Vonage Alternatives?

We're in the middle of a dispute with Qwest as well. Have dropped them alltogether. As soon as number portability came through we switched to Mediacom for our cable internet and next week they'll be installing their new digital VOIP as well. Greatest part……THEY UNCAP THE CABLE CONNECTION TOTALLY!!!!!!!!! WOOT!!!!!
Sorry Chris, they're not available in your area I don't believe…..

Chris – Drop Vonage and go with Comcast Digital Voice. I just did that a few days ago, and I haven't looked back. The new modem you get with Digital Voice also supports much higher speeds, so it is future-proof (for the time being!) It also has a 4 hour battery backup. If your power goes out, your internet goes down, but you have 4 hours of phone service.
Lastly, the phone VOIP line is separate from your Internet line, so neither degrades the performance of the other. THey will even make it so that all the phone ports in your home can be used by Digital Voice, so you dont HAVE to plug all the phones into the router.
Good stuff.

Sorry to hear about your problems. I have had Vongae for about 18 months now and only had the router go bonkers once – when we had brown-outs due to high winds. They want your computer IP to make sure you are on the same subnet as the router; otherwise you won't be able to connect to the admin screens. Hold the reset button for 10+ seconds, and connect a computer using DHCP to one of the three Ethernet ports. Then you should be able to connect to it using the default settings of 192.168.15.1 user name=admin, password=admin – once you get in, you should be able to set it up again. I tried to use Skype for a while, but the Vonage voice quality is so much better and the service is really reliable.

Chris,….whyare you even bothering with Vonage….be an uber geek and run your own http://www.asterisk.org server.
then you can connect to any carrier via sip, answer any call from any location, voicemail to email blah blah blah
http://www.cognation.net/asterisk if you need more info or http://www.voip-info.org if you want the techspeak.
btw My advice is to install the asterisk@home iso as the fastest way to get up and running.
Cheers,
Dean

Here is my story. I share it only so you can get the name of the person who fixed me up. Save some time and don't deal with the first round of folks. Also, press them, they can (and did for me) waive the $99 replacement fee. Tell them you are about to switch to something else and they will bend over backwards to make you happy, but you have to be talking to a manager before you get stuff done. If Mr. Perry is still there he should be able to fix you up post haste.

Here is the link. Link didn't go first time. :S

Chris,
I am also in Seattle and on Comcast, and am using Sunrocket. It has worked just great. It'll also save you about $100 per year. Good customer service. Real folks with real answers. I recommend it.

I believe vonage is only good because it can provide free devices. If they can not do that, why stay with them? Their price is the highest I've ever seen for voip service providers. Try whatever like Pocket8, IConnectHere or Vbuzzer.

Could someone help me?
I used to have vonage service with their Linksys RT31P2. Recently I have discontiuned with vonage phone service for a new Voip service–italkbb. I still use the same router Linksys RT31P2 for italkbb, but I am not able to receive any phone calls from Vonage customer (I still be able to call vonage customer)
What should I do? Should I reset Linksys RT31P2? Linksys manual says the if I want to reset to factory Defaults, the password is only available from the internet phone service, but I am no longer having any service with Vonage.
Appreciate for your help!

Chris–You have had a web blog for over a year and you just got tired of letting people tell you how bad vonage is. Why don’t you allow the truth be told and let people post how bad the company is. Have you been bought off by Vonage?

HI
We have a small VoIP service business. The only thing we have to offer that is different than Vonage and the other big providers is hands on service.
We will spend hours on the phone making your service work.

How can we get listed on your recommendations?

Hi,

Has anyone had any luck joining vonage, leaving vonage, and being able to take your number with you?

I’m tired of talking to the Indian people and the full mailboxes as well.

Take some of that money you are paying half naked models to run around on the superbowl ads and help people out.

They have me bent over because I have been with them over 2 years and I tried to leave with SBC, everything was set and then the phone call. Vonage will not release your phone number. Vonage says it’s not owned by them but by another company Red something or other and it’s beyond their control. I have advertising in the phone book ,business cards, etc and would lose all that business.

Any ideas?

I’m having exact same issue with Vonage/Comcast and RT31P2 router. Appears RT31P2 is not compatible with Comcast modem. Vonage is being lame. Linksys is useless and Comcast says its not their problem.

My RT31P2 is also blinking constantly.

I got the same warranty line from Vonage and its inexcusable. Vonage did agree to finally send a new one, but its going to be the same model. I highly doubt the router is not functioning. I think it Comast and it incompatibility with Lynksys. My other Linksys wireless router is having the same blinking problem when connected to Comcast. I have also tried two different cable modems.

I have a RT31P2 also. I wrote Linksys and told them I was going to Vista soon and I needed Drivers for my router. They sent me a link to see if my router (rt31p2) was on the list.

It’s not on the list. So I guess I’m going to have to buy a new router when I Install Vista.

Mike

I have had nothing but problems with Vonage for almost a year. I plan to leave them once the penality phase of the contract is up. I HATE VONAGE. People do stupid things…they sign up for Vonage.

I signed up with Vonage years ago when they first rolled out service. Back then they were shipping Cisco 180 series ATAs to all customers. That thing has been a workhorse and never needs to be rebooted and has never caused any problems.
When the Linksys brand got rolled out and they rolled an actual router into the ATA, everything went to crap.

