Vonage VoIP

Hey knuckleheads

Ok, so VoIP is not exactly a pro audio topic. But I can't resist chipping in my two sense.
I've been looking at and thinking about making the jump to VoIP for quite some time now. But every time I got close to doing it, I would read a bunch of reviews that said it was horrible and they had tons of problems. So I shied away, thinking I don't want to go through such a hassle.
Then the decision was all but made for me. My wife and I share a cell phone plan which doubles as my business line, but we also have a land line that is mostly used for incoming calls. Our cell phone bill is usually about $88/month for 850 anytime minutes and unlimited mobile to mobile and nights and weekends (Cingular). Our land line is with Verizon and is one step up from having nothing but a dial tone. It costs about $28/month if we don't make more than a few calls. Well apparently one of us, I won't say which one (my wife), made a bunch of calls and our bills ended up being over $200 and $50 respectively. That was it for me. Vonage here I come!
I had done a bunch of research trying to decide which VoIP to go with, but ultimately it came down to the fact that Best Buy had a Linksys Vonage router for $70 with a $100 mail in rebate and your first month free. So really, you make $30 on the deal. So I went with Vonage and hoped for the best.
So I open the box and it's the easiest thing in the world to hook up. Just plug the unit into your modem or router, plug a phone into the unit, and turn on the power. Then go to Vonage.com and register your new account. I chose the unlimited calling anywhere in the US, Canada, PR, and Europe for $25. To me, that's an unbelievable deal if it's true and it works. Remember how I said the first month is free? Well, almost. There's a $30 setup fee, so really the first month is not free and you have to pay some extra. But whatever. It's just annoying and I hope that isn't a bellwether of what kind of company Vonage is.
So I register online and set up the 911 feature (very important!). And I pick up the phone that I have connected and it works! That's it. It was super easy. I wanted to keep my same phone number so I requested that and was told (via email) that it would take 20 days from the time the request was made. Well, it really took only seven! How great is that? Prognosis: awesome. During that seven day period, I was kind of using that time like a trial to make sure the service works. So I left all the phones in my house connected to the Verizon service but had the phone in the studio connected to the Vonage adapter. Everything worked fine.
So once my number was switched over, the Verizon service was no longer active and I came to a crossroads. Another reason I had waited so long to go VoIP was that I don't have one of those multiple phone systems that only has one connection to the phone line with a bunch of satellite phones. I've got a cordless in the studio, a cordless in the living room, a wired in the kitchen and a wired in the bedroom. The last thing I wanted to do was drop a c-note on a new phone package. I just don't care about phones that much (the two wired phones cost a grand total of $7). And everything I had read online about hooking Vonage up to your current phone wiring sounded like rocket science. But I bit the bullet and decided I'd give the internal wiring a shot before spending the money. I did one more Google search about VoIP wiring and voila! I stumbled upon the Vonage explanation (which I couldn't find by just looking around their site, but I did when I searched for "wiring"). It looked do-able but still a pain. So I grabbed a philips-head, needle nose pliers, and a roll of electrical tape and set out to do some wire cutting. When I got to the phone box outside my house and actually read the directions closely, I realized that all I had to do was unplug the phone jack type plug in that box and that was it. So I did that, came inside and plugged the Linksys adapter into the nearest phone port (because they are all wired in parallel) and Bingo! it worked instantly. No wire cutting, no screw driving, no electrical taping. Just idiot-proof unplugging. Great. Fantastic. I did run into a big spider. But I don't think that was Vonage's fault. Well, maybe.
So that's my story. So far I've actually made money on the deal and I can now call anywhere, anytime, for no extra charge.
My vote: YES for Vonage.

Right now I'm taking a vinyl break and listening to one of the best albums of all time. Bruce Springsteen Born to Run. Sounds better on vinyl.

I'll get back to audio stuff next time. I've got that Wizoo W2 Reverb that I want to discuss after I use it a bit more.

Rock on

Ben
www.javboyrecords.com