Digital Trends

Vonage Broadband Telephone Service January 19th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Is It Worth It?

There's no disputing that the Vonage service can be cheaper than most local calling plans and offers a host of features at no additional cost. But there are some aspects of the service that may not be appealing to everyone.

First, you must dial the area code for every call you make — long distance or local. While this is only an additional four digits, not needing to dial the area code on your telephone may be a hard habit to break. We routinely found ourselves having to hang up and dial again because we forgot the area code. A phone with a good amount of speed-dial numbers makes this a non-issue. There is talk that Vonage will change this in the future though.

The Vonage system supports both LNP (Local Number Portability) and WNP (Wireless Number Portability). This means that in most cases you can transfer your landline or wireless number over to your Vonage account. However, many telephone companies have had major issues with number portability and there is a chance that, out of no fault of Vonage's, it may not work for you.

Another obstacle that some consumers may not want to deal with is the possible rewiring that may be required in your house. With normal POTS service all of the telephone jacks in your house are connected at one point to the line coming from the telephone company. With Vonage, you need to take that line coming from the telephone pole out of the equation. By simply connecting all of the existing lines together at this point, you'll be able to hook your Motorola Voice Terminal up to one of your household jacks and power the whole system.

The down side of this is that you will lose one jack in your house since it will now take the place of the line coming from the pole, and you may have to rewire where they all meet. It really isn't a huge undertaking, but it is something that you'll have to deal with if you want more than one phone connected to your Motorola Voice Terminal.

Vonage does a great job with their written installation instructions and adds some excellent Flash animations on their Website to help in several types of installations. For most people, installation shouldn't be much of a chore at all.

You are also at the mercy of your cable Internet provider. If the service goes down, you will be without a phone. If your power goes out you will also be without a phone — unless you connect your cable modem and voice terminal to a battery backup. For this reason, we only recommend Vonage for families that have cell phones. With a cell phone, you'll be able to make emergency calls in the event your power or Internet goes down. 

Conclusion

The VoIP arena is starting to really take off and Vonage has really set the bar high for potential competitors. They already face competition from a few other VoIP players, such as VoicePulse, who offers interesting features such as extensive call filter options. The big players in telecom have also announced plans for their own VoIP solutions. Let's just hope that as the VoIP industry booms, the great service, price and features aren't compromised by big business or the government trying to get involved. Several legislators and industry experts have already asked for a moratorium on government involvement, so that the VoIP industry doesn't get bogged down in fees, surcharges and bureaucracy like the telephone industry.

Vonage offers service similar in performance to POTS, at a lower cost with better features that are included free. If you have a cell phone, cable Internet and don't mind doing a quick install, Vonage makes a lot of sense. In our opinion, the cost savings and excellent features are well worth the change.