Broadband Phone Service

[dtay73]

Not sure about Vonage in particular, but I have gone out to my phone box on the side of the house and pulled the wires loose from the local service lines and taped them up. That way I could just plug my phone adapter into a wall jack and all the jacks in the house are live. I have two different cordless phones and two standard phones plugged in and they all work fine.

[ixie02]

Originally Posted by dtay73

Not sure about Vonage in particular, but I have gone out to my phone box on the side of the house and pulled the wires loose from the local service lines and taped them up. That way I could just plug my phone adapter into a wall jack and all the jacks in the house are live. I have two different cordless phones and two standard phones plugged in and they all work fine.

Great idea!

[nelsonke]

Originally Posted by ixie02

A set up fee with direct or affiliate or both. Where do find an affiliate?

You found one. PM me your email address, and you will receive a coupon that gets you your second month free. There are changes in the wind for the affiliate program. I included a direct link a few posts ago, but it does seem to be offereing the free month. ( I get a free month too )

Let me know if you have any questions. Glad to help.

[DigitalSkyline]

All customers of Vonage can use the refer a friend to give and recieve the free month deal... since nelsonke mentioned it first might as well give him the cookie

[ixie02]

Since I started this thread offers have been coming in the mail, at&t, time warner, for the same service but more expensive than Voange. My question is: are their taxes and access fees for the service like there are on cell and dial up lines? I suspect this service is going to get real competative. And digitalskyline, I agree; nelsonke, it's in your mailbox.

[generic]

I have been trying to transfer a number from Comcast to Vonage since December 2004.

I keep getting failures, and when I call vonage they keep saying its this or that, they have tried to assist, but i dont really think even they know what they are doing.

I really now believe Comcast is just not releasing it saying info does not match.. well it does.

I have been paying for 2 phone lines now for the past 4 months. At this point any savcings from vonage are wiped out.

If your going to transfer, expect a big headache, if your just getting a new number, then i would assume it would not be all that bad.

[dpyers]

If I were you, I'd contact your state/local public utilities comission. They're very sensitive about ensuring that number portability goes without a hitch and also are keeping a close eye on broadband phone service. The phone companies will fall all over themselves to make them happy.

[generic]

Update on my number port to vonage.

Well, it only took 3 months ( ) and I just received an email that Comcast finally approved the transfer and I will be a vonage customer Monday.

Well see, I let you all know how the service is as soon as I can

[nelsonke]

Good luck Traceweb!.

Let me know if you run into anything. By the way, lots of carriers are fighting the transfer. AT&T was my CLEC and they refused to transfer claiming I had DSL on the line and therefore under the rules they did not have to transfer the line. In fact I never had DSL with them. So I don't think it is Vonage's fault.

If you decide that you need more than 2 lines, you will need to put 2 Vonages boxes behind the router. The Linksys router will not support SIP and you will get come clipping. The answer is that Linksys has open sourced their software on some of the routers and you can replace it with the sveasoft software which you can get for $20 per year. Let me know if I can help.

[dpyers]

I transferred some numbers from Sprint to Cingular.
An hour after I requested Cingular to do the transfer, Sprint called to confirm.
15 minutes later, Cingular called to say it was done but could take up to 12 hours to propagate through the two networks.
Got my first call on the new carrier and phone about 15 minutes after that.
I had expected it to take days. Very pleasantly surprised it took an hour and a half.

From talking to people in the industry, some carriers have worked out the specific processes needed to port the number to specific other carriers. Comcast doesn't understand telephony and are known to be difficult to work with. The feeling is that Vonage is just to new. They have processes worked out with a couple of carriers but are still in early days with the majority of carriers.

[dpyers]

Just as an aside...
The Attorney General in my state is supposed to announce a major lawsuit against either Comcast or Vonage tomorrow for failure to disclose the limitation of their 911 call handling.

Apparently, 911 calls go to the carriers central 911 center which then routes the call to a local police department's main number - not to a local 911 service where address info for the call would be displayed.

Recently, a 911 call got routed this way to a PD main number - which was either busy, or not manned during off hours. The caller got a message telling them to call 911 - vicious little loop there. They wound up driving to the emergency center themselves.

