VoIP Price War Declared

gardel writes "Voxilla reports that a VoIP price war was declared today. An announcement that AT&T would drop its prices for its CallVantage Service from $34.99 to $29.99 per month was followed quickly by an announcement that Vonage would drop the price on its unlimited calling plan to $25 a month from the previous $29.99. Analysts say the price cuts show the VoIP market is not only competitive, but it's serious."

Re:Still about $20 too much

[angle_slam]

Vonage has a plan [vonage.com] that gives you 500 minutes for $14.99 per month.

Vonage rocks

[Reality Master 101]

I'm signed up for the 500 anytime minute Vonage plan for $14.95 [vonage.com]. I've been extremely impressed with the service so far. They sent out the box right away, I plugged it into my network, and it "just worked". The online control panel is really slick, too. Very well designed, all the options right there, including listening to voicemail.

Even transferring my phone number was painless. I just faxed them a phone bill and they took care of the rest.

I was a little concerned with "voice lag", where you get that delay effect, but so far it's been unnoticeable. (but I also have a four megabit cable modem).

In short, Vonage has rocked so far. I had my doubts about VoIP, but no doubts any longer.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[danimal67]

I use CallVantage. I've read many reviews that compare to Vonage and other competitors. A good portion of the reviews have said that they think CallVantage is less prone to distortion than competing services. I believe it is in part because the TA has to sit directly behind the cable modem and priortizes the packets. Apparently a recent firmware revision lets the TA sit behind routers, but I haven't moved mine. I don't know if this negates the positive audio qualities that reviews have cited.

Thumbs Up for Vonage

[Omega1045]

I just got Vonage.com about 2 months ago for their $15/month plan (500 minutes plus $0.039 for overage minutes). I really like the service. I had a very small issue with installation and the tech support was very helpful. Pretty much no brainer to get running with my wireless router and cable modem. The sound quality is IMHO better than any traditional landline I have had. I would recommended them to anyone.

AT&T callvantage prices drop to $20...

[Vellmont]

for the first 6 months, $34.99 thereafter. Thanks slashdot submitter for that fully objective and accurate portrayal of pricing.

I like price wars!

[ChiralSoftware]

I'm basically happy with my Vonage service. Only a few minor complaints:

• I can't listen to my favorite Internet stations while I'm making a call. Ok, this has nothing to do with Vonage; I just need a faster DSL connection.
• I can't seem to find a client for it that runs on Linux so I can connect straight from my computer or laptop, without having to use any of their hardware. I know it uses plain old SIP so this should be possible, and I have tried some of the web pages that have instructions on how to do this, but I can't get it to work. Skype has a Linux version ready for download and it works well. I wish Vonage had the same level of Linux support.
• I wish it had better security. I think it uses plain old unencrypted SIP. It should be encrypted at the IP layer. Eventually we need to have end-to-end voice encryption for call security. Again, Skype already has this, albeit without published sourcecode.

If Skype had a service that gives me a phone number and lets me receive calls I might switch to that. I also think that Skype has better sound quality, in my experience.

Re:Any VoIP users? - Lingo

[aacool]

I use Lingo [lingo.com] as my exclusive phone service - I cancelled my POTS line after two days - SBC was very difficult to cancel when I told them I was going to VOIP

I have had absolutely no problems for the last two months. I get an amazing price - $19.99 for unlimited US, Western Europe & Canada, and the first three months absolutely free.

I can't imagine not having the convenience of VOIP. The online bonuses - email voicemail, detailed billing, etc are good too. Ob. referral - contact my id for a ref bonus:)

The rates to the rest of the world are good too

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[danuary]

I've had Vonage for a little more than a year. In that time there have been -reported- outages -- none of which affected me. My phone has had dialtone every time I've picked it up and I've had to do basically nothing special to get it working. My service even worked during the Aug 2003 blackout in NYC -- had my Vonage box and cablemodem on a UPS and everything worked fine. The one time I've had occasion to dial 911 was at 5 in the morning when someone attempted to break into my apartment when I was in it asleep. 911 location is set up via Vonage's web interface; when I called 911 the operators were a little confused -- something about how the call came into them -- but the location was passed along and I had three cop cars in my door in 30 seconds flat. I perceived no difference between Vonage and a traditional land line. In short -- couldn't be happier. Works great for me. Little perqs like being able to get your voicemail e-mailed to you as a wav is fantastic -- as is being able to take the box with you and have free phone service anywhere you have ethernet.

Stunning savings on international. . .

[Sialagogue]

(Pre-rave disclaimer, I'm unafilliated with Vonage except as a customer.)

I set up Vonage for our company - we're running 4 lines over a 5Mbps DSL with only occasional stuttering problems.

