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You are here: MacNN Forums > Community > MacNN Lounge > Skype vs vonage - better choice for home phone

Skype vs vonage - better choice for home phone
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tkmd
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Sep 11, 2008, 07:54 PM
 
I'm trying to cut down bills so I am thinking about ditching my cellphone (only use prepaid minutes) and getting a home phone through skype or vonage. I know with vonage I get a phone number and all the bells and whistles of a regular phone but unfortunately, a 30 dollar bill. Skype on the other hand is a bit more confusing when trying to use it as a home phone. Any thought ?

PS I dont call overseas. just looking for regular phone feature at a cheaper price using the internet.....

Thanks
Pismo 400 | Powerbook 1.5 GHz | MacPro 2.66/6GB/7300GT
     
slpdLoad
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Sep 11, 2008, 08:22 PM
 
You can't dial 911 with Skype. Just so you know.
     
Railroader
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Sep 11, 2008, 11:07 PM
 
But if there is a land line in the house, then the phone company is required to connect you to 911 even if you don't any other service.
     
SeSawaya
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Sep 11, 2008, 11:42 PM
 
I use http://www.viatalk.com/ for my primary land line. Ditched Verizon last year and have been xtremely happy with it. My iphone dosent have signal in my home either (no cell dose) so it's all I use.

$3 a month bill with the $200 up front cost for 2 years plan.

Amazing is all I can say.
     
zro
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Sep 11, 2008, 11:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Railroader View Post
But if there is a land line in the house, then the phone company is required to connect you to 911 even if you don't any other service.
Same with cell phones. Even with the keypad locked.
     
freudling
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Sep 12, 2008, 12:01 AM
 
Originally Posted by SeSawaya View Post
I use http://www.viatalk.com/ for my primary land line. Ditched Verizon last year and have been xtremely happy with it. My iphone dosent have signal in my home either (no cell dose) so it's all I use.

$3 a month bill with the $200 up front cost for 2 years plan.

Amazing is all I can say.
First, it is not $3 a month... you were just duped by the advertising. It is $11.33 per month that you are paying, and they got most of it from you up front. As you will see, that is about what you would pay for a Skype World Unlimited Plan that lets you call to 34 countries unlimited.

I feel confident in giving you advice on this. I have been a Skype user for years, and use it with my business with a PBX system attached to it. On hold music, call transfers, calling reports, etc... all possible through Skype. I know you are using it at home, I am just illustrating that it is quite the thing.

First, the good. There is nothing out there like Skype in terms of function, and AppleTV has an API for it, so you can interact through your living room computer if you have one.

Also, it looks fairly good on the Mac, you can buy whatever numbers you want from many different countries, including the US, you get voicemail, and, for about $12 per month, you can call all across North America and to about 32 other countries (constrained to mostly landlines) as much as you want. Cells and landlines are always unlimited if calls are placed in Canada or the US to Canada or the US.

There really is not anything out there that can beat this pricing, unless you start hacking or piecing together all sorts of software, which won't work very well anyway.

The things you should ask yourself are, is customer service and call quality of upmost importance? If it is, Vonage might be your better bet.

Skype is peer-to-peer, meaning everyone is linked in, and data travels through the network of Skype users. Call quality can thus be hit or miss. If the network is busy with lots of calls, your calls will suffer. To mitigate, get the fastest upload speed you can afford and your quality will go up.

Skype customer service is horrid, period. My account was just hacked into last month and I have had to jump through hoops for weeks just to get them to give my account back to me, and they don't want to refund the fraudulent charges on my account either. There is no phone support whatsoever as well. Very frustrating, specially for a paying business user.

They are, however, working on it, and getting better.

With Vonage, you get a call center for customer support which can resolve your issue in a day not weeks or months like Skype. Plus, the call quality should be better since it is not peer-to-peer, but a dedicated network. But Vonage is more expensive and not quite as mobile. With Skype, when you travel abroad, your phone goes with you, since it is a softphone. You can access your phone anywhere, and you can even forward calls to your skype number to your cell phone.

My advice, try both and see what you like. If you are going to use Skype at home, you MUST get a Philips cordless Skype phone. Now, you have a cordless phone that is always on, but connected to your wifi router with the skype interface. Anyone who calls you on your Skype number and that cordless phone will ring. Now you don't have to be tied to your computer...

