Vonage VoIP
We have an account with Vonage – 4 lines. We switched one line to Vonage some 3 years ago to try it, we added a fax line and then switched the 2 remaining lines last year.
Vonage first quality is cost. We have a total monthly cost around $90 with long distance and very low cost international, compared to the $35 per line we were paying previously with out long distance. That’s already a neat savings.
The overall phone quality is very good even for long distance and international. Vonage is not a low cost/low-quality provider like Net2phone and others. In fact I even can say that the quality is equivalent to land lines.
Vonage is using VoIP as transport but the end user is a standard phone, not a VoIP one and this makes a big difference as you can’t directly connect your Vonage account into a VoIP router, switch or server. You need a POTS interface which can be costly. I haven’t found any Vonage interface or setup to connect directly from Vonage to an Asterisk server. We used a small PBX from BBS telecom with 4 IVT10 and 2 IVT16, very nice equipment without voicemail but all the features of a big one.
My next generation of hone phone system will be full VoIP based on an Asterisk system.