Full disclosure -- I STILL have a land line.

Ok, with that out... I'm done paying for a land line. The primary reason I have one is for the security system, but I have some specific notification needs from my home automation system and a GSM radio tied into my alarm will do the trick. Therefore, the land line dependency is now gone.

I have comcast for interwebs now, DirecTV for TV (and I'm NOT switching). So I figure I can go the comcast route for phone or Vonage.


After talking to comcast today, I felt like I needed to take a shower. The promo rate is for 6 months, at $19.99. After six months, it goes to $34.99. Then after a year it's $39.99. I also learned I'd need a new modem, so that would run me over $100 if I want to buy or $7 a month to lease. The costs are quickly rising and I'm already paying $50 a month for 50mbit internet.

A couple of people in the office have Vonage and like it. My comcast connection, as mentioned is good with around 20ms latency.


Any vonage users in here? Anything I should be worried about? Is comcast really the way to go. I just fear I won't be saving much in the end, especially if I'm looking at $40 a month in the future months.

 

Why not just pay a little more for an unlimited cell plan? (assuming both you & the wife have existing ones). Or get unlimited skype for like $5. Do you really need a dedicated handset that bad around the house?

 

If you're only going to be making phone calls within the US and Canada, have you looked into an Obihai and Google Voice?

Amazon.com: OBi100 VoIP Telephone Adapter and Voice Service Bridge: Electronics

http://slickdeals.net/f/5547566-Obih...-Free-Shipping

Basically, you'll get free incoming and outgoing using Google Voice and a PBX setup. If you want e-911 service, its like $0.8 a month. If you don't want to use Google Voice, you can sign up for any other VoIP service out there which will be cheaper than Vonage. Now there is a catch with this which is that its only free until Google Voice stops allowing free incoming and outgoing calls in the US. When that happens, no one knows but they usually make announcements at the end of the year.

 

My wife does.

 

Im not sure how good now the service Vonage is but, before a friend of mine used to have them and it was always a pain because we would always get dropped calls. She was in Japan, but still. I guess it just depends how good your cable internet is in your area.

 

not bad. its about the same price on amazon but atleast you can use prime if you are a member.

 

Had Vonage. When the internet was down no Vonage. Now just have a cell phone.

 

I had it for many years and never had a technical problem with it. As long as the interweb was running and i had power then vonage worked great. I dumped it becuase the price price kept going up. The base fee of 25 or whatever it is they are charging always stays the same but they kept jacking the fees up. I think when i dumped it there was about 8 or 9 dollars in tax/fee on top of normal rate. I did find that if i called to complain they would give me some deal for a year. I ended up switching to Verizon triple play. Verizon gave me a 250 gift card and i pay a few bucks less a month now.

I was able to port my land line number to and from vonage no problem. The trick is don't cancel your existing service. It will cancel automatically after the port is complete. I read that vonage will really give you a hard time when you try to cancel over the phone so canceling via number port is the way to go.

Security systems not guarantied to work the last time i checked.

 

I would have Vonage if my security system was compatible with them. Had Vonage back in the mid 2000's and loved them.

my favorite thing about them back then was playable and downloadable voicemails on their webpage and emails. but in 2013, everyone does that now.

 

I wish I knew this 3 years ago when I took over my sister's Vonage account. It was a pain in the butt to cancel it. The guy just wouldn't do it. He kept on offering bundle after bundle trying to convince me to stay with them. (This also works if you want to lower your Vonage bill by the way where they'll offer you some pretty good prices). I just had no more use for it which is why I canceled. Otherwise it was an okay service. It wasn't until maybe 30 minutes into the conversation and a bit of screaming that he finally canceled the account.

 

I took my Magic Jack with me to London and it works great, I can make and receive calls to the US for gratis. Vonage is the same concept.