Papirex
Jul 3, 2004, 1:45 AM
Post #14 of 14
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We have been using Vonage for several months. We are delighted with it. There seems to be some confusion or misunderstanding by the posters who have not used Vonage themselves. A special phone to connect to your computer is not required. You would only buy one of those if you traveled with your laptop, and could find a connection to use the service. You connect those phones directly to your computer, and you don’t need the adapter. Unless a person had a lot of business calls to make, that would be more trouble than it’s worth I think.
At home, just plug a regular old plain vanilla phone in to the adapter. The adapter is provided to you free. If you quit the service, there will be a $32.50 charge if you don’t return it in the original box. You do not have to have your computer turned on to use The Vonage phone system, but you must have your broadband modem, your router if you use one, and the Vonage adapter power on. You don’t even need to have a computer to use Vonage, but it is hard to imagine someone having a broadband connection without one.
I bought a pair of cordless phones at Costco for our Vonage system. The Vonage adapter must be connected to your broadband modem, which is upstairs in our house. The phone must be connected to the adapter. One of the phones I bought is a master, it requires connection to a phone wire. The second phone is a slave, the base for it is just a charger. I have the master connected to the Vonage adapter upstairs, and the slave downstairs for convenience. We also have all the long distance numbers we frequently call programmed in to the memory of the phones. We can also each use a phone, instead of passing one back and forth. That’s a lot easier than passing a set of headphones back and forth.
We use a cable broadband Internet connection. As far as the system slowing down when traffic is high, That does not happen to an appreciable extent. We have a 256 KPBS connection. When I run a speed test using PCPITSTOP the upload speed reported is usually around 387 KPBS. Sometimes it is as low as around 200 KPBS. I always test the speed several times in a row. After getting a low reported speed, the next test a few seconds later is usually up around 350 KPBS or more. Any slowdowns seem to be just momentary, and not very severe. I think all the stories about cable slowdowns are spread by phone companies to help them sell their ADSL systems.
Infinitum is not available everywhere either. There is a technical limitation of approximately 18,000 lineal feet of wire from the nearest facility providing that service to your house. That is roughly 3 miles, since the wires must follow the streets. Your house may be too far away for them to provide you service. The telephone wiring to your house, and inside it, must be copper. Telemex sends a technician to your house to verify that Infinitum will work there. We have a nephew that built a new house in Mexico City 5 or 6 years ago. When he tried to get Infinitum, it could not be installed because the wires in the streets were not all copper. The kid has a great job and makes tall Dollars. He can buy anything he wants. But he can’t get Infinitum.
I opted for the $14.99 per month plan, that includes 500 prepaid minutes. That’s 8 hours and 20 minutes of long distance calling. I have never talked long distance on a phone that long in a month from home. If we ever do exceed 500 minutes, additional time is only 3.9 Cents per minute. We chose a Tacoma Washington local number, that is where my wife’s brother lives. If he calls us here in Cuernavaca, it is a local call for him. If we call him, it is a local call for us, all part of our prepaid minutes.
I also chose a toll free 888 number for $4.99 per month with 100 prepaid minutes. Additional time is 4.9 Cents per minute. We have a daughter living in Fairbanks, and two daughters and a son living at Lake Berryessa in California. They and other friends can also call us toll free. There is $1.75 federal tax levied on each account.
We also have a son in London, England, and a niece in Leer, Germany. The long distance tolls to call them are a real budget buster. It costs 2 Cents a minute. Vonage also has some included features that are very nice. We can set up a three way call. A couple of months ago we set up a call from our house in Cuernavaca to our niece in Germany, and her mother in Mexico City. At 2 Cents per minute to Germany, and 6 Cents per minute to Mexico City, the cost was just 8 Cents per minute to us. Calls to a Mexico phone are actually long distance calls using Vonage, since our Vonage phone number is a Tacoma Washington number.
It costs a little over 13 Cents per minute to call my wife’s mother in Mexico City using Telmex, 6 Cents using Vonage. That’s a little less than half of the Telmex rates. We now make all our Mexican long distance calls using Vonage. It is always cheaper than the Telmex rates. I haven’t done the math, but I am recovering a couple of Bucks a month of the Vonage cost I guess. I also like the idea that I am cutting Telmex off at the knees.
Another nice feature is the free voicemail. There are three ways to retrieve them. On the phones here in the house, just dial *123. They also provide you with a telephone number to call if you are out of the house to retrieve it. It is a Tacoma Washington number, so that is not too practical to use from here in Mexico. Every time you get a voicemail they also send you an Email to inform you that you have new messages. You can then log on to your account to listen to them on your computer if you are not at home.
We spent two weeks last month visiting my wife’s aunt in Ajijic. I took my laptop to The CIA and connected to their Ethernet cable. I had voicemail, and I was able to listen to it there. That is a very handy feature when you are traveling.
You can also log on to your account to see how many of your plan minutes you have used for the current billing month, and the amount to date you will be charged for long distance calls on the next months bill. They do send an Email when your credit card is charged for the last months service with details of what all charges are for.
I think the choice of which VoIP service to use depends on a couple of things. One is that Vonage does require a broadband ISP connection. Some of the others do not. Another consideration is if it is worth more cost for a lot more convenience using Vonage. For me it is. That’s a personal choice. All the reports I have read here say that the other services are very good too. A far cry from 5 r 6 years ago when they were all the pits.
Rex
"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo
(This post was edited by RexC on Jul 3, 2004, 2:54 AM)
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