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The Kitchen Table

Anyone Here Use Vonage?

17 years ago

DH and I are looking into going with Vonage for our phone service. Are you happy with them? Since we live in the country our cable phone is tempermental at times.

SamKaren

your resident DJ

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Comments (6)

lindyluwho
17 years ago
DD has it and her phone is fine sometimes and sometimes it sounds all garbled. Goes out if the internet is down.

Linda
mcmann
17 years ago
My brother in Houston has it and I find it annoying whenever he calls. I can't say this happens to all Vonnage customers but it seems like the transmission cuts out and sometimes the words are garbled and sometimes there's silence for several seconds. And of course when the cable is out so is his phone. I think you should try and find out how the service is in your area- maybe it's better.
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joann23456
17 years ago
I've used Vonage for years for my business phone, with no complaints. If the internet is down, yes, the phone goes out, but it will send calls to voicemail, or you can set it up to forward to another number, like your cell phone. The internet isn't down much where I live.

The quality is directly related to how much bandwidth you allow Vonage to use. The adapters come with a setting that uses a medium amount of bandwidth, which can sound garbled at times. If you change the setting to allow it to use the maximum amount of bandwidth (not *your* maximum, just the maximum the phone could need), it sounds good. At times, it's not quite as good as a phone with a cord, but I'm never embarrassed to make business calls on it.

However, Vonage is a voice-over-internet protocol service, and I'll bet your cable phone is also VoiP. If you don't like the cable phone, you may not like Vonage. Or maybe there are settings you could change on your cable phone, to allow it to use more bandwidth.

Vonage has terrific features. My favorite is SimulRing. It allows you to set up to five alternate phone numbers, and when a call comes in on your phone line, Vonage will ring all the numbers, including your original phone line. When I had a phone line, I used to set my cell phone as an alternate number, and the cell phone would become, in effect, an extension of the home phone for incoming calls.

Another Vonage feature that I use on my business line is Virtual Voicemail. All my voicemail is run through a machine that transcribes it and then the transcript is emailed (or texted) to me. Very cool.
matti5
17 years ago
I chat on the phone daily with a friend who has Vonage and at least 3 days out of the week, she sounds so garbled that we have to end the call. Plus, if her husband is using his computer, the phone line keeps cutting in and out.

My son had the service for a month and stopped it because of the garbling problem.
doxiemom
17 years ago
We have had Vonage for almost 3 years. It works great--I don't think ours has been down but maybe for a few minutes once or twice--but then we haven't had any cable or internet outages in a long time either. I really like the phone bill though!! Sheila
samkaren
Original Author
17 years ago
Thank you for this information. I did check the Vonage webpage for their reviews first but I knew I would totally honest opinions from the KT. (Not that I don't believe the reviews but I trust the KT)

SamKaren
your resident DJ

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