Phones

I’m not looking to switch to a new provider (like Vonage). I just want a service like K7 or GrandCentral that has a Canadian area code (ideally 604, but I’m not picky).

We also both use Vonage which is way cool. We could totally be twins. Vonage is an internet based phone line. We tossed our land line years ago, but when my oldest daughter (a teen) moved in we needed to have a phone at home. Vonage is not expensive and long distance is free which is awesome for us because my husband has family all over and my daughter can call her friends from her old school!

Though not as well-known as Skype or Vonage, FWD, now 12 years old, is the longest-surviving VoIP company in the world. From the beginning, FWD distinguished itself through advocacy efforts (e.g. FCC Pulver Order) and enabling tools (e.g. free SIP device registration), which helped the company attract some 700,000 registrations.

Vonage Communications and PR VP Karen Cleeve is probably kicking in-house flack Charlie Sahner under the table right now. In yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, Sahner was soundbited in the following gem:

VoIP is Voice over Internet Protocol. Standard telephone lines are referred to as PSTN or the Public Switched Telephone Network. PSTN works on circuit switching. A good example of circuit switching is the old switchboard operator who would connect callers to receivers by the use of electrical circuits. VoIP is Packet Switching. Packet Switching consists of data packets, or packets of information being carried across the Internet, from your computer to either another computer or PSTN telephone.

I’ve been following the progress of two very different companies with a very similar M.O.: capture business at the ILECs’ expense. These two companies are Covad and Vonage. Both share a desire to compete against the Bells, and both offer a net result of the Bells losing revenue. But one is diversified, forward-looking, and asset-rich (Covad) while the other is mired in question marks and is asset-poor (Vonage).

On the Voice over IP front, Comcast said it had signed up 1.5 million digital voice subscribers in 2006, giving them 1.9 million total, a user number roughly equal to that of independent VoIP provider Vonage. But just comparing Comcast to Vonage really doesn’t make sense, since Comcast’s reach and market opportunity (with video and broadband services) eclipses Vonage’s POTS replacement biz.

You may have heard we got a little bit of snow and ice here in the Seattle area. My Mom tells me everyone back home in TN is asking her how I’m coping with the weather. :) We didn’t really get that much – at least where I live, but the roads did get super icy so the entire city was shut down. And since I work from a home office and had to share my internet connection with thousands of telecommuting workers this week, that meant my productivity also took a hit. Slow loading of web pages is one thing, but since I have Vonage (usually love it), I couldn’t even talk on the phone for a couple days.

I'm seeing the usual suspects like Vonage and SunRocket, but then I see deals from companies like provider ViaTalk who are offering 6 months for free and I'm thinking maybe I should check them out. These guys must be new because I never heard of them until today, but from their site, it looks like their service is almost identical to the major VoIP players out there...and cheaper.

Vonage has huge issues with its service. In our small office where I work, we use Vonage as our main telephone service, just as many others are doing today. We’ve had nothing but continuous problems with the service. The biggest issue has been the fact we can’t call specific (and at random) telephone numbers. For example, the other day I was trying to call a 1-800 number to dial into a conference call from Microsoft. When I dialed the number using Vonage… all I got was silence. No rings. Nothing. I hung up and used my cell phone and it worked great. We’re finding we have to use our cell phones for quite a bit of phone calls when attempting to call out in our office. We’re having issues calling local and long distance numbers and completely at random so it seems.

These “home communication centres” might now be know as our Internet-enabled computers. We are converging on one communication line out that is our Coaxial Cable which provides TV programming and Internet access. Since I get telephone service via VoIP (i.e. Skype and Vonage), I’ve not been using the telephone line ever since.

So if I'm not answering your email, blog comments/contact submissions, or voice mail... well now you know why. And yes, I know my voice mail message is old, for some reason Vonage's VM system won't let me overwrite my old greeting (and I lost patience being on hold yesterday trying to resolve it)!

It's been a bad few months for VIOP provider Vonage. First the stock offering gets hammered - causing customer turmoil. And now phone competitor Verizon claims it owns key patents and Vonage is infringing.

Like switching to Vonage. The Vonage phone commercials have always irritated me: First of all, they stole the theme song from the 5,6,7,8's recording in Kill Bill Vol. 1, meaning that every time I watch that magnificent movie, I have to think about the idiotic Vonage commercials. On top of that, the videos they show are obviously staged (think back upon them and ask yourself if it makes any sense that someone would actually be filming these things on home video while not expecting anything to go wrong).

