Vonage Review - Time Warner Digital Phone Review - Verizon Review -Our Personal Experiences

Our Vonage® Review - and by default a Verizon Review and Time Warner Cable Phone Review.  Also see our digital phone VoIP remarks about internet phone limitations and land line limitations too.   - Later in this Vonage Review, Time Warner Phone Service Review and Verizon Review.

Vonage Review and Rating: overall, Outstanding! see our Vonage ratings summary after 3 years below

We took the plunge using an alternative telephone service, our choice was Vonage.  Digital phone service (VoIP or voice over internet protocol - IP) is giving the traditional telephone companies a run for their money. As May 2009 we will have been with Vonage for 4 years - see later in this review of Vonage for remarks

We only take time to write reviews when we find exceptional value, exceptional service

Or when we feel short changed, taken advantage of, or feel ripped off.  This review is our opinion or a reflection of our experiences.

We are not selling anything here.

We are impassioned by Vonage because of the exceptional value we get and its vigor in taking competing big business to task.

Verizon (First as Ma Bell, then New York Telephone, then Bell Atlantic and now as Verizon) has disappointed us for over 25 years - nothing in the more recent past has changed our opinion

Despite Time Warner's exceptional customer support, we believe Time Warner Digital Phone service is over priced and uncompetitive. With the ever increasing cable prices, we are seeing diminishing value in the products offered by the company.  Each price increase makes us more eager to leave.

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also see our web hosting review for CrystalTech

Our PhotoImpact and CorelDraw Review

Our Purehost Web Hosting review

Also see our Review of Time Warner Internet Cable Modem Service.  We appreciate Time Warner of NY and NJ Customer Service but are disappointed with the internet speed .  Road Runner Service in New York City

See later in this Vonage review for a brief discussion of the VoIP political battle

Things we like about Vonage Review:  Our overall Vonage Rating appears at the end of the review.

• Vonage International calling plans are the best (see later in this review)

• Vonage has not used bate and switch.  For example: Before fees, Time Warner unlimited domestic plan starts at $30 but goes to $40 after the 1st year

• The Vonage adapter and telephone service was absolutely the easiest technology we have ever installed.  (We already have a router so set up was just plugging in the Vonage box into the router by the supplied cable - if you get the router with the Vonage included you will have a bigger job)

• Sign up for our Vonage account over the internet was a snap

• You can take your Vonage phone service with you - unplug the adapter from your broadband router, take it with you and plug it into another internet router where ever you go in the USA.  Your phone will ring just like you are in your home.

• Our new Vonage phone number worked within 2 minutes of plugging the adapter in.

• Vonage offers us a temporary number until our land line number was transferred ( in our case, from Verizon)

• Our Verizon to Vonage land line transfer took just 15 calendar days

• No optional calling plans are required - see the next points

• Unlimited calling - local and domestic long distance

• Verizon charges more for each feature such as call waiting, 3 way calling, caller ID, call forwarding.  These services (and more) are free with the Unlimited Vonage plan

• Vonage voice quality is at least as good - even seemingly better -then POTS (plain old telephone service)

• Calling card international calls (via a local number) work well with the Vonage Service.

• The Vonage user account internet control panel is easy to use

• Vonage is not the cheapest (digital internet phone) VoIP company but their polished web site and it's easy use make it better

• Big Business competitors such as AT&T and Time Warner Digital Phone are more expensive (AT&T is $30 and Time Warner is $40 $45 or even $50, depending on which cable plan you are on). There are teaser rates of $30 a month for the 1st year. Verizon has a $30 a month teaser rate but after that it is $35 a month.  The teaser rate applies permanently if you are a Verizon DSL customer.

• Some competing services have add-on charges for features such as voice mail - these are included with the Vonage service.  For example, this is an Option at Time Warner Digital Phone - adding even more to their already very high VoIP rates

• We paid for our Vonage phone service in savings over our Verizon land line immediately by just switching to Vonage. (We saved by canceling our Verizon land line call waiting and 3 way calling, domestic long distance calling plan and our international long distance calling plan (- in our case - $8 + $3 +$4+  $2 to $5 a month in *69 service fees and the $10 basic dial tone cost)  Also there are no local and long distance per call charges on Vonage). 