[nelsonke]

You must be in my state of Texas. I maybe should have mentioned the 911 problem, most of the VoIP carriers have them. Two issues, first you have to sign up for 911 service (free) and tell Vonage what address you want identified. You can move your vonage box anywhere and it will connect via Internet to Vonage servers so they cannot report where you are without your agreement.

Second, Vonage has had difficulty getting local telco agreements with telcos that control the 911 service in your area. About 2 weeks ago Vonage announced an agreement with Quest that will give them routing to 911 centers in 14 states where Quest is the local telco. This week SBC confirmed that they once again were talking to Vonage about an agreement after previously rejecting Vonage's request and proposal for service. I think vonage has also run tests in New Jersey. I have told my family that for now our 911 calls go from our cell phones. Hope this helps. Here is an article with details. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=825938 5

[dpyers]

Actually, I'm in Connecticut. The SBC agreement would be a big win for Vonage as they cover 911 for over half the US.

[Dabelo]

Verizon has anounced the have a solution for the voip E911 problem.
It is a few months away but they say they will make is it available
to all voip providers. It is unclear from the writeup if it is just for their
911 call centers or if it will be avaliable to telcos.

Congrads to them for releasing it to other voip providers as a public safety issue, rather than using it as a an advantage of their own "voicewing" service.

And while I am at it, congrads to verizon for their 100% area coverage
of fiber to the home. This has been talked about for 30 years - but they are
the first to DO it. In north texas, 4 million homes by the end of the year,
including mine! 15/2 mbs speed @ $40/month !

PS I am a vonage customer. -

There were two problems so far.
1. When you sign up it will take a month or more to transfer you number.
Sometimes more if your current pots provider is being a jerk about it.
And you cannot transfer a number that has special services such as
special ring codes or DSL attached to it. They must be removed first!!

This leads to the need for a new temp vonage phone number while
all this gets cleared up. BE CAREFUL in choosing this number. You
are allowed to pick a number by area code and general location.
(i.e. a centeral office in which they have access to numbers )
It is wise to pick the by location!! I just picked a number by the
area code and later found it was in a central office of a different
city 40 miles away, resulted in all my local incoming calls being
long distance even in the dame area code. Make sure the first
six numbers of your new number are a central office that is
not a long distance call from your physical area, even if it is
a different (overlayed) area code, since you will live with the
new number, at least for a while. And don't cancel your current
service - you wll loose your current number - let them transfer
it, that will start the cancel process.

When I discover the problem, and requested a new central office in
my local are 2 vonage service reps said "It could not be done". Putting
in an order to cancel the vonage service with a 3rd rep got it done ! :=}

2. Second problem
After 2 weeks of servce my voice mail was gone. "No voice mail on this account"
It was truly gone - No messages, no access code, no setup ,nothing. It
took then about 3 hours to fix the problem, but the "new mailbox" had to be
setup all over again, and all old messages were lost. No reason for the problem
was provided.


Outside of these issues the service is good and soon you will forget it is voip
except when you pay the (lower) bill.

[nelsonke]

DPYERS -- You are in a beautiful state, the Texas AG is also suing Vonage on a similar issue, I guess these guys talk to each other.
Dabelow -- Good point on advise on getting the right telephone number. A handy source of information is http://www.nanpa.com/reports/reports_cocodes.html. The NANPA assigns U.S. telcos available telephone numbers. Area codes are called NPA's and the next 3 digits most people call exchanges are called NNX's by telcom people. Go to this link and choose the "Central Office Code Utilized Report". Enter the State and Area Code. You will then be shown a list of all assigned NNX's and exchanges, the name of the company it was assigned to, and the telco's switch they are assigned to. You will probably find that Vonex's numbers are not owned by or assigned to Vonex. In most cases they were assigned to a start up telco and they never needed to use them. They are happy to sell switch connections and telephone numbers to Vonage to connect the public network to Vonage's IP network. I found that my number was assigned to Ionex, which has been sold to Birch Telecom. Hope this helps.