My Experience with Vonage

Well, after several months after converting my household to Vonage as our phone company, I am pleased to report that the major telephone companies have something to be concerned about.

Vonage reliability has been excellent. Of course this is a reflection on my cable company, Comcast. Comcast keeps our internet connection up around 99% of the time the best I can calculate. For home use, that is completely acceptable. We have three cell phones, so there are other ways we can work an outage.

However, we have not had an outage that has kept us from making a call.

The cost is exceptional. Since I cancelled service with my major phone company, they have sent me biweekly offers trying to suck me back into paying more for fewer services. Every time I read one of their offers, I chuckle and toss it in the garbage.

For those of you who are looking for an internet phone company, Vonage has surpassed my expectations. My wife loves getting voicemail in her inbox and I can see how we are doing with our total minutes with several clicks.

If you do not want to manage your minutes, then the unlimited plan will more than pay for itself. We have a combination of long distance and local free minutes between our cell phones and our Vonage line that currently exceeds what we could use.

Here is the breakdown:

800 anytime minutes with cell service (Sprint). This includes long distance, local, roaming, and unlimited internet on my Treo. I get email on my phone. This also includes free Sprint cell phone to Sprint cell phone calls and nights starting at 7:00 p.m. and all day Saturday and Sunday. That is a lot of free calling.

500 anytime minutes with Vonage. This includes all of the features you pay extra for with the big guys such as call waiting, caller-id, three-way calling and some other features that traditional phone companies simply cannot offer.

These are basic plans and low cost. The alternatives to traditional phone monopolies, sorry, companies are only getting better. Check out Sun Rocket as well as Vonage. I hear it is a great service as well.

Vonage gets an “A-” overall. It would earn a solid “A” if the customer support was not in India. My name is not Mr. Eric. It is Mr. Boehme or just Eric. A bit of a cultural chasm.