But the real benefit comes from the fact that although we are a small company, we have offices in five countries in Europe which we speak to on a daily basis. So, we signed up with Vonage for five new lines each tied to a New York number, then when we received the adapters we turned them right around and shipped them to the outer offices. They plugged them in and bingo, all five offices are now accessible with a local call. Plus, that local call is free because all in-network calls with Vonage are free.

That plus the super-low international rates for our other business calls have saved us close to $1,000 a month, which for our sized company is huuuuuge.

Just a week ago I used three-way calling to set up a conference call between London, Prague, and New York and ended up paying 6 cents a minute total. Crazy.

Only downside has been number transfer - they haven't made any progress with cutting our lines over, so we're still having to pay Verizon 80 bucks a month for forwarding - but even there Vonage siad they'd credit our service for any time over 40 days.

I'm a fan so far. . .

Re:Still about $20 too much

[sportal]

Then switch to a VoIP provider with that pricing model. Like VoicePulse Connect http://connect.voicepulse.com/

US Per Minute Rate:
2.95 / minute

If you want an Incoming phone number tied to your VoIP line:
Incoming phone numbers:
$7.99 / month (each)

Incoming rate:
0 / minute

If you don't have an incoming phone number, no monthly fees, only usage fees.

There are other that offer this also, like:
TerraCall http://www.terracall.com/
NikoTel http://www.nikotel.com/

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[angle_slam]

I've had Vonage for 2 months. On and off (mostly off) echo problems. No dropouts. No delays. Haven't had a chance to call 911, but set it up to transmit my address to 911 operators. When power goes out, I'm screwed. Then again, my only phone is a cordless, so I'd be screwed anyway. You can always get a UPS, but I don't know how long you have power through those (will they work in multi-day outages, like in Florida?)

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[davemabe]

I've recently switched from Vonage to AT&T. The call quality on Vonage was not very good. There is often a nagging local echo and there were several times that I had to reboot the telephone adapter to get it to function. This was unacceptable. Everything about AT&T's service has been better so far: call quality, customer service (much lower hold times!), and more features (locate me!).

Also, AT&T's telephone adapter sits on the internet side of your home network - this allows the device to perform QoS functions by prioritizing the voice packets. Vonage's device sits behind your router and therefore can't do anything about a busy connection. There will inevitably be dropped calls if you use your internet connection heavily while on the phone.

Dave [runningland.com]

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[CoreDump]

Quality? Better than cell-phone in most cases.

Delays? Not really.

Dropouts? I get dropped more often by my cell provider than my VOIP provider. And yes, this includes standing still while on cell and having call dropped.

911? The industry is still figuring out how to support this properly. Some carriers sort of fake it today, but nobody really supports it "natively". This should change in the next 6 months as the 911 standard/method for VOIP carriers is being finalized in the next few months.

Power? I've got my cable modem and VOIP adapter on a UPS, so not much happens to me. Assuming that your DSL/Cable is still up in a power outage of course. If your net connection goes down, your phone goes down, might be power, might be your provider, might be the lawnmower.

VoicePulse has had those prices for a while

[Grue]

VoicePulse [voicepulse.com] has had prices that low for a while, and they allow you to setup your own VoIP reseller type service, VoicePulse Connect [voicepulse.com]. It works great with Asterisk, which they push as a solution. Very geek friendly.

--
Josh

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Vonage for over a year.
It didn't start out 100% like a regular phone, but pretty close, but maybe 70%. At first you had to dial all 11 digits even for local calls. 911 was and is still a free working feature, but you must activate it through your account settings on the website so they know your address.

Today, it is more like a regular line including 7 digit local calling, so closer to 90% now. I have two Vonage lines in two different locations. I have already got one in my sister's house, and so far it has been reliable enough for her not to notice any problems (3 months and going) and for her friends and family to start to take notice.
I plugged in a coupler into the walljack, and cut the wire outside to the telco so the whole house is using a dialtone from Vonage, phone number was changed in less than 30 minutes.

Even with the free Voice Mail (which forwards to your email), Caller ID, Call hunt, to name a few. It is dependant on your cable modem, your cable carrier, and the internet connection between your carrier and Vonage, and the electricity to keep all of these things running.

So, if you do not have a cell phone as a backup, which you can configure Vonage to forward to incase of such an outage, then you may want to consider keeping your POTS.

I love Vonage so far, Now with QoS my local intenet traffic doesn't interfer.

Things that still don't work:
[*]Outbound Caller ID says Vonage Holdings for my name, I hope to have the ability to change this to whatever I want.
[*]Faxing to anything faster than 9600bps is unreilable or impossible sometimes, so you need an ancient fax machine that has an 'Overseas Mode' to get it to work reliably.
[*]Impossible to use dialup for the rare occasion I need to dial into a client to repair a network outage.

My favorite feature is, telemarketers don't seem to know these numbers exist. No phone directory, numbers not listed anywhere. Have not received a single unsolicited call. Perhaps they are from the same pool of numbers used by wireless carriers.

