On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 15:25 -0800, Peter van Hoof wrote:
> Hi all,
>  
> I am considering switching from a  landline to a VOIP service
> such as Vonage to reduce cost. I am wondering about experience 
> with such service, recommendations of one company or another etc.
>  
> Do the boxes typically drive  several phones at the same
> time  (ringer equivalent)?
>  
> I want to run it over a Verizon DSL connection. N.E. PA.
>  
> Thanks for your time reading and responding

When I moved to my house I didn't want to pay for a landline since I
rarely use it anyways, and I wanted to take my number with me (phone
company won't let you do that if you're changing area codes) so I got
dry DSL and vonage.

I've been extremely happy with the service. The bang for buck is
amazing. Yes, you might sometimes have minor quality issues (i.e. the
first few seconds of a call having some echo), but considering how much
I save it's a very small price to pay. The "free" features are also
nice, no paying extra for VM or CID. VMs get forwarded to any email
address you want.

Reliability has been extremely good, only time I've ever had a problem
with the vonage line was when my ISP was having problems. Even then it
wasn't much of an issue since vonage has a "fall back forwarding"
feature where if your box isn't reachable by them, they forward the call
to any number you want, in my case my cell phone.

As for driving multiple phones, I disconnected my house phone network
from the demarc and plugged the vonage box into it, no problems. I have
two cordless phones and two satellite receiver boxes that plug in to the
vonage box and have never had a problem with ringing.

As for emergencies my whole network is backed up by a UPS that seems to
run at least 12 hours after power loss, more if I swap with my reserve
UPS (and pretty much indefinitely if I plug it into my gas generator!).

TTYL
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