There are so many things to like about Skype. Just try both, I think you can get a few months free from Vonage if you ask.

Hope that helps.
     
SeSawaya
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Sep 12, 2008, 12:07 AM
 
not really "duped" when I said I paid $200 up front. I still pay $3 a month, every month. $12 aint so bad
     
turtle777
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Sep 12, 2008, 12:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by SeSawaya View Post
I use http://www.viatalk.com/ for my primary land line. Ditched Verizon last year and have been xtremely happy with it. My iphone dosent have signal in my home either (no cell dose) so it's all I use.

$3 a month bill with the $200 up front cost for 2 years plan.

Amazing is all I can say.
Seconded. I'm very happy with Viatalk. Had it for two years, and just renewed.

-t
     
Mastrap
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Sep 12, 2008, 06:20 AM
 
Call quality on Skype to Skype is excellent. Skype to phone is almost unusable, in my experience.
     
alligator
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Sep 12, 2008, 08:27 AM
 
Vonage let me use my existing phones, and cut my bill from $30/month to just $19/month (including all taxes. The service is just as good as a regular phone company, and you DO get 911, just routed through their network first.

I compared Skype and Vonage two months ago when I switched from Comcast. Vonage won for me, and has done everything I expected, plus some.
     
freudling
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Sep 12, 2008, 11:19 AM
 
Originally Posted by Mastrap View Post
Call quality on Skype to Skype is excellent. Skype to phone is almost unusable, in my experience.
Well, it is not unusable in my experience. I have fast uploads speeds though, since we have fiber optic internet and that has helped. I ran Skype diagnostics and my jitters are virtually zero. If you don't have a fast internet connection, then Skype to phone is going to be rough. At least 512 kbs minimum upload speed is what I recommend.
     
Cold Warrior
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Sep 12, 2008, 01:15 PM
 
I've always had good results calling Skype to a phone, either cellular or landline.
     
imitchellg5
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Sep 12, 2008, 05:09 PM
 
My best friend uses Vonage. He is pretty pleased after nearly three years of the service. No long distance is great for him, since he runs a small business that has outlets across the country.
     
vmarks
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Sep 12, 2008, 07:40 PM
 
With skype, you need both skypein and skypeout services.

Or, you could get a www.MagicJack.com , which is far far cheaper than Vonage and may be cheaper than Skype.
     
brassplayersrock²
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Sep 12, 2008, 08:23 PM
 
Hmm, thanks for the link vmarks.
     
villalobos
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Sep 13, 2008, 09:09 PM
 
Also on macintosh, you pretty much can't use the 1-800 # of calling cards. It will sound busy 99.9% of the time. Supposedly the PC version got that fixed, but not the mac version.
An quality is a hit or miss, even on my FIOS connection.
     
Bwa
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Sep 14, 2008, 05:57 PM
 
I use Vonage; two lines with area codes on both coasts. If I need to carry my phone lines with me on the plane, I can just take the adapter. When I'm at home, the adapter sits in the closet and is wired into the phone drops so I can just use my regular phones.

Calls forward to my cell after a period of time I can set in the Vonage web account settings (I think I have it ring 4 times, then forward). Unlimited calling on the main line, 500 minutes on the 2nd line, all for about $50/mo.

Pretty good deal. Been using it for maybe 4 years now; works great on PacBell DSL in California and Verizon DSL & Comcast in Boston. The only downside is that you'll need some kind of QoS if you do have a lot of download/uploads going and want to talk at the same time without breaking out.

Also, people texting your Vonage line will ring the phone instead of forwarding SMS. I guess this happens at the sender's cell service side--not much you can do about this.

Other than that minor detail, I just hand out one number.

Skype can do call forwarding as well. Never used a physical regular phone nor the paid Skype service, but I have found it to be mostly fine computer-to-computer calls.

The lack of 911 worries me. I don't have any real phone lines in the house connected to the outside world. I have Vonage 911 configured, but who knows if it will work if the need arises.
     
AKcrab
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Sep 14, 2008, 06:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by vmarks View Post
Or, you could get a www.MagicJack.com
Note that it's intel only.
     
   
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