Any Satisfied Vonage Customers Here? Please come in.

[GTaudiophile]

If so, please post in thread.

I am thinking about setting up a Vonage account for my father who wants to cancel his local land-line for which he pays like an obscene $80-$100/month.

BUT he hates cordless phones. He especially hates their funky rechargeable batteries that no one seems to carry.

So I just have some questions about how the hardware is set up and what kind(s) of touch-tone phones one may use with the system.

Thanks.

 

[Zivic]

I have had vonage for years. i haven't had any issues with touch tone phones I have used (cheapo $5 ones to the touch tone phone on a fax machine). Not sure if you have a specific one in mind?

the vonage box needs power and and an ethernet feed. You plug in a phone cord from the vonage box to your phone, or into the home's wiring and you are set. very easy

FWIW, my 61 yr old father that can barely use a computer had vonage for 2.5 yrs and didn't have any issues with it.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Hi there! Thanks for the reply.

Your second sentence has me interested.

Say my dad has three phones in the house:
1) Kitchen phone, corded, downstairs.
2) Den phone, corded, downstairs.
3) Office phone, corded, upstairs.

Assuming his PC/modem/router/Vonage box are upstairs in the office, how does he best integrate the phones downstairs assuming he wants to keep them use them?

Edit: Obviously the phone in the office would connect directly into the Vonage box. No brainer.

 

[GTaudiophile]

I have had vonage for years. i haven't had any issues with touch tone phones I have used (cheapo $5 ones to the touch tone phone on a fax machine). Not sure if you have a specific one in mind?

the vonage box needs power and and an ethernet feed. You plug in a phone cord from the vonage box to your phone, or into the home's wiring and you are set. very easy

FWIW, my 61 yr old father that can barely use a computer had vonage for 2.5 yrs and didn't have any issues with it.

This I did not know.

You can plug the Vonage box into a standard home phone jack and the rest of the phones in the house will be able to dial through it?

 

[vi edit]

Skip vonage and go ooma IMHO.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Skip vonage and go ooma IMHO.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I am not loyal to Vonage. But even with OOMA, my questions remains the same. I want more details on how the system integrates within the home. See above posts. Thanks.

 

[vi edit]

Same as vonage. You put it "in front" of the phone line before it trunks off. Then it's available to all jacks in the house.

 

[ew915]

obihai is free, just buy the box

 

[pm]

The new line of Panasonic phones use any kind of AAA rechargable batteries. They do need to be rechargable, but you can replace them with any kind of NiMH AAA batteries from the store... and you can buy a set of Sanyo Eneloops (one of the best rechargables) and use those. For example, these phones take AAA's http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KX-T.../dp/B004N4MH14 but most (all?) of Panasonic's cordless phones made in the last 2-3 years are all on using standard NiMH rechargeables.

And as other people have said, with all of these VOIP internet phones, you can go outside, disconnect the wires back to the telephone office and leave them hanging and then plug in the Vonage, Ooma, Callcentric or whatever box and then you have corded phone service at every jack in the house. The trick is that you have to disconnect the wires back to the main office or funky things happen - sometimes it doesn't work at all, sometimes everyone is really quiet, sometimes it works fine but doesn't ring, etc. But if you disconnect the wires outside, things work fine.

Any type of phones - except the old rotary dial ones - will work (and I think there's a mode you can use where rotary phones will work too).

As far as Vonage, we are on Callcentric pay-as-you-go but we were happy enough with Vonage when we used them for 2-3 years. We switched to Callcentric.com because it was a lot cheaper for international calls.

 

[GTaudiophile]

The new line of Panasonic phones use any kind of AAA rechargable batteries. They do need to be rechargable, but you can replace them with any kind of NiMH AAA batteries from the store... and you can buy a set of Sanyo Eneloops (one of the best rechargables) and use those. For example, these phones take AAA's http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KX-T.../dp/B004N4MH14 but most (all?) of Panasonic's cordless phones made in the last 2-3 years are all on using standard NiMH rechargeables.

And as other people have said, with all of these VOIP internet phones, you can go outside, disconnect the wires back to the telephone office and leave them hanging and then plug in the Vonage, Ooma, Callcentric or whatever box and then you have corded phone service at every jack in the house. The trick is that you have to disconnect the wires back to the main office or funky things happen - sometimes it doesn't work at all, sometimes everyone is really quiet, sometimes it works fine but doesn't ring, etc. But if you disconnect the wires outside, things work fine.

As far as Vonage, we are on Callcentric pay-as-you-go but we were happy enough with Vonage when we used them for 2-3 years. We switched to Callcentric.com because it was a lot cheaper for international calls.

