That's it, as soon as my new Bell line is active I will be discontinuing my Vonage service!
I have been a Vonage customer for several years and I have tolerated a multitude of service issues. But today's issue is the last straw. I have two Vonage telephone numbers, and for the last hour, neither one of them is reachable. Callers trying to reach me at either of my numbers are getting a variety of responses including: an announcement that states that the number was never activated, another says that the call cannot be completed as dialed, and at times just a fast-busy signal.
As I have mentioned here previously, services like Vonage are vulnerable to a variety of issues that can affect service reliability and quality. The most important of which is that they don't own the network connection to my home and therefore have absolutely no ability to provide any type of QoS once the call leaves their network.
And while my service quality has been impaired previously due to congestion on my ISP's network, today's problem is due to a problem within Vonage's infrastructure or with one of their suppliers. When combined with other service issues such as phantom calls, voicemail problems and unreliable voice quality, the downside outweighs the benefits of the advanced features that are not yet available from Bell.
IP Telephony technology is mature, robust and enables a multitude of new services. However, running a phone company is not a trivial matter and design, implementation and operations must be nearly flawless in execution. I will return to the Incumbent until a more viable alternative is available.
Over time, I'm convinced that many other residential VoIP consumers will reach the same conclusion that I have:
I am not willing to sacrifice primary line service reliability or quality just to save a few dollars per month.
Rick McCharles
www.ric.ca
Stumble It!
you'd better check Vbuzzer. For two bucks a month, you just don't care whether it stops working for a few hours every now and then. They give you network-based voicemail-to-email included in the two bucks.
bell is ripping you off 400 dollars a year. You probably could have bought a car or two with what you gave bell.
Can't port your number though, but who cares. That's why you got a cell.
cheers
Actually, you're missing the point. I don't care if the service is free. If I can't depend on it, I don't want it. In fact, I don't want it even if I'm paid to use it!
Also, I bought a $200 car when I was sixteen years old. I have no interest in reliving that experience!