Omar Shahine's WebLog

Congradulations.. I have also switched off of SBC and I have enjoyed every day of it since then. I still chose however to not keep a LAN line, only people that called wanted to sell me a mortage and I had no reason as I live in an apartment to get one so I figured why bother.

Yeah, I may decide in a year or so to do the same. I pay about $100 a month in cell phone fees, add land line and that makes it about $160 or so dollars a month.

I'm pretty sure vonage does allow you to keep your # if you want.

As far as quality we have used them for over a year and have mulutiple virutal #'s from them and they work quite well. While I would not compare the quality to a true land line - I would say that it is better than cell and slightly less than a normal land line.

Here is what it says when I try:

Our records indicate you cannot keep your current telephone number.

I believe it depends on where you live for the time being. Number Portability was only mandated in the top XX markets (can't remember the number). So places like NYC, SF, DC, Chi are covered, but I wouldn't expect Aberdeen Idaho (some random city) to be covered just yet.

If I remember right, there was a 2 or 3 phase plan. first was top XX markets, second was next XXX markets, third was the rest. First phase was last Nov.. Second maybe a year and a half later, and third even later on..

My point being that number portability applies to Vonage's ability to transfer your old number. They'd also have to have a presence in your local areacode.

But I live in San Francisco! ;-). ANd that Number Portability was for cell phones, not land lines. Those numbers have always been portable.

What we did was transfered the landline number to my wife's cell phone, and we got a new number from Vonage.

Our Vonage has performed extremely well, just about as good as the landlline. We love the ability to check voice mail online and to get your voicemails emailed to you (as a .wav attachment). Best of all our bill is $16.94 (including all taxes and fees) for 500 local/long distance minutes.

Remeber too that you can take your Vonage ATA anywhere in the world and place and receive phone calls.

Vonage. Works great until the power goes out!

I am using Z-Tel which gives unlimited local + unlimited long distance service + all the bells & whistles for $50/mo. www.ztel.com So far I am very happy with the service.

Vonage does transfer phone numbers. Some carriers in some geographies are not set up yet to do the transfer. I have Vonage phone and fax. The phone works much better than the fax. A problem I am running into is the uploade data rate I have with Comcast. It varies between 0 and 256 KBytes/second for the standard service ($49/month, (19.99/month if you get the promotional price for 6 months). Vonage requires 90KBytes/sec transfer rate in both directions to support a phone call. When connected to a cable network, homes share a router that can become overloaded at times (usually in late afternoon and evening). If a router is loaded such that one's network upload rate drops below 90KBytes/second, you hear silence until the data rate recovers or the connection times out. If the connection times out, the call is dropped. The download speed through Comcast is not usually a problem because its usually 2400+ KBytes/second. The upload rate is problematic becasue Comcast guarantees 0 to 256KBytes/second upload rate. I have had the rate drop down to 78 KBytes/second on a regular basis.

I am not sure if I am satisfied with the service yet. I am still in testing mode.

I am paying 24.99 for unlimited local and toll calls and 500 minuits/month of long distance. The fax is an additional 9.99 for FAX with 300 minutes of long distance

I have MCI The Neighborhood. I am considering a switch to Vonage. Price is the motivation as I am pretty happy with the MCI service (mostly).

The base plan for MCI is $49.99/month, but the add-ons bring the bill up to $77.47/month. It seems to have stabilized at this figure. When I first started with them maybe 2 years ago, the bill fluctuated and was generally much lower.

They add $4 for "WireSolution" wire maintenance, which I figured might be important If I "caused" any problem with my line. I found out Call Return (*69) was not included in the package and added that for $3.50. Network Access Surcharge of $6.50. Finally, $13.48 in additional taxes and surcharges. That's $77.47.

Vonage claims $34.99 plus taxes and $1.50/month regulatory recovery fee. Total is claimed to be $37.54/month. Plus a one time $29.99 fee to get started.

Vonage claims I will save $39.93/month. Is this true?

I am trying to figure out if the savings will be worth the potential problems that may occur with Vonage. Thanks.

I have DSL from SBC. Vonage requires DSL connection. As far as I know SBC wouldn't give just DSL( With out the phone connection).
Is there any way out of this?
I donot want to move to cable for my broadband, since my upstream is around 512KB/S with DSL. I believe this is very tough to achieve with Cabel...
Thanks
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