Vonage Digital Voice Phone Service

March 12, 2003 - 10:32pm — bmann

Wow. VoIP. Five years ago, I first dug into the deep and dirty world of "voice over IP". I thought it might take off really soon. I'm still waiting. So, this short review of Vonage's service looked interesting.

Vonage is attempting to bring a new value to the phone network -- with their service you can check your voice mail from the web and also have very accurate phone accounting of your last few phone calls and exactly how long they lasted.

They use a Cisco ATA 186, which doesn't seem very interesting -- Ethernet on one-side, analog on the other. What is interesting, that searches for the ATA 186 return "end of life" announcements as the best results.

What is this Vonage company? Can we get it in Canada? Hey, if you get broadband through something other than your phone line, you could ditch the phone company all together. Unfortunately, no Canadian service. Hey Nortel people -- it is rather disturbing that when typing in canada voip into Google, the top hit is Cisco...

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March 14, 2003 - 9:34am — Anonymous

Try iConnecthere

Vonage may not be available but the Deltathree branded service iconnecthere is great. I use a Cisco ATA and have been assigned a virtual phone number (from the San Jose 408 NPA) that terminates in Sandy Hill Ottawa.

There is no concept of local number so all dialling to North American PSTNs has to be 11 digit.

Voice quality:
To local calls in Ottawa: Not that great, cell phone like.
To US Major Cities: very good.
To US minro cities: varies.
To London England: Fantastic.

Costs: 70-30% off Bell Canada discount plans.

PS: Nice site Boris.
PPS: I am too lazy to create a user ame for myself. Anan is fine. Ramps

March 15, 2003 - 9:41am — bmann

Looks cool

I had a look through iConnectHere. I really am thinking that VoIP is "coming". A lot of it is marketing, and the companies seem to be focusing on the low-cost angle, especially to ethnic groups that make a lot of long distance calls overseas.

I think that more marketing effort needs to be put into targetting the Alpha Geeks -- the bleeding-edge folks. Once they are happy with it, and given lots of feedback on what would make it more useful to "regular" users, companies can use that information to roll the product out to a wider market.

Again, a case of "I want it!" but there is no one around to sell it to me. Pretty much all I would need is a Canadian area code (long distance is typically the same across Canada). For local incoming calls, I would use my cell phone. Mmmmm...could the cell be forwarded to that long-distance number? Would it cost me or callers? Interesting.

Of course, optional add-ons like video capability would be cool, too. A black box with analog jacks and/or computer client via USB. Second USB port for web cam.

BTW -- the mysterious poster is Gaurav Rampal, a.k.a. "Ramps". Check out his site, gauravrampal.com.

March 15, 2003 - 7:36pm — Anonymous

iConnectHere

iConnectHere is not well-reviewed elsewhere.
There're also Net2Phone & MSN Messenger 4.7 with voice.

March 12, 2003 - 11:17pm — smithdm3

Vonage...

Not yet available in Canada... mainly due to the fact that you have to pick a phone number/area code and they don't have regulatory approval here yet (who know's if they've applied) and therefor can't dole out Cdn numbers.

ATA 186 - very simple product, likely EOL'd by Cisco cause they don't make any money on it. It's more a D-Link/Linksys style product anyway.

Besides, the truth of it is... very little true VoIP (IP from the endpoint to the PSTN) is out there right now. 3% of the PBX installed base is pure IP or IP-enabled. There are just over 10,000 Vonage customers today... and maybe a few thousand Cableco VoIP subs in pilots. But that's it...

One day VoIP will be prevalent and we won't have to worry so much about long distance... as we discussed before, voice services thru Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and even "Roger Wilco"/Halflife are fairly decent today.

March 13, 2003 - 7:20am — bmann