Also, don’t think I’m just talking about video files here! Anyone got a Vonage line? Yeah, Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is F’ed if this goes through. Think about it, the companies pushing for these laws are the PHONE companies. They’d just love to force you back to paying ridiculous rates for local and long distance calling!

As it stands, Vonage stock is off 30% from its initial price of $17.00. “Going public,” is not a panacea for company ills. A fundamental axiom for a successful IPO is that a company must offer a product that creates customer value. High subscriber turnover suggests dissatisfaction and the dissatisfied multitudes that have disappeared out Vongage’s back door would unanimously agree regarding this IPO, “I told you so.”

So if Verizon starts offering voice-over-IP (VOIP) service, they could make it so that all Vonage packets moving in their network are slowed so much that they effectively make Vonage service useless. Since all three backbone providers in the U.S. plan to do this (yes, they really do) there isn’t even a competitor to switch to. If your ISP uses AT&T, Verizon, or Bellsouth for it’s backbone connection (or your traffic needs to go through their network) you must subscribe to their VOIP service or you won’t get VOIP at all.

From the Customer Directed Share Program page, shares are offered to customers first.

We’re not the only people trying to rid ourselves of the local telephone company. For a very brief time we were going to go down to them just forwarding our existing telephone number to our Vonage VoIP lines but when Comcast couldn’t come through at our physical location then we were back to the local telco. You know how much they wanted to charge just to forward our existing main phone number to our VoIP lines? $18 + $4 tax. 22 bones for a computerized redirect. What a scam. Oh, and it took them three business days to do this. Three business days?

My Vonage equipment arrived (as expected) yesterday evening…nice and speedy shipping is always a plus. Total setup time was less than 10 minutes; the phone automatically configured itself (and even includes an extra ethernet port, which is nice as I’m running out of sockets) and was usable immediately. Everything about the phone and service is completely configurable via the Vonage website (such as setting up voicemail, data speed, etc). The coolest feature IMO is that I can check my voicemail from any web browser without even having to call in! Call quality is crystal clear, and something else I didn’t realize is that I can take the phone/hub with me anywhere…if there’s an internet connection I just plug it in and blammo, I’m good to go.

Why should the large telecommunications companies like the Time Warner Syndicate, Cox Communications, and Verizon determine what I can and cannot do with my Internet connection? The Internet is the greatest engine of free speach and free enterprise ever created. It is the greatest forum for democratic ideals ever made. Everyone has a voice on the Internet and everyone can do with it what they wish. But, by voting against the protection of the neutrality of the Internet the US Congress could be irrepribly harming all of that. Think about it, if and when this is passed by the full Congress, your cable modem provider could block VOIP traffic from every company except their own…so no more Vonage. They could block scheduling packets from TiVo in order to force you to use their own DVR systems.

Vonage ran a test. It seems the ISP was blocking the cable modem when the Vonage adapter went into use. I ran a test of my own. I ran pingplotter for 10 minutes: no blockage, then I picked up my Vonage phone and placed a call: immediately there was a 100% blockage on the cable modem. This was a continuous loss as long as the phone was used.

The same problem still exists. Perhaps the so-called ‘plate’ on the pole needs to be changed. At this point in time I have a giant headache. High speed was supposed to be great and save me lots of time. Not only do I have high speed but I have Vonage as my telephone which is internet based so when I lose my internet connection, I lose my phone as well. This is really great when talking to clients…

Update: I have now had the chance to read the Vonage filing which is betterdescribed as a request for an investigation as opposed to a complaint. In fact, Vonage concludes its submission by arguing that “Shaw’ s QofSService has the potential to greatly damage nascent competition forlocal VoIP services across its serving territory. Vonage Canada is ofthe view, however, that not enough is known at this point about theShaw service in order to formulate an appropriate regulatory response.”

Look at this report from a Vonage user: could not dial an emergeny # on vonage tonight The summary is a small child had swallowed something, and they needed to reach a poison control center immediately, and couldn't get through on their Vonage line. After a couple tries to dial on Vonage they switched to their cell phone and went right through. In the followups as others gave their own horror stories.

Plenty of digital ink has been spilled covering the Vonage IPO. If this interests you I strongly suggest reviewing the articles summarized in a recent Seeking Alpha Post.

After my initial report on the Skype Mouse Phone, I knew it was only a matter of time until a VoIP keyboard would come out. Well yesterday must of been my lucky day, because after I was right about the Vonage IPO, I saw an article about the first VoIP keyboard.

