So Far I’m Pretty Satisfied with Vonage
In about 2 months I’ll be into my 4th year of Vonage phone service. (Although you might want to note the date of this piece-since I DID switch to the way, way cheaper MagicJack a few months after I originally wrote this). Anyway, the funny thing is, up until recently, during the the last 2 years or so I hadn’t really used the phone much. See I moved. I used to live in Los Angeles, but now I’m in Chicago. But I intend to go back to LA. And that brings us to one of the weirdest features that Vonage offers; you can take your number with you. And that’s the reason that in the future internet based telephone service (VoIP) will probably be very popular.
And that’s how Vonage works; it spreads by being popular, or maybe a better word is contagious. I got it, and then spread it to about 5 people in my circle of friends and family. Because another one of the features is that Vonage customers who call other Vonage customers don’t loose any minutes (if you’re on their 500 minutes plan like me). And they have basically 2 plans; unlimited calling and the lower cost 500 minutes plans. And that one is perfect for me, since incoming calls don’t count, and I RARELY make 500 minutes of calls in a month from my home phone. You know, most people are like me; they use their cell most of the time.
For those of you who don’t know, the way the service works is you use a high speed internet connection to have a phone conversation. (And I get mine from ATT DSL for 19.95 again and in certain areas 10.00 a MONTH for people who have never had the service. OR you can go for the NO PHONE LINE version). A REALLLLY long time ago there used to be a thing called “Dialpad.” And Dialpad was like a chat device, except you used a microphone and speakers to talk to people over the internet. It was awesome; you just called people and talked-today’s version of that is called Skype. But it’s the same principle VoIP companies use, except they insert actually telephones into the equations to make people feel normal. So today not only are there lots of VoIP companies out there, but big phone companies like ATT and cable companies like Comcast offer the service too. And once you read about all the features that VoIP has, at such a low cost, you get on board. It just makes sense.
In my mind there are only 2 real legitimate problems with the Vonage service. Every so often you can have some break-up in your quality. To combat that they have a web based tool called the bandwidth saver that allows you to alter how much juice the system is getting. You go into the “Features” area and then look for your bandwidth tool like so….
Once you’re in there you just choose a setting for better sound. I helped a friend with this tonight-I assume that’s why I’ve got Vonage on the brain tonight…
The other BIG problem with Vonage is no call blocking! Jesus! For all the features and all the cool things you can do, in THIS modern world you NEED to be able to block assholes from calling you. I mean, REALLY. Seriously who doesn’t want that? Vonage recently rolled out Anonymous Call Rejection, which lets you deny callers who don’t identify themselves, but that’s like a small ice cube on the iceberg of call issues. There’s this thing you can for free at phonetray.com, but so far I’m not having a lot of success with it. But maybe it’ll work for you!
If you want to read about a guy who was NOT happy with Vonage , then check this out. And he’s not a casual user, he’s a guy who really knows the industry.
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