Last summer I switched to lingo.com, an IP phone service that proved to be cheap but unreliable. Starting last week Lingo failed altogether and their tech support folks (available only by phone, which is kind of irksome) failed to call back, so I ordered Vonage, which is the same $25/month but does not include Western Europe in its unlimited calling region and has higher international rates.
Here’s how Vonage has worked…
- Vonage sends you a brand-new Linksys broadband router with included IP phone jacks and three Ethernet jacks; if you were relying on your old router for 802.11b or to use as an 8-port hub you may have to buy some new networking gear
- the customer service Web site is very slow and about 25% of the time page requests produce an error page with a “try again later” instruction
- tech support is available through a form on their Web site; this form asks for your name, phone number, account number, etc., even though you’ve already logged in and it should have all of his info as part of your account profile
- tech support via phone results in a “we’re experiencing an unsually high volume of calls; try again later”; customer service (billing, etc.) can be reached after a 15-minute wait in queue
- they say that they never received my FAXed letter of authorization to transfer my old number from Lingo and want it refaxed
- when set to simultaneously ring my cell phone Vonage does ring the cell but I can’t hear callers (they can hear me though)
They say that it will take two months for them to transfer the phone number from Lingo, so I’ll have to pay $25/month to Lingo for forwarding until that happens.
[Update: I believe that I unfairly maligned Vonage in regards to not being able to hear callers on calls simultaneously rung to my cell phone. It turns out that it is my PalmOne Treo flaking out on the very day that I installed Vonage! This makes Treo #10 that has failed, I think. It lasted about two months, just like the others. Anyone have a suggestion for a GSM phone that will do a calendar and contacts sync with Microsoft Outlook?]
[Dec 3 Update: When voicemail is pending, the Vonage system fails to change the dial tone. A second try to reach technical support (at 1:30 pm Eastern time) resulted in the same “we’re too busy to talk to anyone” recording. The voice quality of calls is somewhat low, with some constant static.]
[Dec 19 update: I took the advice of various folks and ordered a Motorola MPx220 phone with genuine Windows inside. I ordered it on Dec 7 from Amazon.com but, although they said that it was in stock they have yet to ship it.]
I still don’t understand why you insist on sending your voice calls over the cable modem or dsl modem when you have a perfectly good and reliable traditional telephone line. You can make calls to europe for a few cents per minute, which I presume is nothing for you. If want to play around with VoIP try Skype. Why make things more complex than they should be?
I went through the same process of transferring a land-line phone number to Vonage, but the experience was much less painful than yours sounds. My number was tranferred in less time than the 2 months they notify you of…somewhere along the lines of a couple weeks. I have not had to deal with their tech support at all. The only issue I have come across is the volume of my voice on the other end of the call is sometimes low. Hard to tell if it’s a Vonage problem however. Overall, I’ve been quite satisfied with the service.
Dang! That doesn’t sound like a v. good experience. I know the H. Dean campaign used Vonage, maybe that was part of what happened to them(?!)
I ended up choosing Packet8, which is similar to vonage. I chose it partly because it was cheaper, but really because it seemed simpler, and also doesn’t seem to be suffering from recent growth pains like vonage. I use it with Comcast’s great cable broadband (3-4 mbit).
Things I like about packet8:
– you can use your own existing router, and their box happily plugs in to it (doesn’t have to be first)
– $20/month unlimited domestic, _very_ cheap international
– reasonably functional web account admin
– has worked flawlessly since I set it up in september.
Things that could be better about packet8:
– checking voicemail involves calling a somewhat weird phone number. Not a big deal, especially if you program it in to your phone, but still, could be easier.
– all phone numbers need to be prefixed with the country code (for domestic calls, this means “1”, then area code). Seems like they could allow an easier default for domestic calls.
I was going to try to port my previous phone number over, but when I was surveying the available VoIP options, I generally got a sense that this wasn’t yet as smooth a process as it could be, so I decided that it wasn’t worth it. Many of the people I’ve heard complain about any of these services had number porting issues.
Anyhow, overall, packet8 is definitely the simplest-to-manage phone service I’ve ever had (although, perhaps it’s not if you count home network maintainance as part of the cost…), I recommend it.
If H. Dean couldn’t hear the other party, but they could hear him, that might explain the screaming. I sometimes have that problem with it not hooking up the voice correctly after picking up the phone too. It is usually no one can hear anything, since my Verizon POTS line also has that problem I figured it was just something about the phone service in my town.
I’ve used Vonage for a little over a year and have had absolutely no real issues with them over a DSL line. Of course since I haven’t had any problems that were persistent, so I’ve never had to sit through the customer support queue.
Sounds like all these VOIP services will be reliable and easy to use, in about 5 years. Until then, I can make my 5 international calls per year at the outrageous rates charged by T-Mobile wireless.
Sounds to me the problem isn’t with VOIP, but the integration with the old system. But it needn’t be, just look at cell phones, which integrate just fine. The difference is that that was done by the telcos working together through the ITU, and by some dot-com going it alone…
Isn’t there a service that will simple let you forward your existing line to one of their numbers? Sure, you’d pay double, but you’d get what you want; the same number wherever you are in the world and you can switch provider in an instant by changing the forwarding.
The IP telephone service here in Japan just works, no problems, and it’s offered by the legitimate ISPs and telephone companies bundled with your DSL, not fly-by-night startups. I wonder why they can’t work things out over there?
As for phone numbers: just change your number. You’ll survive.
No need for new networking gear. Just plug it into the Vonage box. Works fine. (albeit with a 2nd level of NATing happening)
The Sony Ericsson P900 series is GSM, and syncs with everything. Bluetooth, decent little camera, and pretty good sound recording, too (voice memos, etc.). Opera browser works v. well on it.
