internet phone

[cornicejumper]

Just wondering if anyone on here uses internet phone companies such as lingo or vonage or any others .. How do they work and are they worth it

 

[Ex-Member]

Can get a little bit of lag if your internet tubes are plugged up (Downloading torrents, streaming videos, etc) but the ones I've used are rather nice.

 

[SnowBigDeal]

I've been using Vonage since 2005 and don't have any complaints. I tried to switch to Sunrocket strictly based on price and at the time the service quality sucked, so I kept vonage.

If you want me to refer you, I can send you an email and you'll get two free months of service.

 

[Abominable]

Sunrocket went tits up last spring, I was with them when it happened. I've since been using packet8, I cant tell the difference between it and a POTS line. I am told you cant fax over a VOIP line but I don't know if it is true. I've been planning on checking out magicjack - looks like the cheapest - but haven't got around to it yet.

 

[Wacky Wally]

Just wondering if anyone on here uses internet phone companies such as lingo or vonage or any others .. How do they work and are they worth it

We have Vonage, save's us at least a $100 a month for our Business. Had for about two years, and love it.

 

[LSB]

Can get a little bit of lag if your internet tubes are plugged up (Downloading torrents, streaming videos, etc) but the ones I've used are rather nice.

You should be able to get around that by setting up some good QoS rules on your router. I like to run Tomato firmware on my Linksys routers (now you have to get the WRT54GL). Check out www.polarcloud.com/tomato (i think) for the firmware. Its by far the best Ive found out of all the ones out there. Anyway you can set up rules so that your torrents, and other bandwidth hogs will be throttled down and wont hurt your voip while its running.

Now for the original question I havent used Vonage and havent thought about giving up the land line just yet mainly because where we are we have no other option besides Satellite. While I do use a higher end system than Hughes, you still cannot get around the latency issue you will always find with the satellite. I do though use Skype and I have a portable Skype phone as well. $30 for a year of unlimited long distance to the United States and Canada. Also the foreign workers have Skype accounts and use those skype $20 credits from Wal mart to call home. The savings are astronomical over calling cards. The Skype quality is great (minus the satellite lag) but if I go to somewhere that has a T-1 or cable it sounds just like a phone.