Review

Price is right, but Net calling is not for all

My initial excursion into using the Internet for telephone service taught me some important lessons.

First, there's no local phone company to make a house call if things get royally messed up. Second, once I got it working, it can save me a lot of money. Third, the quality was as good as my land line and better than my cell service.

The setup for the Vonage Digital Voice system should have been a snap. The company sent me a Cisco adapter. It's free for subscribers, though the company charges a $29.99 activation fee. It has two price plans: $25.99 that includes 500 long-distance minutes, and $39.99 for unlimited local and long-distance calls. International calls cost extra.

I plugged my home phone into one end and the Ethernet cable from my Internet connection into the other. It took all of three minutes to get ready, then trouble arose.

In this case, the 202 area code I expected to get was actually 718. I wanted a 202 area code, because I frequently do business in that area. The 202 area code would allow people there to make a local call to reach me. Vonage soon will have 727 and 813 available.

The problem was important enough to fix. Under normal circumstances Vonage tech support can "talk to" the adapter and reprogram things from afar. For whatever technical reasons, mine could not be reset. While the support was fast and efficient, the instructions to configure the device manually were for serious eggheads. We decided that the average human could probably not perform what was asked.

Vonage sent me another device, and all was perfect. But the initial problem is important to remember: If your hardware fails, you could be without phone service until a new adapter arrives. So I wouldn't consider this service if I did not have a cell phone to fall back on.

Another question you should ask before jumping in is how much you trust your broadband Internet service provider. If your Internet service is spotty, Internet telephony isn't for you.

I have both Time Warner's commercial-level Road Runner service and digital subscriber line from Clearwater's Intnet. I tested the Vonage service with both and it worked flawlessly. (Vonage does not work with slow dial-up Internet service.)

I was also impressed with the Web-based tools that control the service. Configuration options such as forwarding your phone, checking voice mail and changing your phone number are all a click away.

People who don't use Windows are out of luck, though. The online voice mail relies on Microsoft's Windows Media Player. While there is a player for the Mac, it doesn't work with Vonage. Of course, you can still pick up the phone and check your voice mail the old-fashioned way. You also get e-mail notification when voice mail comes in.

The Web interface offers other niceties such as a list of numbers you've called and received. And it passes the consumer-friendly test of being a breeze to use.

I don't use my Verizon home phone that much, and I'm always alarmed when the bill arrives. The holidays gave me the gift of $130 in long-distance charges, much of it international calls.

I get dinged a quarter for each time I call across Tampa Bay, and I have to pay extra for an unlisted number. Add in base phone service, Verizon's "Big Deal" add-ons and December cost me $185.

If I had Vonage as my phone provider, my bill would have been $70. That's the $40 base charge and another $30 for calls to mobile phone users in Britain at 20 cents a minute.

Neither the recipients of domestic calls or those wacky Brits (if you could hear my accent you'd know I was born one of them) could tell I was calling over an Internet service. If they can't tell the difference, why should I pay the difference?

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