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:

We finally take the plunge using an alternative telephone service, our choice was Vonage.  Digital phone service (VoIP or voice over internet protocol - IP) seems poised to give the traditional telephone companies a run for their money. As of the end of September we have been with Vonage for 4 months - 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.

info at prorganize.com

also see our web hosting review for CrystalTech

Our PhotoImpact and CorelDraw Review

Our Purehost Web Hosting review

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

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

• 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 offers friend referrals - up to two months free for each successful referral (hardware acquired from Vonage)

• Or, the necessary hardware is free after rebates if you purchase at a retail store.

• 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).  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 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

Things we don't like about Vonage

• There is Vonage disconnect fee under the terms of service of $40, with the return of equipment required.  However, Verizon expects us to pay fees for adding a new line or for adding services - so the disconnect fee is not as bad as it sounds - As an example, Verizon charges $16 to re-add the call waiting and 3 way calling that we just canceled.  We didn't ask for a current price but the last time we did ask, Verizon wanted $86 to activate a new phone number even though the physical line already existed in the house. (over $250, if we did not have the existing line, to bring a new line into the house)

• 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.

• 411 fees are 99 cents vs. 80 cents from Verizon.

• Vonage asks an addition $10 a month for an additional "fax number".  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 fax line)  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.)

• Vonage's internet site does not tell us if the above "daisy chain" single line scenario mentioned above can or might work

• When signing up for the Vonage service and transferring from the Verizon service, the internet form asked whether we would like to retain our directory listing or not.  There was no information about the cost if we choose to retain the listing.

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.

• 911 service can be limited or unavailable with VoIP (as of May 2005, the FCC is requiring this service within 120 days of the requirement - stay tuned to how this plays out).  Check with the service companies you are researching

• Operator services are limited or 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 - see below

• If the POTS local telephone switching building looses electricity (and / or their backup generators go out) our plugged in land line phone will be out just like the cable phone service or DSL phone service.

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

• If your cable or DSL internet service goes out, your phone service goes out if you use digital phone or other VoIP services

• Voice quality can suffer if there is Internet congestions - we have not yet experienced this during the first weeks of Vonage use.  Our friends have had no problem either.  We have high speed cable services.

• 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 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.

Consumers are saving on taxes because VoIP is not yet regulated and taxed like the local telephone companies.  These phone companies are screaming to Congress with their lobbyists and to the regulatory agencies such as the FCC via their lawyers.  You can expect VoIP companies to be increasingly targeted by local and federal tax agencies.  (As of June 2005 the Vonage Unlimited rate is $25 a month but there was a $1.50 regulatory recovery fee and 75 cents FET tax.)

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 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 get 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 6 Months with Vonage:

After our first 6 months with Vonage, we are saving about what we expected - we are saving  over $60 a month, on one line,  by using Vonage!  (Actually, we are saving even more because we have cancelled other calling features on our other line - saving an additional $25 a month) And  we are completely satisfied with Vonage

And we are still getting a dial tone on our old Verizon line.

We had one "hiccup", in 6 months, on Vonage when we were on the line that lasted all of 5 seconds.  Our call was disconnected.  Simultaneously, our television cable TV picture froze, for about 5 seconds so we believe it was a Time Warner cable issue.

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

[home] [computer mentor] [hosting reviews] [links] [privacy] [gifts ][ library without walls ] [stamping]
[privacy][art by commision] [crystaltech review] [vonage review] [photoimpact review]

Be a good internet citizen. Keep your anti-virus software up-to-date. Install a personal firewall. We recommend Zone Alarm Pro.
 We recommend Mozilla (a variation of Netscape), or the Mozilla FireFox Browser (similar to Mozilla but without an email system) as our preferred browsers. Both are free at www.mozilla.org.
Mozilla and FireFox can block and control pop ups, block cookies and other spy ware, images and advertisements as you direct it.  The Mozilla mail client blocks junk mail too - all for FREE. Mozilla was been rated the best software and / or browser of 2003 by many prominent PC magazine and news sources.  FireFox is rated as the Best Browser in 2004 by even more industry analysts than lauded Mozilla

PC World rates FireFox as the number 1 new technology in 2005

© 2003-2007 prorganize®

Last updated: 01/13/2007