Vonage and similar services

[Turboguy]

I thought I had seen this discussed before but a search turned up nothing and scanning through a bunch of page topics did not show anything.

At the moment I am highly po'd at MCI so I think I want to strike while I have the motivation. At home I am signed up for MCI's basic service and if I have to call Russia I use either 10-10-987 or a calling card.  When my friend from Rostov visited me for a week last month I showed her how to use 10-10-987, however, she must not have done it.  I got my bill from MCI today.  $ 705.00 for 65 minutes worth of calls to Russia during the week she was here.  MCI and I are going to part company real fast.  She could have direct dialed on my cell phone for a third of that.

I have high speed internet at home and am thinking of going to a service like Vonage.  I am aware you loose 911 ability.  No big deal.  If I ever need it I can use my cell.  What are the other pros and cons and are there any other services I should look at or should I stay with a more conventional phone service but with someone other than MCI.   My cable is through Comcast and they have a cable phone set up too if anyone has any opinioins. 

Any good suggestions are welcome.  Thanks guys.

[jb]

Vonnage is simply great.  I've had Vonnage service for over a year and we absolutely love it, and will never go back to conventional Bell Tel.

And BTW, Vonnage handles 911 too. After you get the service you just have to register your address and they take care of programming which police number your phone will automatically connect with if you dial 911,  For 24.95 a month you get unlinited phoning anywhere in the USA and Canada, all the whistles and bells, call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail, etc.  You also get some pretty good rates overseas, although we do better by teaming up Vonnage with MasterCall.com  It's like talking to your neighbor next door for sound quality, and a call to Moscow, runs about 2 cents a minute.  The latest wrinkle is to sign up your g/f overseas with Vonnage, get her a local Vonnage phone number and whenever you dial that local number, her phone in Russia rings.  Talk forever for $24.95 a month.   Cool beans, ay?

I understand calls to Ukraine are still subject to crappy connections, but that's because Ukraine has crappy a phone system.

[Sohkay]

My girl in Ukraine just has a cell phone and the connections are south of crappy. I use Bizon at .19/minute, My Webcalls at .15/minute and Yahoo at .11/minute. Bizon has the best sound quality but is still erratic, Webcalls is extremely erratic and Yahoo has a delay like it was yesterday. And of course the Ukrainian cell phone providers are just atrocious. Seriously, there are times I will dial 20 times for a 30-40 minute conversation. Very sore point with me. Interestingly, I had a Sprint phone card around the house and gave it a try. The sound quality was tremendous...at $1.00 a freaking minute!

Also, those with Ukrainian wives/girlfriends can relate to this...it's about 9 months wait to get a land line installed. I think she'll be stateside by then.

[Louie]

My long distance carrier is AT&T, and it cost me from 12 to 4.5 a minute to call Russia and ukraine, it seems like the longer i talk the cheaper it is. Example; Russia for 49 minutes cost $7.35 Ukraine 36 minutes cost $7.92, I signed up for 2 calling plans, Just Call World Wide @ 4.99 a month and Value plus flat rate @ 3.00 a month, the calls to Russia are Chrystal clear about 95% of the time, the calls are very good 75% of the time to Ukraine when I get thru.

[docetae]

In fact all communication handling terrestrial lines in Ukraine are bad. I get the opportunity to look at some switches (was my work in the 90) and I get the feeling to do a time travel.

But all the gsm infrastructure is really good. so if she has no high speed internet, just call her using her cell phone and voip on your side.

If she has high speed Internet, more simple, just buy her a sip phone (look on ebay) and associate a local (US) phone number to her sip ID. Result : you can call her for free from anywhere ... and on her side she can redirect her phone number to her cell phone too...

[catzenmouse]

We also have Vonage and like jb will never switch back to a Ma Bell type phone. It has been one of the best things that has happened to the phone industry since Al Bell got it going. I have a friend with Lingo and he says that they are great also but he is the only one I know who has tried it.

Ken

[Turboguy]

Thanks Ken,  I did go ahead with the Vonage but it is still sitting in the box.  Hopefully tommorow I will get it hooked up.   It looks easy enough.  It does look head and shoulders above my former service MCI who I will never deal with again.

[ConnerVT]

We use Packet8 here.  Cost is a little less per month than Vonage, and all the tech support is right here in the USA.  Initially went with them for the $0.07/min calls to Russia.  Dial direct, no calling card needed (it would be a lot less, if I was calling Moscow as jb does).

Now we use Viopcheap.co.uk (one of the Betamax/Fineara siblings) where with a 10 EUR (or GBP depending on the website) we can speak for 300 minutes during a 7 day period without ever taking a cent from our account balance.  Since Feb, we have over 70 hours of telephone time to Russia for less than $1.00 TOTAL cost.  And the sound quality is better than my old Verizon line was talking to the neighbor down the street.

You folks with the huge telephone bills crack me up...   

[wendaaaal]

We also have Vonage and like jb will never switch back to a Ma Bell type phone. It has been one of the best things that has happened to the phone industry since Al Bell got it going. I have a friend with Lingo and he says that they are great also but he is the only one I know who has tried it.

Ken

I've been using Lingo for almost 2 years now. They've been $19.95, but I think they're going up to $22.95 soon. Includes free calls to landlines in most of Western Europe. That was great when the girlfriend was in Holland, now she's back in Ukraine. Like jb I use mastercall.com to call her mobile in Ukraine. Generally works o.k., but any call to Ukraine is an adventure!
Wendell

[Son of Clyde]

With Comcast sometimes having outages, I assume you must have an active Internet connection for Vonage to work. Is Skype basically the same principle? Skype also has pc to phone plans with pc to pc being free.