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[Scowler]

Why would you want to put the telephone adapter on the internet side? The newer routers (including the fabulous WRT54G) can already do QoS, and probably a better job at that.

Also, you can use just about any adapter on the market with either VOIP provider, in either configuration (with a little work). I have the Vonage adapter on the router (with QoS) side of the network and have had no quality issues.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[rpdillon]

Vonage does support 911 - but you have to manually update your current address since the system cannot track your location. Instead, they look it up (automated, obviously) when the call comes through. If you do not update, then you'll have a problem, but otherwise, its transparent.

$25? I smirk in your general direction!

[Cleetus Freem]

I use onesuite.com [onesuite.com] and pay 2.5 cents a minute within the USA. I pay that same rate for calls to China.

That means that for your "competitive" $25 a month, I could make over 16 and a half hours of calls (to just about anywhere in the world... from any phone... at any time of day... on a regular, echo free phone line no less... and no I don't have to enter a bulky code every time I call... calls from my home automatically bypass the need for a code).

None of the options presented here are that cheap and convenient and until they can at least come close, I will stick with my onesuite.com (which I've used for 2 years now).

Re:Any VoIP users?

[The-Bus]

Vonage let's their hardware act as a router (poorly) or sit behind a router. Vonage lets their hardware do QoS and packet shaping. I don't think the hardware makes that big of a difference.

Re:What's the 411 on VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, even if your cable modem is on a UPS, that doesn't imply that the cable companies' equipment is.

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[The-Bus]

Vonage's hardware can sit in front or behind your router. It all has to do with how you configured it.

That being said, it's not 100% service. But it's a lot, a lot less frustrating than using a cellphone.

How come no mention of packet 8?

[Danathar]

I use Packet 8 communications at $19.95 with no problem. Since it's cheaper than either Vonage or AT&T why was it not mentioned?

Vonage user past 5 months

[The-Bus]

Recently I was switched over to working almost full-time from home. I can easily be on the phone 500 minutes in one day, so only unlimited service would really do. Here's my experience, abridged:

• Set up with Vonage. I decide on them because they are the biggest and well-known. I only have a couple days to research, so I order the damn thing. I get to pick a number which is supposedly in a certain town here but I don't recognize the exchange.
  
• Installation. It comes in the mail a couple of days later. I set up and *bingo*, it just... doesn't work. The next day I figured out the phone was plugged into "Line 2"... Who puts "Line 2" on the left hand side of "Line 1"? Doesn't make sense. My mistake.
  
• So now it works. Sort of. The router is still not part of the equation. The hardware is an awful router, so I eventually decide to put it behind the router. Forward the right ports, etc... Bingo. Works perfectly.
  
• No wait, it doesn't work. What I didn't mention was that a large part of my job has to do with faxing. Well, the POTS fax protocol used (excuse my butchering of telephony terms) doesn't play nice with VOIP. I can get faxes fine but I can barely send them. Everything drops out. No matter where. This will not do.
  
• A long difficult period. I contact Vonage tech support for help and no matter what I say they put me on L1 where they check to see what version of Windows do I have and do I have the router set up right etc. etc. eventhough my phone calls work just fine!!! Argh. Over the next week or so I literally spend 20+ hours researching this issue.
  
• Finally, an agreement. I turn down the send speed of my high-speed fax, I do a bunch of hardware and software tweaks, and now about 70% of all faxes work. Not a terribly high ratio, but I've learned to rely on other forms of sending documentation now.
  
• Over time. My only major complaints is the complete lack of support for faxes. VOIP natively is not good at handling faxes. If you ever really really need to send a fax, VOIP is not for you. Call quality was perfect except in one major teleconference call, and there were no outages until last week when outgoing calls where butchered for the entire day.
  
  Overall, I'd give it a B+. I've probably saved $100 or so over the past couple of months, at the expense of a really bad headache. Still, if I ever go anywhere I like to know I can take my Vonage box with me and have my number be there.

Re:Any VoIP users?

[timsch]

Why pay those monthly fees at all when http://skype.com/ [skype.com] lets you

(1)talk to other skype users for free.

(2)ring any other telephone (including cell phones) in the world for 1 euro per hour (about $0.02 per minute)

It works surprisingly well on a dial-up connection, small (8 MB), and clean with no spyware or other junk.

Re:Vonage rocks (dissenting opinion)

[little_blaine]

>Also, AT&T's telephone adapter sits on the internet side of your home network - this allows the device to perform QoS functions by prioritizing the voice packets. Vonage's device sits behind your router and therefore can't do anything about a busy connection.

Not true about the current vonage telephone adapters. I signed up about 6 months ago, and the motorola box that they sent can sit either in front of the router and perform QoS, or behind the router with no QoS.

I still haven't given up my POTS line, although I've reduced to the bare minimum service with no features. Problems with echo and occasional service disruptions made me hesitant to switch to VoIP exclusively.