• Vonage will email you a sound file of voice mail messages so you can hear the messages without having to place a call to your answering service

• International prices are fair (for countries not included in the basic or international plans.)

• We added the optional Vonage International Enhanced World Plan at $15.00 per month in October 2008.   There are unlimited minutes to a large number of countries.  (Cell phone calling is not included to certain countries but the rate charged to these cell numbers is fair).

• Our friends who use the Time Warner international plan started at a $20.00 per month with 3000 minutes included.  The Time Warner International minutes were reduced to 1000 minutes.

• Regular Vonage domestic plus unlimited international service costs us $40 monthly, before taxes and fees, compared with our friends paying $60 to Time Warner

With Vonage, consumers are saving on taxes and fees.  At one time VoIP was not yet regulated or taxed like the local telephone companies.  They are now and you can expect VoIP companies to be increasingly targeted by local, state and federal tax agencies

• As of June 2005 our Vonage Unlimited residential plan: $24.99 a month plus fees and taxes totaled about $27.50

• As of January 2009 our Vonage Unlimited residential plan: $24.99 a month plus fees and taxes totaled about $35.00.

• As of January 2009 our Vonage Unlimited residential plus international Enhanced World plans: $24.99 + $15 with unlimited international for a total of $39.99 monthly.  Taxes fees and taxes make the total about $49.00.

Things we don't like about Vonage

• There has been Vonage disconnect fees.  Please see the Vonage website for current terms

• The Vonage Terms of Service (TOS) are restrictive - see following points

• "Home office" and "telecommuting" uses are not allowed under the home plan

• Allows post period back charges if Vonage determines that you are in the above categories - see below for a brief discussion of our telephone use.

• There are 411 fees or 99 cent/

• Vonage asks an addition $10 a month for a dedicated "fax line".  We might fax 5 or 10 times a year from our computer but we used our regular land line.  We'll skip the Vonage Fax number offer.  Our faxes are sent from our computer which is daisy chained to our phone lies. 

• We have not tested faxing via the (non-dedicated fax) regular line Vonage service. (We'll use our existing Verizon land line for now - Verizon DSL internet phone service literature says their internet phone option works with faxing at no cost.)

Digital Internet Phone limitations and Land Line Phone Limitations:

These are Internet Voice Over IP (VoIP) limitations (and land lines limitations too) regardless of who you buy it from - Including AT&T CallVantage®, Packet 8, Verizon Internet Digital , Time Warner Cable Phone service or others.

• If your cable or DSL internet service goes out, your phone service goes out if you use digital phone or other VoIP services.  Our cable internet service was out for 6 days while we waited for the internet service provider to get a technician scheduled.  The happens regardless of which VOIP company you use, Vonage, Time Warner, Verizon, or services like Skype or Magic Jack.

• Operator services are limited or may not not available with digital VoIP phone service. Check with the service companies you are considering

• Other abbreviated dialing services such as 311, 511 are limited or not available with VoIP. Check with the digital phone service companies you are researching

• If your power goes out your internet phone service is gone - Land lines tend to stay up when the neighborhood electricity is out although there is no guarantee:  their backup generators or battery systems may go out.

• If you have only cordless phones, your cordless base station will not work when you loose electricity.  With cordless phones, your landline will be out too.

• Voice quality can suffer if there is internet congestion.  - This has not been a problem since we are getting high speed internet.  Our friends have had no problem either.

• The household phone wiring system has to be changed from the incoming land line telephone jack to the VoIP internet connection box. - This was a small problem for us because we use cordless phones for the Vonage service

• During the transfer of the number from Verizon to Vonage there was a period of about 24 hours where the transferred number phones did not receive incoming calls (incoming callers got a rapid busy signal).  Outgoing calls on both the Verizon and Vonage lines worked during this outage and throughout the transfer cycle.  We believe this outage when switching to Vonage, to be typical (and acceptable) of any telephone number transfer - as an example, switching from one cell phone company to another and so on.

Vonage Review Rating:  Overall - Excellent! - why did we not go to Vonage sooner?