Yeah, it’s been a mess with them. Their incompetence is atrocious, and I’ve given more than a few verbal ass-kickings to their support/customer service people, believe me. So far I’m happy with Vonage for my office & fax, at least it’s a consistent bill and the service is actually good as long as I’m not doing heavy uploading. Now, I have to give Charter some credit, the Internet service is pretty stable. I was one of the first people in my county (#5, in fact) to get Cable Internet, and let me tell you — they’ve come a long way. I have a metric ton of stories regarding the “early days” but now it’s rarely down, and pretty fast.

The post points to the fact that the proprietary technologies of Skype and Vonage and other VOIP providers could pose a security risk. Read the post. He makes some very good points and points to more genuinely interesting observations by a group that watches such things.

It is careful to point out that tracking and monitoring are two completely different things. Your cell phone calls are being tracked (again, not monitored). Your home phone calls are being tracked. Each month you get a list of who you called and, at least with Vonage, who called you. Just like a cell phone bill. When you buy something using your credit card, that is being tracked. Wait until that data starts to get sold around to people. When you make an online payment, it is tracked. When you log into any site using a User ID and a password, you guessed it, it is being tracked. If you work for a company with more then 5 people in it, odds are pretty good that everything that you do online can not only be tracked, but it can be monitored.

This morning I signed up for Vonage to be the primary phone provider for our house. I’d be interested in hearing - via comments - other people’s experiences with Vonage or other voip providers.

On a somewhat tacky geek side note I can say that despite the fact that they shut off the power my webserver and network stayed online uninterupted on UPS power for over 2 hours. My vonage line even had a dial tone since I threw the cordless phone on one UPS. That’s it for now. I’ll post pictures of the front of the building tomorrow.

Now I travel a lot and in terms of miles I am often further away. But in The Bahamas I was not reachable by cell phone. That was the worst part. I could and did call home from my sister's house. They have a Vonage phone and that was great. But it wasn't as if I could just on the spur ofthe moment call home. Nor could my wife call me if something went wrong at home. Which it did. She was able to handle it fine of course. But it would have been nice if we could have talked about it. This is something I am going to have to look into - international cell phone service - should I travel outside the US without her again.

Well, this has been a productive lunch break. While dining on Campbells “Soup at Hand,” I have finally managed to call the real estate agent who is listing our house, and cleared up what the deal is. Apparently Vonage has been eating our voicemails again, because she actually has had several interested parties, but not knowing we’d moved out, she couldn’t set up a showing. She is now abreast of the fact that the house is empty (mostly, and messy I warned her). But I am really encouraged by the fact that people have recently wanted to see it, even with the market being a bit slow right now.

Vonage: Nice idea, execution? Somedays it’s choppier than the French revolution but those calls are at least made. The problem is this. Companies with certain types of 1-800 numbers or that rely on reading the ANI (Automatic Number Identification) from your phone to grant you account access or activate a credit card are not being sent anything they want to work with. They think I am in another area code so no card until I call the cc people, Joy oh joys. I really want to like Vonage but I keep getting crappy reports on international calls making one of the best reasons to have it , 3c to the UK, moot.

On the positive front, I jumped onto the Voice over IP phone service by signing up with Vonage. My first call was to my mom and stepfather in Florida and it worked really well. I'm happy and would recommend it to anyone. It only costs $25 per month for unlimited calling and free long distance in the US and Canada.

This company uses Vonage broadband phone service. I have to say I’m impressed. Before I signed up, I wasn’t sure what sort of hardware to use — I was concerned I’d end up with something that was totally proprietary and would never work with anything else. Turns out, the phone adapter I chose, the Linksys RTP300, is just a regular old Linksys router that happens to have two phone jacks preconfigured (by Vonage) for access to their network. It’s nothing super fancy, but it works quite well.

This always happens to me. I have only signed up for Vonage for about two months and I just heard about Broad Voice. I've also been learning about Asterisk (inspired by this.) I was considering setting up an Asterisk server and getting an account with FreeWorldDialup, or some other vendor that offered bare bones connectivity to the traditional phone network. My wife is still using this computer we bought in 2000. I have been trying to get her off of it for about a year now, so I can re-comission it for thins like this.

this went on for a while… until I realized… its the Vonage line!!! The whole analog to digital back to analog thing meant the box could net get it’s initial update (which would allow me to connect a broadband connection).

My broadband phone service, which is purchased through Vonage, is better than ever after they recently sent me a new Linksys terminal adapter to replace the old Motorola one. Turns out that old device was wreaking havoc on call quality and reliability (big time). It even prevented my non-voice traffic from working reliably. But with the new hardware in place, all is well.

