Partner system to Vonage for dial tone 4

[highpointrich]

I have a customer who has asked me about using Vonage for dial tone into his Partner system. [ Pre ACS ]

He is using Vonage at his home and likes the price..but...
I'm curious about function...i.e. disconnect timing, hold,, ring current , etc...

Anyone have anything to say ...be it good or bad ??
Rich

 

[endlesswinter]

not as solid as land line. voice quality is not there yet. I use at home as well but would advise business to look elswhere. Disconnect timer, ring this could be answered by vontage.

 

[skip555]

I have a couple of customers using them with partner systems , no problems at all

 

[allbizz]

I have several customers using Vonage with no issue. What he may want to do is have a few incomming analog lines from the local telco and use a few Vonage lines for outgoing and LD. One of my customers uses a comapny called votacall, it is similar to vonage but less expensive on the business line product and their voice quality has been much better than vonage.

 

[skip555]

something they should be aware of is if they port their number over to Vonage they probably wont be able to get it back if they decide to leave vonage .

as I understand it if you leave vonage that number just gets released back to the general pool and you may or may not be able to get it back .

Ive had my business number 20 years , I sure wouldnt want to taek a chance on loseing it

 

[highpointrich]

Good information from all of you..
Thanks for taking the time to reply...

Rich

 

[allbizz]

I have not seen the issue with loosing your number. By law they have to give you the ability to port away from their system. Vonage uses local telco's such as PaeTec and Xo for their local numbers and links them back. I recently ported my home line to vonage and then back to Comcast because the voice quality was so poor. I am now going to port to Votacall for the savings, Comcast packages are no savings.
Hope it helps

 

[skip555]

Ive seen it a few places , I had lunch with the rep from one of the CLECs and asked her about it and she was saying that vonage isnt a clec and so it comes down diffrent than when its ported to a CLEC

she said that when vonage relases it it just goes back to a general pool rather than being ported over to your new carrier.

one article was saying that vonage dosent actully "own" the numbers the way a lec or clec does

I had seen it mentined in a couple of places so I brought it up and asked her IT would be something I would sure investigate in depth before I ported my number or recommended it to a customer.

another issue with vonage is the FAX , they give you a free fax line with a business number it works about 85% of the time customer called me out to troubleshoot and when I went to the forums at the vonage site there where a lot of peaple there having issues. My customer finally got a line from the lec for fax .

I agree its not a wise business descion but the customers of mine that have it didnt consult me first , more like " were conveting to vonage , hook it up "

 

[jzjerry1]

I have use Vonage for last 2 year and i don,t have any problem with the voice ,but fax work about 80%

 

[skip555]

one customer has had vonage about two years worked great untill they moved now all kinds off issues he was using dsl then switched to cable to try and get better service still very poor voice quality .

he finally orderded some lines from the telco

somthing to play with maybe but a very poor place to put a business line I wouldnt use it for my business and I suggest to my customers that they dont either ,

( some dont consult me and go ahead and order it )

 

[Dexman]

VOIP seems to work the best when ordered from a managed service provider. Such providers usually deliver their service via dedicated circuits, such as a DS1 or a DS3.

Unfortunately, many small outfits, like mom & pop stores, churches and such, that do not generate high call volume and have limited budgets, cannot afford the monthly local loop charges and/or minimum usage requirements, so doing business with a managed service provider is out of the question.

That, more or less, limits choices to providers such as Vonage and Packet 8. As Skip and others have pointed out, QoS varies greatly with these providers.