Internet Telephone Service

A month ago I decided to cut my phone lines (literally), and connect my home and office phones to the Internet using the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology. After some research I settled on Vonage which is one of the largest and best rated providers of VOIP to the home market.

As I was keeping my existing home phone and business phone numbers, it took about one week for Vonage to cancel my AT&T service and transfer the numbers to Vonage. It took about ten minutes to install the Vonage device and my transfer was complete.

It took about six months for me to make the decision, as I was skeptical about the quality and reliability of using the Internet for the all important telephone connections.

Here is my experience to date:

1. My phone bill has been cut in half, or will be once my first two months free has ended.

2. Both my business and home phone lines have all the bells and whistles one could want including call forwarding and caller ID.

3. In case the Internet connection goes down, calls from both lines are automatically forwarded to my cell phone. My Internet actually did go down for an hour last Friday and one call that came in was seamlessly routed to my cell.

4. All voice mail messages are available on the phone and as an attachment to an automatic e-mail.

5. All long distance calls are free throughout North America and much of Europe.

6. Quality of calls has been excellent – in fact in many cases better than on the old “land lines”.

7. It takes a few seconds longer for a local call to ring once the number has been dialed than using the old land lines.

8. Should the time come that I move – anywhere – I can take my existing phone numbers with me should I choose to do so.

9. I find that when I send outgoing faxes from my fax machine, that I often have to resend due to communication problems. As I send few faxes, this has been a minor inconvenience.

Bottom line is I find little not to like about using Vonage, and would do it all over again.

Will Limkemann
Limkemann Business Advisors
440-871-0976
www.neobizadvisor.com
email: will@limkemann.net