Hi all -- just wanted to offer a heads-up for anyone considering
signing up for Vonage service who's searching the newsgroups for
information. I just cancelled my Vonage service today (after having
been connected for about two days now.) Reason? Well, the voice
quality was pretty good, no beef there. The pricing, as anyone who's
done their homework knows, is pretty outstanding.
Problem is, the Motorola adapter I received from Vonage sends my
Internet connectivity straight into the ditch (slow to non-existent),
even when it's NOT servicing a phone call (outbound OR inbound). The
phone works fine, but surfing the net and checking mail became a dicey
proposition at best. As a technical note, my adapter was placed
between my DSL modem and my wireless broadband router (the setup
designed to give phone calls priority.) I tried various sequences of
resetting my DSL modem, the VoIP adapter, and my router, and none
worked -- removing the Motorola from the equation was the only way I
could restore good, fast Internet service.
When I phoned Vonage to cancel (which, by the way, left me very
unimpressed, once again, with their customer service, especially the
thick foreign accents and -- believe it or not -- the poor voice
quality of the phone connection with customer service) the Vonage
account rep actually told me that he personally had fielded a few
calls *that day* regarding the very same problem.
Bottom line? Based on my experience this week, I would advise being
very wary of signing up with Vonage *IF* you intend to use the free
(after rebate) Motorola device -- it is abundantly clear to me that
there are, at the very least, reliability issues with a signficant
number of the recently manufactured units. I can't say that all VoIP
adapters will cause problems, and want to make that clear. I also
can't say that I have issues with Vonage voice quality -- it was about
as good as I expected, given the nature of the signal delivery. But
you may want to consider hardware options other than the Motorola
VT1005 that they're giving away.
I hope that this info helps someone avoid annoyance similar to mine
(it IS a nuisance to have to pack stuff up and return it almost
immediately after having set it up.)
Skyline
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have been with Vonage now for about
three years (since early/mid 2003) and find that what you are saying
is sort of true with the older units as well. I cannot seem to do both
(voice and data) at a speed I am satisfied with. If the voice is up
there okay, then the data slows down, and if the data is okay then the
voice quality drops. Originally I had it set up with the Vonage unit
as one of the ports on the router (that was the way Vonage built them
in the beginnning). I got a new TA from them which was built as you
are familiar, with the TA in the middle, acting as a 'throttle' on the
whole thing. That made the voice quality go up, but the data speed go
_way_ down. Even with the newer TA, I wound up wiring it like a port
off of the router again; that brought the speed back up but took a
chunk of the voice away. Now I content myself with having the TA on a
port and when on a phone call, I _stop typing_ and/or recieving data,
since given my brain disease, I cannot do both at the same time very
well anyway. But -- I have one computer here which is on line 24/7 --
a weather station -- and once each minute it sends its data via FTP to
another site where it is available to the world and typically, once
each minute on my voice calls the voice drops off a wee bit :( I hava
a mini-PBX arrangement here, room-to-room calling as extension 1xx,
dial '9' for local outside calls, dial '8' for 'long distance' (the
Vonage line); the hangers-on around here are free to make calls to
wherever they wish; I make _them_ do the '8' for long distance thing
and let them complain about it; I generally dial '9' for both my local
and long distance (wink!) or use my cell phone. But I have been
thinking about dumping Vonage also if I can find one I like better.
PAT]
skyline_blvd@earthlink.net