Pass this along to anyone you want. Delete it if you want, but you should know this.

I had Bell South phone service for many years. When I wanted to switch to Vonage, I was told that it would take at least 3 months to transfer my number. Before the process began, I would have to sign up for Vonage, so effectively I would have paid for 2 phone services for at least 3 months. I decided to change my number. Vonage ended up being $9/month cheaper with all it’s features than Bell South with a basic line and call waiting.

I have been very happy with Vonage (if any of you are interested, I will send a referral link. They give YOU free modem and first month free for referral).

I just moved, and Bell South is responsible for putting the box on the side of your house that connects all of the lines in your house together. I tried to order service online, but since I was only signing up for basic, I received a message that I had to call to set this up. Once I called, I found out why. They try to sell you everything under the sun. Phone services, DSL, cell phone, even after telling them over and over I only wanted a basic line. Finally, I was setup to pay for the first month and the installation.

Once they installed the box, I went to unplug their line to setup my Vonage. Much to my surprise, the box had changed from the normal setup. To hook up Vonage, you normally go in and unhook the line coming from the street. It is a basic phone plug, and is in the Bell South and Vonage instructions. This box had the wires hardwired behind a second panel with a security screw. Luckily I was able to get past this with some needle nose pliers and cut the lines. I do not know what I would have done if I did not have a knowledge of telephone wiring.

CONCLUSION
What I am trying to say is that when you pay for the box on the side of the house, it is yours to do with what you want. The measures that Bell South is taking to keep you as a customer are illegal and very shady. They are NOT trying to give you better service or better deals, they are trying to strong arm you into service.

Bell South and Time Warner charge $50/month for digital phone.
Vonage charges $25/month for the same exact service.

I am not trying to sell anything here, just letting you know the facts that no one else will. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

1/13/2006 9:24:14 AM

Quote :

"Bell South and Time Warner charge $50/month for digital phone. Vonage charges $25/month for the same exact service."

No, it is NOT the exact same service. I work extensively with both Time Warner
and Vonage, and there is a vast difference between their VoIP solutions.

Time Warner Digital Phone uses different allocated bandwidth for voice than
for data over the cable plant. Dial a call on Vonage and then download (or upload)
a very large file to your PC; listen to how badly your call quality degrades.
I expect that you will get a lot of chirps, drop-outs, etc caused by delayed and
missing IP packets as everything is sent over your standard IP data connection.

Also, try dialing 911 on your Vonage phone and explain to the operator located
in Utah how to dispatch a patrol car to your home in North Carolina.

As an aside, I actually have Vonage at home, because my needs for a home phone
don't require 99.999% uptime as i mostly use a cell phone. But if you want a solution
that is as close as a POTS line, TWC Digital phone is far superior to Vonage. The
biggest advantage they have is the fact that they own the infrastructure from end to
end and can implement end to end QoS to ensure that voice quality is always preserved.

1/13/2006 9:35:56 AM

also,

Quote :

"Bell South is responsible for putting the box on the side of your house that connects all of the lines in your house together. "

Is that really true? My neighborhood uses CTC for local POTS service, but I never had them come over to do this. The builder punched down all of the phone lines, and I simply connected that to my Vonage 'router' so that all phone jacks were hooked into it.

Maybe it's different for bellsouth supported neighborhoods... i dunno. However I did pay extra for all Cat5 cabling to be terminated INSIDE rather than outside, so i could have an ethernet jack as well as a phone line in every room.

1/13/2006 9:39:15 AM

thats pretty fucked up that they changed their boxes like that

1/13/2006 9:41:42 AM

I COMPLETELY agree with bobbydigital. A good friend of mine will call and he's all digitized and can't talk so he goes and turns off bittorrents and everything is fine. So basically Vonage leaves it up to you to ensure you have bandwidth limiters... time warner does it for you.

1/13/2006 11:21:27 AM

^ Exactly. Even if you try to prioritize with Vonage, you're only going to be doing it at the point that the voice traffic hits RR. Once it's there, RR doesn't distinguish it from any other traffic, and unless voice QoS is end to end, it's effectively useless.

1/13/2006 11:25:04 AM

other VoIP companys are alot cheaper and have the same quality or better than vonage. search around.

1/13/2006 11:42:39 AM

i make A LOT of international calls with vonage and time warner.

they both suck for that.

i've never had a problem with downloading and calling someone within the states. it's when i'm downloading and making an international call that things get iffy.

1/13/2006 1:01:17 PM