Subscribers beware!
All I know is that, I signed up for Vonage service and everything was great until 3 weeks later when the service stopped working. I called in to customer service and tech support and they did some troubleshooting with me until they decided that it would not be fixable. They told me to “BORRROW a friends laptop…” I never was able to find anyone to borrow one from to continue the troubleshooting with them. I finally just gave up on their service. They made some promise that they failed to keep. Needless to say I did not realize that you agree to a year contract with them when you sign up. :O YIKES! Also you give them free reign to charge your CREDIT CARD! :O YIKES! I tried to alert them of the problem with their customer service and they told me that I owed roughly $100 for cancelling my service. I asked them if they felt it was right to be charging for service they were not providing and they stated that I did not follow through with their recomendations. It is a little disheartening to know that our government allows businesses to treat consumers like this. To charge for services and not provide them should be illegal.
daneK

I really like the service. I have had nearly 100% uptime since I started 13 or 14 months ago….

I even switched from Cable to DSL, and Vonage continued to work without any configuration.

I did try to cancel, but they offered me two free months, so I am on that right now. The only reason I wanted to discontinue service was because I got a cell phone, and just don’t need it any longer. I thought I might as well take the free time, though.

I do stand with Vonage against Verizon’s patent dispute. I can’t help but side with the company who is cost-efficient, inovative, and fair with pricing.

VONAGE is an unscrupulous company with tactics of thugs. Vonage refuses to cancel my account after approximately two weeks of repeatedly trying to cancel my Vonage account by telephone and email.

I’ve used several VOIP services – Vonage, Earthlink’s Truevoice, Time Warner Cable VOIP, and Verizon’s Voicewing. Amazingly verizons was hands down the worst. Not sure how they won that lawsuit against Vonage. Earthlink’s service barely acceptable – you had to dial the area code with every call, including local. TWC and Vonage were both very comprable to the old AT&T landline, and for the money Vonage is the hands down best. I would never go back to AT&T but I understand with the increased services and reduce fees I have to accept that everyonce and awhile I have to reboot a device. For folks who are not a least a little geeky, stay away from VOIP for a while.

Unia Telecom http://www.uniatelecom.com . went to the Unia Telecom site. good Connecticut based VOIP phone service provider. Great alternative to Vonage or SunRocket! Apparently, they have a cap on subscribers they’re willing to service. According to the CSR I spoke with, no more than 5K users at any given time. Said they want to ensure preservation of quality service delivery by not having too many subscribers. Surely makes sense.
Definitely signing up now……

G.

I have been a Vonage subscriber for about 8 months. Quality of service has been up and down, but part of the issue wa putting the VOIP router behind an older router and using a old cable modem. After making adjustments, Vonage has been working pretty well.

Overall, the problems with using Vonage service that I am aware of are two fold:

If one wishes to cancel, Vonage gives you a har way to go, but eventually gives in (not good). I think this will change, as Vonage management is not happy with their customer service and have made it a priority to improve.

If your internet connection drops packets, has delay or jitter, the VOIP quality really suffers (true for all public internet VOIP). It is my understanding the cable companies use a secure private network for their VOIP, not the public internet as Vonage does, so less of a problem with cable companies.

The benefits of Vonage are IMHO are as follows:

A lot of features that are NOT available via other VOIP providers. My favorite is Vonage talk that allows me to answer my vonage line anywhere from my PC or make a call that does NOT tie up my vonage line from my PC.

Cost – Comcast time warner wnt 39.95 per month, not much different from my local phone company with bundleed features. So why move from POTS for only a couple hundred $$ savings. Vonage saves me $400 – $500 per year, $60 dollars savings more if I pay yearly!

If one moves for a temporary assignnmet overseas, just take the Vonage device with you. Same US phone number, etc. as long as you have high speed internet.

It comes down to what works for you.

Today we had a terrible experience with Vonage. 3 months ago we called Vonage to have our service transfer to them but after being tired of waiting and also we did not want to continue paying two differents telephone companies we decided to cancel Vonage. First they did not want to cancel their line by trying to offer us some ridiculous deals and second they told us that they will charge us $127 for disconnection fee. Not only Vonage sucks, incompetent but they are also dishonest. I will tell anyone that I know how bad this company is.

We used Vonage for our business for almost a year, and due to the high number of dropped calls switched to UniaTelecom. Great service, good connection, no dropped calls. We have been using them for 4 month, and have not encountered any problems. In addition, we get an email from UniaTelecom customer service every month asking if we are satisfied with the service. Vonage did not even come close to UniaTelecom service quality. Stop waisting your time and check them out.

OMG someone help me. This has been happening for a few months now. I am having a problem with Call Forwarding/SimulRing. When someone calls my Vonage number and their call forwards/simulrings to my mobile phone, their number shows up on the Caller ID as an international number. For example: if I get a call on my Vonage phone from 202-555-1234 (a local Washington number), and that call forwards/simulrings to my cell phone, the call appears on my cell phone as +20 25551234 (a number in Egypt). This ONLY happens with calls forwarded from my Vonage number. It does not happen when someone calls my cell phone directly. This started happening a few months ago. It occurs with every call forwarded from my Vonage number to a non-Vonage number (EXCEPT, interestingly, when the incoming/forwarded call is FROM another Vonage number). I have already tried the following, to no avail:
- resetting all the devices on my network time and time again.
- trying a different cell phone (though same provider, AT&T)
- getting a new SIM card in my cell phone
- calling AT&T to see if they can troubleshoot the issue on their end
And their Indian cust svc reps are so aggravating to talk to… though they speak perfect English, there is a distinct language barrier. They are so focused on their script that if you throw them a curveball like this you can hear in their voice right away that it just does not compute. Not to mention that so much time is wasted listening to them thanking me a zillion times… thanks for being a customer since 1995, thanks for holding for 30 seconds, thanks for allowing me to call you Steve. They should really be thanking me for not going to Bangalore with an axe………. but I digress.

Any ideas, anyone???

RE: Using God’s name in vain in this blog: Try to avoid this if you can. He can definitely take it but it really serves no purpose and distracts from the good work that you do.