1. 100% Guarunteed Bandwidth alotment
2. Right to connect anything to the network
3. Right to connect any number of systems to a network

I talk to my daughter in Okinawa almost every day. We gave them a Vonage phone (nayy) to take with them. Costs me $30/month. Thank some smart people and the internet.

On another note, I’m off home toBarbados in late September for a few weeks. First stop will be my grandfather’s place to fix his home network, and ensure his DSL line works satisfactorily. I’ll also be installing a Sipura for him, probably a two line one so he has options. He probably won’t use the options, but I think I’ll configure the primary line with either Gossiptel (who seem to have problems recently :( ) or the UK Vonage service. The secondary line, I’ll stick on FWD - he’ll be able to dial myself and my parents for free that way (and could do with Gossiptel, we both have Gossiptel accounts), and could also dial 800 numbers in the USA.

(17:48:20) Mike: because my voice number is Vonage that simul-rings my home phone, office phone and cell phone

And finally, to end today's non sequitur, I noticed this weekend that I'm such a drone to marketing that when I catch myself about to do something stupid, my mind plays the Vonage music. I'm not digging this at all.

Saturday morning I woke up at a criminally early hour (for a weekend anyhow). Since sleep apparently wasn't in the game plan I decided to call Vonage to see if I could actually get someone on the phone, and if I could convince them to listen to me long enough to troubleshoot a hardware/firmware problem I've been having with my VOIP terminal adapter.

My internet broke on Friday, right before I left to go interfere with Chris for the weekend, so I didn't have time to do much about it (i.e., call Cablevision), so when I came home this afternoon, I called for help. I think all I had to do was press the "Power" button on the cable modem, as it appears everything is currently functional. It's kinda a pain when the cable modem goes, though, because I use Vonage, which means my phone line is connected through the cable modem, and I pay the Cablevision bill through the internet, which means I don't get paper bills, which means I can't access the internet or call Directory Assistance to find their tech support number to call them. And although I do have a cell phone, the fact that I live in a basement apartment means I have to go outside to get phone reception, which means that when the tech support guy (or gal) asks me a question or tells me to do something, I have to explain why I have to put them down and run into the house. I lose internet connectivity maybe 2 or 3 times a year (usually because I'm moving wires or cleaning or something), so it's not a really big deal, only a hassle that makes me reconsider not having a "real" phone line or something similar. Ahh well.

Parsing the information, (which comes from market research firm Point Topic), we see that as of the first quarter of this year, the top ten VoIP providers listed by number of customers were:

1. Skype- 5,300,000

Rich Tehrani of TMCnet posted today that there are rumours of Bell South purchasing Vonage at 3.5 billion dollars US. http://blog.tmcnet.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/9198. The blog wires are humming with comments etc about this today, and there's all kinds of interesting analysis. I'm gonna add some too, although I'm no analyst, and don't really know all that much anyways....

So, for a technology with so much promise and convenience, this area of the country is totally left in the dark. You can stroll into any electronics store in town and buy Vonage adapters, but you cannot get Vonage service locally. Hey Vonage ( or any other VoIP provider), roll out service in this area and you would quickly make a killing. Why sell the adapters, but not provide the service? I’m sure it makes sense on some marketing level, but in the meantime we’re left with either making serious compromises or avoiding you. Any company with half a brain could easily blow the other two providers here right out of the market. Anyone out there have half a brain?

I have Vonage, and I have a SoftPhone line. I’ve had this problem (and according to what I’ve seen elsewhere on the net, I’m not the only one) where I was unable to place any calls with the supplied software on Mac OS X Tiger—I’d get a “499 Not Acceptable Here” error every time I tried. However, I had no problem receiving calls, nor placing calls from non-Tiger boxes.

If you’ve been interested in trying out the Vonage VoIP service well Linksys and Vonage has a deal for you. Purchase one of the new Linksys Wireless-G VoIP routers and receive several rebates that essentially makes your router free. This only works if you had a previous Linksys Wireless Router before hand AND if you plan on using Vonage’s VoIP service.

Instead you have someone like Vonage operating their own closed voip network as the posterchild for voip (sorry Jeff) much like AOL for many really IS or WAS the Internet...for several, Vonage IS VoIP - let's face it. Even worse, we're letting that happen all over again. Think about it. VoIP/Vonage is just like Internet/AOL a few years back. Sure the LECs will have their own flavors but one independent company is taking the lead as the top proprietary service. Doesn't have to be this way guys, we've got to find a way to take the maverick mentality and polarize for the greater good. Otherwise, we're going nowhere fast in small, isolated silos and repeating history with VoIP and limiting our businesses every single day.

