We’ve had Vonage in place for several months now. They closed our account for us with both Ameritech and our third-party off-the-internet long distance carrier. That was kind of nice, I didn’t have to deal with them.
The first month’s bill came in right at $16.95 (taxes etc make it more than advertised), and this last month’s bill was only $1.50 since we got our credit from being referred. Since I referred someone else already, I’ll probably get another cheap month as well.
I actually verified that our incoming calls are not charged to us, so we don’t even come close to the 500 minutes we’re paying for. Which is fine.
This last week Comcast has been spastically disconnecting, and not coming back for hours, or even days. This means our phone doesn’t work. But it also allowed us to verify that when our net connection is down, they re-route all calls to my cell-phone, so the end user doesn’t even know, and we don’t miss any calls. Quite handy, that.
One thing that really bugs me is that when comcast DOES come back, the phone box doesn’t. I have to go to the basement and look at the lights on the modem to see if it’s back, and if it is, power cycle the phone box. That’s a real pain, but not enough to make me go running back to the phone company.
All in all, we’ve been very happy with it. Once in a while there’s an echo on the line, but not often, and we’ve never had a call drop or anything. Well worth it, I’d say.
