How to make you Vonage work!

  • Article

So I recently signed up with Vonage, I would have done so earlier however I was afraid of all the drawbacks

  • What happens if you have a Power outage or your Internet connection goes down
  • What happens if you need 911 (Vonage has a 911 service but it is flaky at best and not a traditional 911 services)

I have a small kid and both issues are show stoppers.  However I have found a way to make this work.  This assumes you would have a broadband connection already in place, so I do not factor in my broadband connection charges here.  I use a cable modem so I am not forced to keep my phone number for DSL service.

To mitigate the 911 issue my teleco has a metered service for $9.45 plus tax.  Essentially my land line is a pay phone (I figure hey in an emergency I can pay the extra charges, I pray I am not calling 911 that often).

In a power outage we have a UPS ($100) that gives me 1.5 hours of phone usage, I have not measured battery time when not using the phone, plus cell phone batteries for two phones so no big deal there).  I am counting on not having a power outage every other month as well. 1-3 a year is something I can live with.

So total phone bill metered line + Vonage (24.95 plan + tax) = $38.00 a month.  I'll take it.

There are some things that are different but I say give it try, I have been using it for 3 weeks so far and I like the service.

Ed