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Using Vonage here....since July, 2003, w/ cable internet and a UPS for internet router and voip box. It felt great to disconnect bellsouth POT wires from street at the NIC box on the side of my house, placing a note in the box that read, "Attention: Telephone co. repair, do not connect these wires because electricl current from telco system may damage electronic devices connected to internal telephone wiring in this house !"

bellsouth service used to go out....sometimes for 3 days...at least twice per year, due to squirrels or moisture damage in buried wiring from the main road to the end or our cul de sac. No outages with vonage, except during cable outages or longer power failures....it helps to have a cell phone as a backup, just as it did when overpriced and under featured bellsouth service was interrupted.

Features: portability of existing phone number to vonage....bellsouth delayed the transfer, but, after 5 weeks of using temporarily assigned vonage number, the transfer did complete.

ability to assign, on your vonage internet account, the data upload of the "packets" that your conversations are converted to....30kb per sec., 60kb, or, 90kb....where I have it set. This setting eliminates "lag".

They offer toll free, incoming numbers, with 100 incoming minutes per month including, for $5 per month each. I was fortunate to get an "800" number, 3 years ago....now I see that only "866" and "877" numbers are available, but it's still a nice convenience for friends and family who call you, and if you have a business. I was also fortunate to obtain an area code "212" incoming number from vonage....anyone in that area code can call us and it is considered by vonage as a "no billing" local call, to our number.

....so, monthy service from vonage for the 3 tel. numbers, 500 min. unlimited outgoing domestic calling, 100 minutes incoming 800 number calls, unlimited incoming minutes on the other 2 tel. numbers, and "e-911" service, is $32.00 per month, incl. taxes. Extra outgoing minutes are 5 cents each, and unlimited outgoing calling would raise our monthly bill to about $41.00, if we chose to upgrade.

negatives: since you can take the vonage voip box an use it anywhere in the world where there is broadband service, to make our receive calls from your own tel. #, 911 emergency calls are a problem, since the nearest 911 system, except the one you've assigned via the vonage online account interface, when you were at home, won't receive your 911 call, when you are "on the road". If you transfer somewhere for a few days or more, with your voip box, you can change your local 911 location via your vonage account interface.

You have to decide if this trade-off is worth the "perk" of always having your land line local phone with you, when you travel.

....some folks say that they are unable to send faxes via regular vonage accounts.....there is an additional charge of $9.95 per month for a fax devoted line assignment, I haven't needed it.

The call quality is now indistinguishable from POT service, although that wasn't always the case....in the beginning, probably before my cable service upgraded max. upload speed rates, there was a short lag between what either party on a call said, and when the other party heard it....like on a two way radio conversation. Using the 90kb setting also diminished that, and now, I cannot discern any difference....no static, although, once in a great while, calls do not ring to my phone....they end up answered by the vonage voice mail greeting, and can be retrieved at your account interface on their website.

you also have the option to forward all incoming calls to another number....you can change it on your account interface on the web...so you can take all of your calls on your cell phone number, and you can assign a number for calls to be forwarded to if the vonage network goes down....I haven't seen that happen for more than 2 years now.

The downside is that, all three of my incoming numbers must be forwarded to the same number, and all incoming calls from all three numbers end up going to the same vonage voice mail box if they don't go through to my phone. They cannot be seperated.....caller ID does work, incoming and outgoing, and all outgoing calls show caller ID as my original number, transferred more than 3 years ago, from bellsouth.

another new reason to consider vonage or one of it's competitors is this new option, offered by sprint cellular in areas with "evdo"....a router that receives it's signal from a laptop "card" and seems fast enough to use as your broadband service. You can use it for your vonage service and take it "on the road" with you, if you travel where there is sprint "evdo", or have access to any broadband while you travel, and take your voip box (interface), along with you. sprint is the only company that permits unlimited data download with a cellular router, at a reasonable price. Verizon specifically does not:
Bottomline:
It's almost 2007....I'm keeping my vonage service because I know of no other source for a coveted incoming area code 212 tel. number that provides unbilled incoming calls from callers in NYC metro area, and an actual "800" toll free number with 100 included incoming minutes, for just $5.00 per month, each.

Since those two features are no long offered to new subscribers by vonage, only NYC manhattan area code "646" and toll free "866" and "877" number prefixes have been available for at least the last two years from vonage, if I were a potential new subscriber, why get a service like this at all, unless you seek the to add the feature of unlimited no charge incoming calls from callers in an area code remote from where you live?

It seems to me that cellular service and the addition of a $30 per year SKYPE tel. number should be enough, especially since cell numbers have become portable. Unless you need to keep your current home tel. number, except for the reasons that I just described, cell service and SKYPE should be enough to meet most people's needs.

....on edit....I forgot to post that I solved the problem of potentially missing voice mail messages that are forwarded to my vonage account voice mail box, by buying an inexpensive Vtech cordless phone with a base that includes a little red light that blinks when there is voice mail in my vonage box. After you go to your vonage online account voice mail page and retrieve your message(s), the little red blinking light, goes out. You can also check for new vonage voice mail messages via a tel. number provided by vonage....