Hello (plus a question) - Vonage

[mikeinmunich]

New forum user, so Hi all.

Not sure of the best forum for my question, so apologies in advance, if there is a more suitable place to ask this.

Anyway, I'm a longstanding TW subscriber, having had phone and broadband for a few years. I recently took up Virgin's £30 offer and added TV size M for, effectively, a price reduction. The phone deal gives me free weekend calls to landlines.

Today I had a sales call from a guy at Vonage, selling their phone service - free calls to UK/Ireland/many other European landlines for a fixed 7.99 per month and cheaper calls to mobiles than Virgin are currently offering.

So 2 questions

1 Has anyone tried this service?
2. They say that all I need is a free adapter to attatch to my cable modem, but after viewing their website, it looks like I need an adapter with a built in router, which costs 9.99. Can anyone clarify?

[Matt D]

1) I haven't, but others have. I've changed your thread's title so people will see it's about Vonage - hopefully someone who has used it will reply.


2) You do need a router of some sort. You can either use a normal cable router, & plug their VoIP adapter into a spare LAN port on it. Or, you use one of their special routers with built-in VoIP.

[SMHarman]

Are you sure that price is right?
OK it is new price plans...
http://vonage.co.uk/specialoffers/index_uk.php

If your Cable Modem is plugged directly into your PC then you will need more than their free hardware (one of their routers with built in VOIP as MattD said. The Linksys one is very good. I have used that before). If you have a Cable Modem compatible router you plug the widgit (made by DLink IIR) from them into it and away you go. This will mean you need to move your cordless phone base station to near the PC.

It does not work with Sky/Sky+ so if you have that as well be aware.

Call clarity is great. My UK box now lives with me in the US so anyone in the UK can call me on it using a UK number. I have set VOIP traffic to have priority on my router and have a 15/2 connection, but even while downloading from newsgroups call clarity is unchanged. The power adapter for the DLink is 100-250v so can be used globally with a plug adapter on the power socket. The other end is just a RJ45 Ethernet plug so works in any router.

So how much is the phone line element of your VM bill? More than 5.99/7.99 a month?

A final thing to note is that at the moment there is no number portablility to Vonage. You will get a new phone number. Probably in your area code, but it may bear little relation to phone numbers that you usually see in the town you live in. For example most phone numbers in the 01992 area are either 4xxxxx 5xxxxxx 8xxxxxx. Vonage numbers in this area are 6xxxxxx

[jem]

Originally Posted by mikeinmunich

New forum user, so Hi all.

Snip

So 2 questions

1 Has anyone tried this service?
2. They say that all I need is a free adapter to attatch to my cable modem, but after viewing their website, it looks like I need an adapter with a built in router, which costs 9.99. Can anyone clarify?

Yes me, I signed up via the website very late last Wednesday night and the hardware arrived by courier on Friday morning. It consists of a very small black box, all pre-configured, which you plug into a router and plug you conventional analogue phone into into the socket on it. And thats all you need to do.

The black box is effectively free (it does cost £9.99 but they credit it back to you), subscription is £5.99 per month for six months then £7.99 per month, unlimited 'free' call to all UK geographic numbers i.e. those starting 01 and 02 and call to mobiles being between 15p and 5p per minute depending on time of day. Call quality is just fine, certainly as good as the fixed line, I have it set on the highest quality which uses about 90kbits of bandwidth.

Now I already had a router attached to the VM cable modem so for me it was literally plug-in an go. If you just have a single PC connected directly to the cable modem then you will need to get some kind of router. Vonage do supply one but personally I think you can do better by getting your own - something like a Linksys WRT54G which will be about £40 or so.

My apologies-I seem to have just about repeated SMHarman's post above, must remember to read the whole thread properly before replying