[clue-talk] Vonage/VOIP recommendations

[Nate Duehr]

Greg Knaddison wrote:

> I'm curious if anyone has experience with Vonage or any other
> providers.  I've used Skype and am interested in the SkypeOut/SkypeIn
> service which allows for interaction not only with Skype users but
> also other POTS users.  However, I noticed that "SkypeIn" (which gives
> you an incoming phone number) is only in beta and has limited
> availability.  That doesn't sound good to me...

Multiple friends on Vonage and the ham radio club tech crew also changed 
out the phone line that goes to the equipment on Conifer Mountain with a 
wireless ISP link from Wispertel and a Vonage box.

No complaints or anyone noticing any quality difference at all from the 
radio club membership, and the conversations with friends on various 
ISP's with Vonage all sound like they're normal phone calls unless they 
really hammer their network with traffic while they're on the phone. 
Vonage has the devices set up to do QoS of a sort, but it requires the 
device to handle all traffic, and I don't like the idea of a $20 device 
being between my servers and the Net (GRIN).  So I'd probably bring the 
Vonage box further inside the network and deal with the occasional 
packet loss if I forget and do a huge download while on the phone.

Let's see... what else... Everyone I've talked to that has ever done a 
local-number-portability number move has waited 4-6 months for Qwest to 
do it, though.

You also may want to look for a provider that will let you do standard 
SIP connections so you have more overall flexibility with your devices.

BroadVoice allows this, with their "BYOD" plan (Bring Your Own Device) 
and if you ever get interested in building a Linux PBX or using a cheap 
SIP phone or ATA, you can.

They're also slightly cheaper per month than Vonage and offer calls to 
21 countries for free, including the U.S. - no minutes to track, even to 
all those countries.  Vonage only does the U.S. and Canada for free.

I've been thinking about getting Broadvoice and setting up an Asterisk 
machine at home, mostly so I can call friends in Australia for free.  We 
already talk regularly on VoIP desktop clients of various sorts on our 
PC's, but it'd be nice to be able to dial the house, enter a few digits 
to get into a menu, and to call their "extension" from home from any 
phone.  Especially since I have to call at odd hours to catch them awake.

Both Vonage and Broadvoice have Windows-based softphones available, but 
with Broadvoice, in theory any SIP-compatible softphone would work, so 
you have a better chance of being able to run it on a Linux-based 
softphone, I would think.  I haven't looked into Linux softphones yet, 
really.

Oh yeah, Skype... a number of friends using the client peer-to-peer, but 
none of them have opted for the SkypeIn service that I know of, yet. 
The client works well, audio quality and setup are easy enough I'd 
recommend it to anyone, not just computer "geeks".  For chatting PC to 
PC it's nice.

Nate