VoIP - Internet Phone and Digital Phone Service Politics:

The local phone companies and those with other interests are not taking this new competition from Vonage, Time Warner Phone, Packet8 and Verizon VoIP without a battle.

Internet Service Providers are not happy, either. These ISP companies see Vonage and the other internet VoIP companies as having a free ride on "their" internet pipeline.

In fact, some internet providers around the country have blocked VoIP services with technology.  The logic? The IP's have spent millions to develop the broadband service pipes but others are selling services they want to compete with - currently, the FCC has banned such blocking.

The validity of this logic escapes me - we are already paying for the internet service - why can I subscribe to a streaming music service liked Real Media's Rhapsody but not subscribe to a VoIP service?  Also, to follow this logic, how can I have subscribed to AOL or Net Zero via the phone lines?  

The United States Supreme Court is already involved in these battles in a case known as the "Brand X" case. (Search the internet if you want to know more)

Our personal outlook about these politics is not optimistic.  Ten or 15 years ago, international calls were over $1.25 a minute, we now pay pennies (our phone bills were often $300 or more a month during the earlier times). Consumer and new competition now be damned because Big Business controls this presidency and this Congress. Big business gets its way in this climate far too often.  We expect BB to try to muscle this upstart competition out of the market.  And we expect the outrageous high percentage in taxes and fees to find VoIP services.

Our Telephone Usage: (Verizon Review by default)

This household has 3 phones; 2 old fashion telephone company land lines and one cell phone.  We expect to cancel one land line when our phone number has been ported to Vonage.  We will keep one land line to have an alternative in the event of neighborhood power outage.

The 2 land lines total over $130 a month - mostly for local calls.  We make hundreds of minutes worth of international phone calls a month via a local phone number (using retail calling cards that make the call price as little as 2.1 cents a minute).  Because of frequent local calls, sometimes over 500 local calls a month, our LOCAL charges, for just the calls, is always well over $60 a month.  (We half expect Vonage to ask if we are a small business because of this heavy calling.)

Our land line carrier is Verizon and we are giving up one of our them because of Verizon's poor service and ever increasing rates.  Others on the internet have criticized Voyage's customer service and its long hold times but we don't believe it to be an issue.

While we can say we recently can get Verizon on the phone in a very reasonable time, we cannot say that we get good service from them when there is a technical issue. 

An example - the transfer of our number to Vonage.  Our former Verizon phone number was transferred to Vonage after just 15 calendar days.  We called customer service a 2nd time to confirm that the service was canceled - according to Verizon it was - but we still got that dial tone 10 days after that call, 10 days after the transfer was complete. We expect to have to do battle with Verizon over their failure to disconnect the transferred number line when we receive our next (final) bill.   Other than the transfer issue, we do not recall a single need to call Verizon over the last 5 years about our home phones. (We wish that were true at the businesses we consult with - the Verizon service and disruptions have been awful - but that is another story

Our experience with other carriers such as AT&T is worse.  Also, we would give up our other Verizon land line if the internet service were not fickle to power outages. 

We are tired of paying extra for call waiting, three way calling, caller ID and so on - for services we rarely use but like to have.  Verizon started us out, when they began offering domestic long distance, at a low rate but that rate has doubled.  We used to get discounts of up to 65% for off peak local calls - we now pay the same rate and higher price for every call.

Finally, we expect to save over $60 A MONTH by using Vonage over Verizon - over $720 a year - looks like we can afford that flat panel wide screen TV now.

And as an aside - did you know?   - Taxes and other government fees on phone bills now add almost 25% to the total - over 30% on our cell phone bill.

Our first 3 and one half years with Vonage:

We are saving more than we expected - over $60 a month on local service and much much more on domestic and international long distance!

And  we are completely satisfied with Vonage

We had two "hiccups" in our over 3 years with Vonage although the issues were always related to internet problems and not Vonage. Once, our high speed modem started to refuse to give speeds over 100k and as low as 50k (dial up speed). The cable company had apparently replaced a local routing hub which caused the cable modem to be incompatible at high speed.  At another time the cable modem just died.  Both problems were resolved with replaced internet cable modems.

Voice voice quality continues to be outstanding.  We have had no network usage slowdowns and we are happy.  We highly recommend Vonage.

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Last updated: 03/26/2009