Is Vonage VOIP a Reliable Option for Residential Use?

[Pengwuino]

I've been thinking about getting this 1 month free trial of Vonage VOIP. Has anyone used it? What do you think about it for residential use? I've always wondered if your voice quality is as good as land lines nad if uploading things on your computer have much of an impact.

Have I asked this question before? geez...

 

[Moonbear]

I don't know specifically about Vonage or residential applications, but we have VOIP phones at work. I don't notice any difference at all in sound quality between them and standard lines...if anything, they're a bit better, as in, I have never encountered any static on the lines as you sometimes do with a regular phone line. The only downside that I've run into is that when the internet is down, so are the phones, so ALL forms of communication are down at once. This can get very frustrating in a business setting, because when I know I need to call someone, I can't even send an email informing them that the phones are out, or when I need to email something to them, I can't just call and let them know internet is down. I end up resorting to using my cell phone, which gets crappy reception in my office since my office is on the interior of the building. But, it's only happened 2 or 3 times, and only once was the outage more than a half hour.

 

[Pengwuino]

Yah the worst we have to worry about is the internet drops. It happened like once a year for a few minutes up until comcast switched DNS servers. Now its happening a lot... but i hope they fixed it. We'd also have to have a landline backup for our alarm system and "just in case". It'd still come out cheaper though!

 

[NoTime]

I never tried Voip, but some of the people I know have had bandwidth issues in residential setups.
Also, unless things have changed recently some areas don't get 911 with Voip.

My bigest problem with it, is when the power goes out.