I was wondering if anyone has used the vonnage service http://www.vonage.com with a T1 as their phone company? I am mostly interested in how much it _really_ costs, as with a phone company, they will tell you that it costs x, but by the time all the "taxes" are added in, the phone bill is almost 50% more. I am also interested in getting any feedback on the quality, reliability, etc, good or bad, of the service. Finally, is there any degradation in latency or bandwidth when the phone is _not_ in use to the data part of the T1? I believe that the vonage service uses two 1 1/2 "banks" of a T1 (about 90k.) Thanks in advance, nitro
I'm using it over a cable connection through a router that all my PCs also connect through. A little bit of special configuration of router port passthrough (for inbound calls) and getting the Vonage box DHCP priority (so it could get the same inside address to be used as part of the passthrough config). Quality is fine (occassionally a little choppy sounding), however be aware that while you can send and receive FAXes there are occassional problems and incomplete sends/receives. And modem connections are problematic and unsupported thanks to limitations in the Cisco box - I had an application that needed to modem connect to dozens of remote data devices for a client - took a lot of monkeying around and lots of retrying to get it to work reasonably over Vonage. But if you're just going to use it for ordinary voice and FAX and don't always require "hear a pin drop" quality, it works fine. Don't have a bill in front of me, but the cost is around $50 or so per month for a box and seperate voice and fax numbers. FAX line has unlimited receive and several hundred minutes of send time, voice line has unlimited local and long distance usage. Box is portable - so if you were going to be out of town (or even out of the country) but somewhere you had access to high-speed internet, you could plug the box in there and make unlimited phone calls.
Thanks for the reply. Interesting. From looking at their website, it looks like you are using the Small Business" plan for $49.99. That includes a fax line in addition to the regular phone line. I see that you are using Cable. I do not know much about the vonage service, but I imagine that some of the problems you experience have to do with the fact that you are using Cable and I may be able to get more reliability as I would be using a (quality) T1, but I am not sure... This is a stupid question, but do you know if I could get the basic plan without a fax, can I then use that number when I needed to make or receive a fax? I rarely need to send fax or receive faxes, so for me it is sort of a waste... Unlitmately I will need to call them to get deeper into this. I may even have to try it. In your post, I am a little confused by something. You mention a Cisco box. Is that what they provide you, or are you referring to a switch and/or router on your network? I ask because when I have the T1 in place, it will be using a Cisco CSU/DSU. nitro
"Don't have a bill in front of me, but the cost is around $50 or so per month for a box and seperate voice and fax numbers. FAX line has unlimited receive and several hundred minutes of send time, voice line has unlimited local and long distance usage." i dont see any reason your average person would use it for $50 per month unless you do a lot of overseas calling. doesnt seem that cheap to me. right now i use qwest. for $50 per month i get unlimited local and long distance.
No, The $50 he is talking about has _two_ lines, one for fax and one for the regular phone. If he only needed just a phone line, you can actually get your "Broadband phone bill" down to about $17 _after_taxes_. nitro
Let's see: 1. The $50 includes two lines - one voice line and a seperate dedicated FAX line. You can use a cheaper single line plan that still offers unlimited use. 2. If you use a cheaper single line plan, you CAN still use it to send and receive faxes. I wanted a separate fax line phone number. 3. The problems with using the line for modem communication has nothing to do with it being connected via cable - it's an inherent design issue with the Cisco ATA device that they use (Vonage and Cisco acknowledge the problem). 4. The Cisco box I mentioned is the ATA (the terminal adapter they send to you) - it has an ethernet port (to connect to your router/hub/switch) and 2 analog phone line ports (to connect to your phone/fax/etc ). Note that if you use a single line plan, the second port will not be active - so if you want to occassionally send/receive faxes on the voice line, you might need a phone/fax switch.