Like most of the people I know in this area, I hate BellSouth. They're over-priced, have crappy customer service, and the quality of service itself is often poor. After a recent string of dealings with them, I decided to try and dump the POTS of BellSouth and see what else was available. Enter Vonage.

I heard about this initially from a friend of a friend. I was a bite sceptical at first about the voice quality that this service claims to provide though. Afterall, I played with Net2Phone and other VoIP services back when first appeared a few years ago. We even at a Cisco VoIP system at Darwin Networks before that company went down the drain. But I never remembered it having anywhere near a really decent sounding connection. The best was the Cisco at Darwin, but it still had an echo that sometimes made the conversation a little troublesome. But there's definately been some progress over the past few years.

Being the impatient type, after researching Vonage and it's competitors online, I went out and bought the boxed version at Circuit City. I've been pleasently surprised with the quality of the service. Within 10 minutes of getting home I was making calls using the new VoIP setup.

I was a bit worried about dealing with tech support, but I've found them to be extremely responsive despite what many have stated in comments around the web about the service. I did have a bit of a problem with the service not having a dailtone for a bit, but after a firmware update to the Motorala VT1005V it seems to have worked itself out. Tech support has been very responsive and generally respond within the hour to emails. I haven't used the phone support, but I'll update this post when I do.

The best thing about it though is what you get for the price. Before my monthly phone bill was around $100-150 a month for service (one line, 3 #'s) and long distance. Now it's going to be around $65 a month for 3 lines (2 regular, 1 fax) with no other charges. And to top it off, the sound quality has been superb. Talking to my parents in Western KY, they made the comment that it actually sounded better from their end than the old POTS line. And the voicemail system is great too. You can check your message via the web or even have them emailed to you as a wav file attachment. With this and my cellphone, it's time to say bye to BellSouth.

If you'd like to sign up and get a free month of service, drop me an e-mail and I'll make sure you get the coupon for a months credit of service.