Don't Back Down

After I eventually made it through the signup process that was needlessly unpleasant, the Vonage experience has been quite good.

I ordered the service (that is, I ordered the service successfully) on Tuesday. The package was shipped that samed day (I ordered relatively early in the day), and it arrived here yesterday (Saturday). I'd say that is a reasonable timeframe, though you'd think it could get from Ohio to North Carolina a bit faster than that. No matter, at least it arrived.

In completely un-geek-like fashion, I didn't even open the box until last night, and I didn't even try to connect anything until just a few minutes ago. When I did try and get things running, the largest problem I had was getting it all connected. I have so many things plugged in that I really have run out of room. I need a larger UPS (that is to say, more ports) or something.

Once that problem was solved, I simply connected the included Linksys phone adapter after the cable modem, but prior to my existing router. Brought them up one at a time (cable modem, phone adapter, router, in case you're wondering) and they came right up, with no problems at all. Very sweet.

I plugged in the phone and it worked right off. One thing threw me, and that is that when I dialed my cell phone number with ten digits (no 1 in front), it gave me a fast busy signal. This apparently is the Vonage equivalent of "you must dial a 1" message. After I tried that, it worked flawlessly.

I've only made a couple of calls, but so far the quality is excellent. Far better than the Voicepulse account I tried a couple of months ago. I'd assume this has a lot to do with the Linksys device, since it implements Quality of Service on the voice traffic at the router level, as opposed to being another device hanging off of the existing network and fighting for the bandwidth. No matter - as long as it works!

For those who are considering a VOIP solution, I'd recommend checking out Vonage. If you'd like to lend me a hand, let me know your email address and I'll send you a referral coupon that will get me some free access when you sign up. If you'd like to hear the quality, let me know and I'll send you my phone number so you can hear it for yourself. If you live in the US or Canada, send me your number and I'll call you so you don't have to pay any tolls.