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I have been using internet phones for years now and with the savings I would never go back, I wonder who else uses them as opposed to the regular and higher cost phone lines?
I just installed 2 of the new video phones in our webcam houses, these things are so neat. with the internet its like watching a tv picture.
picture of the video phone here
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I use vonage for our fax line, everything else we just use cellular. I have used only cellular for years now. It is nice having one phone number and one point of contact. Leaves you with also just one voice mail to manage.
The only problem we have with voip is running our webcam out of the house, the fax machine doesnt like it to well when the webcam is running. We have to turn our webcam off in order to send and receive faxes. Sometimes that becomes a hassle. Other then that voip is the only way to go.
I've used VOIP for years as well.
Honestly, I really don't understand why ANYONE would still have a traditional phone line. In most cases, you can even carry over your existing phone number.
VOIP gives you sooo many added features, and is so much cheaper (I pay under $30 a month for every feature you can imagine plus unlimited long distance to the US & Canada).
For those of you that have been nervous about it, take the leap! It'll all be OK, I promise!
:groovy:
http://www.vonage.com/
i use 3 differnt ones.
2 of our lines are vonage, one is Lingo ( $20 world calling ) and the video phone is packet 8 ( $20 a month video calls and regular calls )
havnt really noticed any one being better or worse than the others. thus i would say lingo is the cheapest if you call all over the world, vonage i think is most stablished, and the video phone, I think packt8 is the only one offering that
We just signed up with VOIP, we transferred our primary number to the Vonage VOIP box so we could keep it in our pending move...(the phone company said we were going to lose it in the move and I wanted to keep it without the expense of forwarding calls...so I transferred it to Vonage, and voila! I keep my number... )
We have signed up for a primary number, a secondary number, and an 800 number, that all sequentially hunt for an open line, as well as our included fax line, and i also have a soft phone on my laptop as well as a voip box for my place in Thailand so it can have a california local number as well.
I just can't believe that i can take this box to another country, and it's the same telephone number there as it is here. so when I am there, i can make local california calls..... the best feature in the world if you ask me.
We got it all hooked up, using 180 kbps when both lines are in use at the same time.
I like the features of being emailed my voice mails, and that we can forward all the office calls to whereever we want by redirecting from the website.
A great feature for customer service oriented companies.
Overall, it's a snap to setup and a heck of a cost savings over what I was paying the phone company.
If I were the phone company I'd be shaking in my telephonic boots... :)
Very happy Vonage user here also. Works and sounds just like any regular phone. The unlimited LD saves tons on the daily calls to NYC.
A trick i did ( technical, not human :) ) was to program call forward busy to goto the next line, that way i created a hunt group and it didnt cost anything. ( for those non tachnical peeps, a hunt group means you give out your main # but you have multiple lines, if line 1 is busy it will try line 2, then 3 then 4 untill it finds a free line. )
so, has anyoine else bought one of the packt 8 video phones? or are we the only ones?
How do you use video phones in your business? I am not really sure of it's applications..outside of the VOIP features. Can you educate me?
well 1st you can also use them to make and receive regular calls form any phone, but we installed the video phones, one in each of our webcam houses , the good thing about them is they have a video in and out on tyhe back so you can plug them into a tv for group viewing. that with the hands free that seems to work very well, makes it usefull for having group meetings for example when discussing ideas with everyone or things that involve both houses.Quote:
How do you use video phones in your business? I am not really sure of it's applications..outside of the VOIP features. Can you educate me?
on a more personal not soem of the boys are getting theire parents to get one, especially the ones that live far out so they can see each other.
considering its the same monthly cost as a regular voip line i wouldnt see why you wouldnt get one.
I thought VOIP was cool and stuff. I used the SkypeOut feature
But
When Comcast goes to shits you can forget about VOIP. It's horrible, especially when one of the nodes nearby was so overloaded it would return pings of 150ms which made the VOIP stutter and grable.
Untill they institute laws to prevent the ISPs from throtling VOIP traffic and degrade it on purpose I would stick to cell phone. I think some ISPs are even starting to say that if you wanted your VOIP to work at maximum you should signup for one of their packages instead