I was about to sign up for Lingo, following Philips lead, but a last minute websearch of other peoples’ bad experiences lead me to Vonage instead. I prefer Skype for outgoing international calls, while Vonage acts as a backup for cellphones and Skype (sometimes bad connections for either). I found that the basic $15 plan (500 minutes) is sufficient, only in the event I use more than 750 minutes (13 hours) outgoing domestic calls, it will be worth the extra $10/month.
If anyone wants to sign up for Vonage, you can get the first month free by using me as a reference, if you are interested, drop me an E-mail (list2003@fure.net), and I will forward a signup link which gives both of us credit.
Also, I disregarded the instructions, and connectred the Vonage inside my linksys firewall instead of directly to the cable modem, with no quality problems.
Jan
I’ve had VOIP for a few months now, at home. I tried Vonage, Fonality and now Broadvoice, mostly due to their international rates to some countries I call often ($0.00, included in their $25/mo fee).
I’ve an ATA with one each FXO and FXS ports, calls to the POTS line connected to the FXO port ring through to phones connected to the FXS port. I simply hooked up the house telephone wiring to the FXS port, and life is good. I have to keep a POTS line anyway, to get DSL service, so I haven’t had to give people a new phone number to reach me. Outbound calls go via VOIP, and if the VOIP service is not available for some reason, the ATA will route outbound calls via the POTS line. Plug the ATA into a UPS, and reliability is quite high. To deal with calls to 911, I programmed a dialing plan so those calls get routed via the POTS line.
Seems like a lot of work, but you can get all of that done in 30 minutes or less.
-jav
Is it a specific model Treo, or several, that has been failing you?
Justin: I have had several copies of the Treo 180, the 270, and the 600. Each one has failed after two or three months (without being dropped). I wrote about this a bit at http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/
Go for a Motorola MPX 220. No Qwerty keyboard, but a great phone.
You should try a Blackberry 7130 from T-Mobile. The QWERTY is great, and the phone works well too.
Treo issues:
I’m really surprised by this. The top brass in the IT company I work for has been issued Treo 600’s and I have only had to send one back due to a hard reset error it had. Other than that I’ve got people grinning from ear to ear, or was, until they heard about the high-res screen on the new units.
I’d also say get away from Outlook. Get yourself a nice mac, a little bluetooth, ical, and you can sync from your pocket w/o issue.
The problems we always ran into with Blackberry is good product, bad software. They bend you over to run their server and its all proprietary. That’s no fun for flexibility and thinking outside the box.
Maybe we need to move your home farther away from the power lines 😉
-a
I also had trouble with the 270. The hardware seemed extraordinarily flimsy. When I received it, the top right screw was in too tight, so the screen kept registering input from the case being pressed against it. Great. Then I dropped the thing onto my desk, and the entire lid shattered, like some sort of model airplane. So I shelled out for a Treo 600. Seems like palmOne has done a better job on the hardware, though your experience isn’t exactly comforting.
Some things to add to the Treo 600 review. palmOne still hasn’t fixed the “birthday” problem. This is incredibly annoying, and incredibly confusing. My girlfriend’s Tungsten, running an older (!) version of Palm OS, has a field in the Contacts database for birthdays that hooks up with the Date Book. The 600 does a better job than the 270 with contact search. Well, better precision, generally worse recall. E.g., a search for “ma” doesn’t reutrn “Harvard Book Shop” (located in Cambridge, MA); instead it appears to search only first names, last names and knows about initials. The call log integration is slightly better. The speakerphone generates an annoying echo for the person you’re calling. And there is still no voice dial support.
Phil,
When there is voice mail, you could have the vonage system send you an email to your cell phones SMS account.
This works really well and if it is from someone important I can check immediately wherever I am. Including checking over the web and having the voice mail play on your computer, instead of the traditional
interrupted dial tone.
Like you, I got fed up with handspring/treo and have converted to a
Motorola v500( I got this in UK). You can get a v600, they are quad band i.e) pretty much works everywhere you go when you get a SIM card or have international roaming.
Their calendar is not as extensive as a Treo or a communicator line, but does its job. Personally I am sick of a carrying around a bulky communicator which does not work well as a phone. Often times Treo
has been a dead weight with spotty reception. whereas the v500 worked with the same provider and plan in areas where I did not get signal with my tro.
give the motorola smartphones a try (MPx200 or MPx220). they run windows CE and have great outlook support and some other decent capabilities. free compilers from MS to roll your own apps, too.
I just got a Blackberry 7100t that I really like. Push email, reasonable sync with outlook and (finally) consolidation of all my email accounts (via pop and a web service). The keyboard is a bit strange, but it really does work well, and much better of a phone than all the previous Blackberry attempts (which I have also owned).
FWIW, I just moved from the Treo 600 to this and I’m very pleased.
The Blackberry 7100t is pretty good. It syncs up with Outlook, has java/html browsing instead of cheesy WAP, and a qwerty keyboard, albeit rather annoying
“Anyone have a suggestion for a GSM phone that will do a calendar and contacts sync with Microsoft Outlook?”
Unfortunately only T-Mobile currently offers official service for it (although I hear you can get it unlocked and use it with AT&T) but the HP iPaq h6315 is the best of show, today. GSM/GPRS, WiFi and Bluetooth, and supposedly ~200 hours of standby and ~4.5 hours of continuous talk time. It’s got a slow XScale CPU but the trade-off in battery life is worth it if you actually want a usable cellphone.
You might want to look into this phone. Haven’t used it but it looked good in the store.
Motorola MPx220 Smart Phone. It’s from Cingular