old service until the xfer has gone through completely.

Yes Bittorent use will effect call quality - unless you have a decent router that does QOS and prioritizes your voice traffic - you may have to limit your upload/download speeds at times when you may be expecting calls - else your call quality can get very choppy ...

I have Packet8 and it is good for me.

Originally Posted by jokeworm

Speed should be fine for VOIP.

I had Vonage for quite a while .. zero issues whatsoever .. might be worth getting the "500 min" plan if it is not going to be used all that much - $14.99 + fee's per month .. (i assume you don't want to get locked into a long-term contract.

I moved form Vonage to Sunrocket a few years ago - again zero problems .. unfortunately - they went bust .. so last year i moved to Viatalk ... which for the most part has been working - however its been MUCH more spotty and troublesome than any other VOIP service i have ever had over the past 4-5 years.

I'm now mainly using a pay as you go provider .... callwithus.com or future-nine.com and viatalk as a backup (as it is not exactly reliable for me)

If i were you - i would stump the few dollars extra for vonage .. it just plain works - its solid - its idiot proof - the control panel is much better than any other out there - and for a new VOIP user its probably all you could ever need. ... if you can find someone on here to give you a referal - you should be able to get your first two months free ...

Xfer of the phone number will probably take a couple of weeks ... make sure you don;t turn off your old service until the xfer has gone through completely.

Yes Bittorent use will effect call quality - unless you have a decent router that does QOS and prioritizes your voice traffic - you may have to limit your upload/download speeds at times when you may be expecting calls - else your call quality can get very choppy ...

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.

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.

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 have mine ring at the same time on my cell phone.

Thanks ramy. I need to tell my sister that. She switched to Vonage last year and since, I can never reach her. Everytime the local cable company loses internet for them her phone is unreachable. IT happens way too often. In some areas, VOIP is just a terrible option due to the BB internet reliability.
Personally, I would never use it. Instead I shut off my landline in January with ATT and switched the number to my cell phone. My cell service is as reliable as a landline here and I don't miss the landline one bit.
This year we have had 5 outages of cable modem service and it was back on in a few hours. However, if I had the cable phone service I would have had no phone during that time and would need the cell phone anyway. If I do need a special phone service beyond what the cell can do, I have used skype which worked well.

Originally Posted by ramy

I have Packet8 and it is good for me.

I used to have Packet8 (aka 8x8) and if anything ever goes wrong between me and ViaTalk I would go back to Packet* (so also recommended)

Originally Posted by ramy

I have mine ring at the same time on my cell phone.

Ditto this as well.