Does anyone use Vonage or VoIP at home?

[Kathy in Cambridge]

I am looking into this beause the rates are sooo much cheaper than my phone company (Verizon).

We use VoIP at work-over a T-1. I have DSL at home and I was wonder if slower speed impacts the quality of the connection.

Thanks! RR

[ixion]

1. you may sometimes get an 'echo chamber' effect

but for the most part it's pretty solid, and difficult to distinguish from an analog land line.

[Clovis Sangrail]

2. did

I was using Lingo.
The quality was fine, the customer service terrible, the price great.
$19 for unlimited US/Canada/Western Europe

Unfortunately my network connection has fluctuated wildly since the university students moved back into town making it less than usuable.

[lcooksey]

3. I used VOIP on the road, not at home

The hotel I was in had DSL, and I used Skype's (www.skype.com) SkypeOut service. Regular Skype to Skype conversations are free with their software. You have to pay by the minute for calls from your computer to a telephone, but in the US that's only 2 cents/minute. The quality was as good as a cellphone call.

I was getting an echo effect sometimes, but discovered that if I spoke a little quieter, it went away and the person at the other end could still hear me. I made a bunch of Kerry GOTV calls in the evenings while on travel for work, which made me a lot happier about being away from home the week before the election.

There is no monthly fee for Skype, so it's not risky to try it out. There have been complaints about their customer service on their message forum, so caveat emptor. Buy $10 worth of minutes, and then check it out.

[welshTerrier2]

4. verizon DSL tip

i signed up for verizon DSL about a year ago and the line capacity maxed out at something like 768KB/sec ... the speed was way better than dial-up but still not great ...

i called them about 2 months ago and they upgraded my line to 1.5mb/sec ... it's much faster now ... and what does it cost to have them do this: zippo ... all you have to do is call them to request the upgrade ...

if you're not sure what kind of speeds you're getting, you can run a test by going to either (there are many others) of these websites:

http://infospeed.verizon.net/speedtest/speedtest500k.asp
http://maine.rr.com/03/speedtest/speedtest.asp

if your speed in under 768KB/sec, you should definitely call them about upgrading to the faster line ... they also have even faster lines available (3.0mb/sec) but i think that costs an extra $20/month ...