We have it and it's excellent. No difference in sound quality at all. The only issue I have with it is that when there's a power outage, we have no phone service, either. But our cell phones are a good backup for that.

Ask about 911 service.

Vonage E-911 service isn't effective. Part of the "convenience" of vonage is to be able to take your home phone anywhere. The downside is that 911 can't track you down when you call. I wouldn't do it. I don't know where you are at but I know Comcast offers something similar that has the 911 capability. Good Luck.

I have Vonage and I think it's great! We had outrageous long distance bills before this and now we have high speed broadband and unlimited local and long distance calls for less than our old l.d. bills used to be. The reception is great. You might want to invest in a portable phone that has several recievers though because we can only 'plug in' one phone.

-Stella

We're in South Florida and we just got it. Works fine. Our cable provider (runs thru our cable modem) does have its moments, but we have it rigged so that if cable is out, it will go to my husbands cell phone. So far so good, and yes, its $20 something a month, plus tax, so ours is $27 and change. We were able to keep our phone number. We've had it for a couple weeks. My parents in North Carolina have had it for about a year I think. They love it.

Is it possible to hook the Vonage up to the house phone jacks and use the extensions normally?

Agree on the 911 service. It does not support it in our area. A 911 call does not go to our local dispatch. It gets re routed to a non emergency line. Not a good deal to me.

I have it and love it. But no 911 service here either.

My neighbor had it and dropped it after a few months because of the heavy cable internet usage in our area. He was using it through his cable company. When the internet signal is not heavily used everything is fine. But when traffic gets heavy, things slow down. And so did his phone transmission. It would cut out a word or two at a time. So he went back to his regular service.

I have always heard that cable internet can be affected by heavy usage in the area, but had never heard anyone complain about the side-effects of that, until now. DSL internet service is not supposed to suffer from any degradation with a lot of others online, but it is not as readily available in most areas like cable is, either.

So, its effectiveness in your area may be good, may not be. I don't know if there is any way of knowing without trying it.

"DSL internet service is not supposed to suffer from any degradation with a lot of others online..."

The DSL line to the house will not be greatly affected, but the line ands at the phone companies Central Office (CO) and after that you are on the internet with all the other traffic and all the problems of overload.
The phone companies tend to have a lot of capacity to move traffic, but if the wrong fiber line gets cut all sorts of trouble quickly shows up. Depending on available capacity and demand, large areas can be affected (states and regions).

had it for years, love it.

I have been using the Vonage service for 3 years now. Keep in mind it is not perfect, and reception to a large degree depends entirely on your internet connection and throughput of that connection. BUT, despite the few hiccups from time to time, the bottom line is you save a ton of money, have every available phone feature to use, a web based control panel to monitor usage and setup options.
Also keep in mind, while the actucal Vonage service has been reliable, I have had outtages due to my cable being out. When my primary connection is unavaible all of my calls gets automatically shuffed to my cell phone. Features like ringing my cell phone simultaneously when I am not home are great! But honestly, it's all I really need for a home based telephone and if you talk long distance its a money saver.

I've had it for a couple of years and am quite satisfied.

YES, Saypoint -- you can use all your extensions by connecting your system to the Vonage box. Might want to check your line to be sure the phone company has disconnected their power from your network interface -- they wasted no time in taking away MY 50 volt connection :-)
Yes, the E911 isn't as convenient but the $50 per month savings make it worth it to me.
My only gripe so far is the lack of ACR (Annonymous Call Reject) option which I used a lot when I had the POTS system .

There are other VOIP service providers out there that DO offer ACR, so I may switch providers to gain that feature.

The problem is that Vonage is the only VOIP service that advertises on TV, and it's not even a US Company! Do a quick goooooogle search for voip service in **** (your city) for some amazing results! We run a (several) licensed small business out of our house and the Verizon bill was daunting, so we chose Voice Eclipse. Free adapter, hook up, ported our number and 911, $21.31/ mo with all of the taxes we are in month four and quite pleased with the exception of difficulty dialing some 1-800 numbers. A couple of other people use Lingo since they have relatives in Europe (free calls). Go to ripoff report.com and read about Vonage.