Several months ago I wrote about an evil cell phone carrier. In a nut shell I went over my minutes (only time I ever did) and they charged me an extra $70. To get the specifics you can read my post Cell Phones vs. VoIP.
Well it has been a while since that incident and I thought I’d give a quick follow up. My wife and I got VoIP installed quickly after. I mean, you really can’t beat unlimited calls for $24.99/month. We also switched cell phone carriers out of ire. Guess how many problems we’ve had with VoIP so far. Zero.
As a matter of fact, since we make so many calls from home as opposed to on the run, we were able to downsize our cell phone plan. Now between the two of us, we’re only using about 300 minutes a month on our cells. VoIP has allowed us to significantly cut down our phone bills.
I highly recommend getting a Vonage home line to anybody that want to cut down cell phone usage. It saves a lot of money and hassle with robotic cell phone carrier customer representatives.
I recently moved into a new apartment with my wife (we just got married a few months ago). We each have a different cell phone carrier and we are both still under contract. I do not use the phone very often and neither does she, so we figured we’d live on our cell phones until we buy a house in a year or so, then we would install Vonage.
Well, let me take a minute to tell you what a terrible idea that was. I received a phone call from my evil cell phone carrier the other day. I’ll leave them nameless because they truly are evil, and in an already suffering economy, I don’t want my very important opinion to bankrupt this company. The lady on the phone told me that I was about to reach my monthly limit which was astonishing to me! She informed me that there was a $.45 per minute charge which I already knew.
Then she said, “Let me pull up your account.” She pulled it up and stated that I was actually already 100 minutes over my monthly limit. As if that weren’t bad enough, she then persisted to try to get me to upgrade my phone plan so it wouldn’t happen again. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this either.
So the phone bill rolls in. What usually costs me $55 a months was $121! What a rip off. I was actually in such disbelief that I downloaded a spreadsheet of all my calls and did some analysis on it. I found that a lot of my longer calls were actually from home. If I had Vonage Unlimited, I would have paid significantly less this month in overall phone bills.
After doing some spreadsheet analysis I learned that a large amount of my phone calls we 2 minute phone calls. Usually when I make a call I go right over a minute. Doing this a few times a day adds up quick since 1 minute and 1 second is a 2 minute call. As a systems major I know that it would be extremely easy to track each call in minutes and seconds then add everything up for the monthly bill, but the truth is, cell phone companies hate you. I can’t wait to get VoIP.
Ironically enough, my cell phone company sued Vonage a few years ago. Conspiracy?
At the end of July, Vonage named a new CEO. The man for the job is former Cingular Wireless Chief Marketing Officer Marc Lefar. Now at age 44, Lefar will take over the executive officer spot for Jeffery Citron, Vonage founder and chairman.
Citron will still stay active in the company, but will be handing off a lot of repsonsibilities to Lefar. Lefar has a lot of hard work ahead of him. He will be working mostly on Vonage’s long term plan now that the company is out of hot water.
The hope is that Lefar’s marketing knowledge and prior experience in the same field will aid the company in improving its marketing strategy without heavily increasing the cost of advertising.
Early on in the VoIP industry, there were issues with 911 calling. With no hard fixed location to trace, 911 callers would have to explain exactly where they were in order for any emergency personnel to be able to find them. This was a pretty unfortunate con to voice over internet protocol phone service.
Fortunately, there have been several improvements made to correct this problem. E911 has made it possible to make effective 911 to be made and tracked. Unfortunately, there are many places that still do not have E911 capabilities meaning there are still several places that are vulnerable when it comes to calling emergency services.
Last week, President Bush signed a bill into law that calls for all VoIP companies to offer service that has the same 911 capabilities as regular phone service. This will make VoIP 911 equal to regular 911 in it’s ability an reliability. With a service that is slowing replacing traditional telephone, it is important to ensure that it is as safe as possible.
Perhaps the next big problem to solve will be the power loss issue. There are already VoIP backup batteries, but something will have to be done for all VoIP customers sooner or later.
I think just about everyone here has seen at least a few Vonage commercials. There was the beach commercial, and who could forget the hilarious geek and super model in sports car commercial.
Vonage’s commercials have had a different effect on many people. Some people are somewhat offended by some of them, but the bottom line is that they are pretty funny and downright effective advertising. Aside from the funny concept behind every commercial, we are all reminded of the Vonage theme song. This memorable tune just glues itself to the minds of everyone who hears it.
These effective Vonage commercials have been a large factor in the success of building their large customer base. All that said and done, Vonage has somewhat shifted their perspective and started to make a few “information based” commercials that inform more about the details of some of their new products. Vonage, although they have cut back on advertising costs, continues to diversify the ways in which they do advertise and the company continues to grow under this trend.