Today I finally got my package from DHL (courier company), the VoIP provider is Vonage, they are located in USA but they have just increased their services to Canada now. First of all, the voice quality is so good, if my ears are any better I could say the quality is MUCH higher than regular phone line. I love it. I’m paying 19.99 per month with 500 minutes of talk time (that only includes outbound calls), any inbound from Toronto is FREE! So, if any of you are out of town and still like to keep in touch with your love ones (family and...

The move comes as Vonage is gearing up via VARs to sell to the same small business market. But Vonage has a different spin with the SOHO and SMB offering. It's the folks doing the selling. The Vonage sales force are proven telecom and IT sales and installation companies (or are supposed to be). Pitney Bowes sells stamp machines and office related equipment. So just as P8 preceded Vonage into the consumer VoIP space, as they also did in the business space, they are hoping via this move to avoid having what happened in the residential market, where...

When I initially signed up with Vonage, almost a year ago.. I had to buy an ATA from them. This was no problem, because I didn’t have something like Asterisk in place. Their device performed beautifully for quite some time. Because the Vonage ATA and Asterisk is redundant, I called them to see if I could link Vonage directly into Asterisk. I can, but not using their unlimited plan, only using their $9.99 a month 500 minute “soft phone” plan. I found this most unacceptable and chose to suspend my account.

Digits 0-9 are standard stuff, but what are the * and # buttons for? And why are there letters above almost every digit? The configuration of these two buttons along with the letters above the digits is the same as you'd find on a telephone. Could there be a Vonage-like VoIP function in the works? If this is old news or has been explained elsewhere someone should tell me because I must have missed a press release somewhere.

Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom announced the company plans to put out a VoWLAN phone, which will allow customers to connect to the Skype voice network via WiFi. Not too many specifics were given, other than that it’ll be out later this year. Let’s hope they inject it with a little more style than Vonage’s retro-cell aesthetic employed on the UTStarcom F1000, their first offering in the WiFi phone department.

Hmm, wonder if I should be concerned about my favorite VoIP company: Vonage? Om Malik says that they are on a spending tear:

Vonage is spending $21.829 million a month on Internet advertising alone, making it the second biggest money spender online.

Can you feel the excitement?! Only 32 hours before the CRTC decides whether it's going to regulate Internet telephony. Judging by recent analyst reports and news stories, regulating ILECs such as Bell and Telus could destroy their local phone businesses, while making them uncompetitive in the fast-emerging Internet telephony market. It's all a bit dramatic. It's not like Bell and Telus will be unable to offer Internet telephony. It's not like they won't be able to use their strong brands, customer relationships, and ability to offer multi-service...

If there's ever too much of a good thing, the VOIP market is a perfect illustration. With low barriers to entry into a market just starting to emerge, there is plenty of confusion among consumers about which service provider to use. Do you sign up with Vonage because they aggressively advertise and just raised US$200-million in private equity? Or do you go with your cableco because they offer VOIP within an attractive bundle? Stepping into this selection "void" is Whichvoip.com, which offers consumers an easy way to select the best VOIP service provider based on their specific requirements. A particularly nice feature is the Web site's advanced search capability that kicks back service providers that meet a consumer's personalized needs. Whichvoip.com also offers reviews and tools to select a VOIP SP for business users. I'm not sure if there are similar sites to Whichvoip.com but the Seattle-based company deserves kudos for recognizing an opportunity and rolling out a easy to use service.

As expected, Canada's telecom regulator has decided to regulate VOIP. It means ILECs such as Bell Canada and Telus Corp. will have to seek pricing approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commision to ensure they don't sell Internet telephony service below cost, while cablecos and third-party suppliers such as Vonage and Primus are free to price any way they want. Bell Canada, Sasktel and Telus have already said they will appeal the decision to the federal cabinet, and could pursue legal action. The bottom line is the CRTC...

Now that the CRTC has shackled ILECs when it comes to VOIP, Vonage Canada has decided it's time to crank up its marketing machine. This will see Vonage sponsor two high-profile events in Toronto this summer - the Molson Indy and the Distillery Jazz Festival. From a marketing/advertising perspective, it will be an interesting summer for the VOIP industry as existing players get more aggressive, and Rogers launches its cable telephony service in July. You have to expect Bell Canada will respond by promoting its own VOIP service - Bell Digital Voice...