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Vonage Goes Head to Head with Ma Bell by Jim Bray, TechnoFile Magazine Tuesday, June 21, 2005 Voice over IP is starting to make some headway in the marketplace, thanks to companies like Vonage. Voice over IP telephones take the long distance out of long distance phoning by using the Internet instead of conventional phone lines, because in cyberspace where you are physically doesn’t matter, and this makes every call a local call regardless of who or where you’re calling. Vonage, at least as of this writing, appears to be the 300-pound gorilla of VoIP companies, though they’re also competing head to head with some Internet providers such as cable companies. I’ve done a bit of a mini test of the Vonage service, though not nearly as much as I’d have liked, but it appears to work as advertised. There are some hoops you have to jump through, though, and you have to get used to a funny dial tone and an overall sound quality that is different from that to which you’re probably used. It isn’t really an inferior sound quality, at least so far as our temporary hookup was concerned, just different. Setup is quite easy if you only have one phone and it’s close to where your Internet service comes into your home or office. The system I tried comes with a phone adapter/network router you plug into your Internet modem and your computer on one side and your phone on the other. Vonage includes straightforward setup instructions, though they take into account a network with more than one computer and not an installation with more than one phone, which seems like a silly oversight. What this meant in my installation is that I had to install the hardware down in our workshop, where our network is set up, and I only got access to one phone that was in that room. I asked Vonage for help in setting up all my phones, but their PR person never responded until it was time for him to ask for the system back — and my question was never addressed. But according to their website, if you want to use multiple phones you have to either purchase a multiple jack extension connector, and then connect it to the Vonage equipment — and it needs to interface with your existing phone lines in the home/office or get a bunch of wireless phone jacks that use the home’s wiring. In my installation this was impractical (since I didn’t want to mess with the hardwired installation for a temporary test, nor did I want to buy the necessary equipment only to have it useless when I sent the Vonage equipment back). Another possible solution is that, if you have a cordless phone with a base station and satellites, you can plug the base station into the Vonage unit. In my home this was impractical because the base station also acts as our answering machine and I didn’t like the idea of having to head down to our dungeon-like basement just to check for messages. So I ended up using Vonage on one phone in the basement and my regular service in the rest of the house. This allowed for a nice "apples to apples" comparison, but it also meant I kept forgetting the "Vonage-shod phone’ was downstairs, through force of habit, and kept using my other four regular phones — and of course since I didn’t switch my phone number over to Vonage (which would be a darn nice feature that I’d definitely use if I were to switch to Vonage permanently), incoming calls always came to my regular system anyway. The result was that I hardly ever used the Vonage system, which was a shame because it does offer a lot of features for the price and I was dying to give it a real workout. Another potential way to get around the multiple phones problem is through Vonage’s Wi-Fi phones, which aren’t on the market yet but which are currently in beta testing in the U.S. and should be available there sometime before the end of 2005. (continued....)
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