Vonage arrives and I may never let it leave

Michael Gartenberg | September 10, 2004, 10:09 AM

Way back in the early 90s, I first saw a demo of Quicktime. Running on a superfast computer of that era, it was able to generate about 15fps in a windows the size of the postage stamp. I remember being so excited, not at the prospect of postage stamp sized video but of the potential of what would be coming as computers got faster and bandwidth higher. Today, I regularly download DVD quality movies from Starz online and my PC can easily display HS video, full screen with perfect fluidity. Well, VoIP reminds me of that a lot. My first use of the technology required a tethered headset, lots of tuning, fuzzy audio. In short, nothing anyone would mistake for a phone call. But you could see from a mile away that the potential was there. Well, I've been flirting with the Vonage idea for a while but phone use is mission critical for me so I've been unwilling to take the plunge. The allure isn't the savings (I already get pretty rates from IDT) but the notion of using the broadband connection directly and the flexibility of the telephony services. Thanks to the Vonage folks, I've been using a test acc't it's been very positive. I also have been using a softphone acc't that lets my computer or PDA make calls over the network (although it's a different # than my main Vonage one, which is a drawback). The Softphone was setup first and my results were mixed. It worked as advertised and I was able to make calls on my laptop as well as two PocketPCs with WiFi. The problem is that no matter how I configure it, the caller on the other end has a horrible echo of their own voice. Somehow, my speaker is feeding back into the microphone and I can't figure a way around it at the moment. Since the service is $10 a month extra, comes with only 500 minutes and requires another phone number I doubt I will continue with it. The regular Vonage service is another story. The came yesterday. Ignoring the directions, I plugged the box into my router and the phone into the box and said a short prayer. Lo and behold, there was a dial tone. It just worked. A little fiddling to get my current # forwarded over and I'm now on Vonage full time. Voice quality is excellent and no one I spoke with could tell I was on anything but a phone. The features are amazing. I get caller ID, Call Waiting and Simultaneous Ring (so my cell phone rings along with the Vonage phone and I can direct calls to either voice mail). Best of all, I can control everything from a slick web interface. I know these features have been around for years, but my local telco would charge me more for those services alone than I would pay Vonage for everything. I'll be running in test mode for a few weeks but if the service quality stays constant, I'm going to sign up. The best compliment I can give Vonage is that it just worked. Simply and effectively, like my plain old telephone service, only without the higher costs.