Thanks but this still doesn't answer my technical questions regarding older, corded phones

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

obihai is free, just buy the box

It's certainly worth looking at.
Product is here:
http://www.amazon.com/OBi100-Telepho.../dp/B004LO098O
Thread is here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2184609

 

[alent1234]

Had it for years with no issues. Dumped it because it was cheaper to get time warner triple play

 

[GTaudiophile]

Same as vonage. You put it "in front" of the phone line before it trunks off. Then it's available to all jacks in the house.

Trunks off?

I thought you had to place the "box" between your modem and router?

 

[pm]

Thanks but this still doesn't answer my technical questions regarding older, corded phones

Yes, I did. It's in the middle paragraph. Older corded phones work fine and every jack in the house can be live if you disconnect the wires outside.

 

[Pliablemoose]

The new line of Panasonic phones use any kind of AAA rechargable batteries. They do need to be rechargable, but you can replace them with any kind of NiMH AAA batteries from the store... and you can buy a set of Sanyo Eneloops (one of the best rechargables) and use those. For example, these phones take AAA's http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KX-T.../dp/B004N4MH14 but most (all?) of Panasonic's cordless phones made in the last 2-3 years are all on using standard NiMH rechargeables.

That's an awesome idea, I may go with a VOIP solution with the Panasonics because of that, the batteries have always been a pet peeve of mine as well.

 

[Zivic]

Trunks off?

I thought you had to place the "box" between your modem and router?

you are reading too much into this...

you should unhook the old feed coming into the house. Other than that, just plug the phone cord coming off the vonage box into a wall jack. this make all the jacks in the house hot. you can use any touch-tone phone... corded or cordless.

The vonage box itself just needs an internet connection. Mine is just on a port off the router

 

[r0k]

Skip vonage and go ooma IMHO.

Thanks but this still doesn't answer my technical questions regarding older, corded phones

That's an awesome idea, I may go with a VOIP solution with the Panasonics because of that, the batteries have always been a pet peeve of mine as well.

I just bought an Ooma box today. It's darned expensive. $250. Then it turns out they want $10 a month for their "premier" service which is free for 60 days so I'll try it.

I use an Airport Extreme as my router. Every time I looked into Vonage, they require their box to be between the cable modem/dsl and your router. Why? QOS. Vonage seems to be more dependent on QOS for better voice quality. Meanwhile, my AEBS doesn't even support QOS but my ooma box is working just fine. I should mention that there is a QOS setting for the ooma box and I've heard it's on by default but I haven't touched it.

On ooma's support site, somebody asked about the corded phones. I had to look that up myself. We have about 12 phones hooked up, most of which are wireless but about 5 of which are corded. You need to check the REN or Ringher Equivalency Number of your phones. Old fashioned "bell" phones with mechanical bells have a REN of 1. Corded speakerphones with internal batteries have a REN of around 0.4. Corded phones without internal batteries also have fractional REN, typically 0.5 or less. Cordless phones that run on AC power bricks have a REN of about 0.1 and sometimes even say 0.0. You have to look at the rather obscure label on your phone (bottom usually) for the REN. What this means is you can easily have as many phones as you like on the ooma box as long as you don't exceed 5 or 6 of the old style mechanical phones.

My At&t line stopped working yesterday. I called repair. They said Tuesday. I said "enough". I went and cut the useless wire coming inside from At&t so there was no outside land line coming in my house. I "back fed" the entire house from my ooma box and all our phones work just like they did when we had At&t. No. Scratch that. Now they work without noise on the line every time it rains and the dial tone has a little song at the beginning. I'm going to keep both At&t and ooma until I prove to myself ooma is better. If I make it beyond the 30 day return period for the ooma box without taking it back, I'll port my At&t number to ooma ($40 fee).

I also considered magic jack but it requires a PC or Intel mac. I have an old G4 mini I was willing to dedicate to Magic Jack but decided I'd rather not deal with dedicating a computer to phone service. I also considered Comcast and At&t voip but they were way too expensive. I could probably find a better "deal" than the $250 ooma box but I've been doing without a phone and so I'm not interested in mail order this time. If you have a working phone and can take your time, there are other VOIP boxes out there just make sure you check everything out before you buy.

 

[vi edit]

I also considered magic jack but it requires a PC or Intel mac. I have an old G4 mini I was willing to dedicate to Magic Jack but decided I'd rather not deal with dedicating a computer to phone service. I also considered Comcast and At&t voip but they were way too expensive. I could probably find a better "deal" than the $250 ooma box but I've been doing without a phone and so I'm not interested in mail order this time. If you have a working phone and can take your time, there are other VOIP boxes out there just make sure you check everything out before you buy.

Every so often Fry's and w00t have the old ooma "core" refurb for around $100. I've even seen the new telo system on w00t for around $120. The old core system has zero fees. Even the telo system with the new FCC taxes or whatever they are should be around $3.50 a month. The $10 plan is for premier which I had zero need for.