It’s time to stack Vonage up next to another VoIP provider. Today, we will take a look at Comcast Digital Voice. This is Comcast’s version of Voice over Internet Protocol service. Let’s look at a few important factors.
Of course the first thing on everyone’s checklist is price. Comparing unlimited local and long distance calling plans, Vonage as always, is charging $24.99/month. Comcast digital Voice is $39.95/month! That’s almost 60% more expensive! Not only is it much more expensive, this rate is only available assuming you are already using Comcast cable internet. If not, it costs more every month!
I also found that the Comcast check out page is extremely difficult to understand. Actually buying the product is pretty difficult. Comcast comes with some pretty heavy sign up fees as well.
Vonage is a company that is dedicated specifically to offering VoIP service. Comcast generalizes in all cable products and uses VoIP as a tool to get people to sign up with their other services.
Vonage offers 20 premium features with their unlimited calling plan. This is 8 features more than Comcast offers. So Vonage knocks Comcast Digital Voice out of the water with features as well. One good idea that Comcast has implemented is a battery backup system in case of power outages.
Vonage for a much smaller price offers much better service and many more features than Comcast.
CallVantage is AT&T’s take on VoIP. There are many factors to consider when searching for a VoIP provider. Let’s take a look at a few important factors to consider while comparing AT&T CallVantage to Vonage.
Well, the price of AT&T CallVantage’s unlimited residential plan is the same as Vonage. Just $24.99 a month. This automatically makes it a battle of which service is better. Since the prices are the same for each service, we can cancel that category out of our comparison.
Features are definitely worth considering when we compare VoIP services. While CallVantage offers some great features, Vonage offers many more and at no extra cost. Now you can even use your Vonage service to send a fax over your PC.
Both services offer free calling to Canada and Puerto Rico, however, other international rates differ. Vonage offers free international calling to several other countries (ex. France and Italy). This is included in the regular unlimited plan. Other international rates are also extremely cheap (ex. China and Mexico city both 1 cent a minute).
These are just a few of the huge perks that Vonage offers over AT&T CallVantage. For the same price, why not get more? www.vonage-promotions.com.
A lot of people have fear of switching from a land line phone company to a VoIP provider because it seems like setting up a VoIP service in your house would be difficult.
Vonage has taken the time and effort to make that an easy task. It’s very simple. When you buy Vonage, everything that is required to set up the service comes in a box that will be mailed to your house. Everything is actually color coated, so the set up could probably be figured out by most people without having to put forth much effort.
However, Vonage has prepared a manual and even a CD that explains and shows diagrams of everything that has to be done. They give step by step walk throughs of how to successfully set up Vonage.
With little effort and no confusion, you could sever your connection with the phone company now, pay less, and not have to deal with surprisingly high long distance and international rates.
It’s back to school time and I was recently faced with a problem. Everyone in our house had a cell phone except myself, so there was no home phone service. I had to chose between buying my own cell phone or getting Vonage. I got the cell phone. What a mistake.
The first thing I had to actually do is buy the cell phone $60. There was an activation fee of $50. I got nailed with $20 worth of bogus charges after that and a few other things. So after buying the phone, my first bill was over $70 for a 4 day period. As if I hadn’t already suffered enough with this experience, I quickly learned that even on incoming international calls during nights and weekends, I get nailed with heavy rates! Between $1.50 and $2.00 per minute for the countries I receive calls from.
In short, I already regret not getting Vonage and it’s only been 2 weeks! With Vonage I would get unlimited calls for $24.99 a month. I would be able to make phone calls anytime I want, not just nights and weekends. I would also get much better international rates.
Vonage is definitely a great service for college students. Since we all make so many long distance calls, it is hard to find a cheaper, more reliable, convenient service. Don’t buy a cell phone. www.vonage-promotions.com.
This week Vonage asked a federal court to have Sprint release vital information relevant to the alleged patent infringements. This information will be key to Vonage’s defence, but Sprint hasn’t seemed to want to let it out.
Vonage has rightfully claimed that Sprint has failed to enter a full privilege log and is therefore withholding extremely relevant information from the case. It is hard to know what the problems are and what Sprint wants if they won’t give detailed information on what patents were allegedly infringed upon and how. It makes one wonder how much ground Sprint will be standing on when the trial starts. Are they withholding information because they have not yet decided exactly how it is that Vonage has infringed upon their technology? Next month will tell.
The question still lingers, if all these companies are still offering the same kind of service, is it any wonder that there is technology overlap. Why aren’t all the other VoIP companies suing all the other VoIP companies?
The court will be more likely to lean in Vonage’s direction if Sprint fails to comply with all the regular protocol.
Despite all the variables and question marks still seen in the trial a little down the road, many new customers continue to sign up for Vonage everyday as the company continues to grow in number of total subcriber lines.
