RE: VOIP

Stuart Levine wrote: 

"Does anyone on this list use VOIP either for home or, more importantly, for
the office.  The bells and whistles look great, but I am concerned about
sound quality.  Is the sound quality sufficient for business use?"

Vonage is great.

However, I ALSO use RingCentral [www.ringcentral.com] "on top" of Vonage,
which gives me, for a flat rate, UNLIMITED incoming toll free calls, which I
then have forwarded to my Vonage numbers and cell phone.

RingCentral lets anyone call or send a fax to me toll-free.  I can forward
the toll free number to a specific number, or have RingCentral hunt me down
by calling a bunch of numbers, which it can ring sequentially or all at
once.  Also, I have a slight preference for RingCentral's voice mail over
Vonage's.  Both will e-mail your messages to you [absolutely great for sole
practitioners who travel].  

I have noticed a very slight tendency for Vonage to drop calls during our
recent thunderstorms.  [But then, I was hiding under the bed anyway.]

I should add that I have an extremely high speed  internet connection, and
I'm not sure I would be as enthusiastic about VOIP if I tried it with
limited bandwidth.  

Here's what I suggest.  To try out Vonage, keep your old POTS account for a
few weeks, and just use remote call forwarding to forward all calls to your
Vonage number.  Your calls will then come to you over VOIP, and you can see
if you like it.  If you do like VOIP, you can port then your existing phone
numbers to Vonage [under the phone number portability provisions].  If you
don't like VOIP,  just turn off remote call forwarding, and you are
instantly back to where you started.

An added plus:  Vonage make available to existing customers a "Softphone"
for $10 per month.  This is a software phone which operates from and on your
laptop.  When you go to New York, for example, if you have your laptop with
you, then you have a phone which you can use with any high speed internet
connection.  Not only do you avoid extortionate hotel phone rates, but calls
to your office can reach you, since you will have forwarded your "regular"
Vonage calls to your office to your "Softphone" number and/or cell.  You can
achieve the same result by just taking with you the small adapter and
plugging it into the Hotel's internet connection, but believe me, the
Softphone is much more convenient.  [So much so that I use it constantly
even when in the office.]

 
I have found my VOIP set-up, especially when added to another service which
scans and sends to me via e-mail my U.S. Mail, to be absolutely
indispensable.  If you are a sole practitioner, this combo may actually
permit you to take a vacation without spending sleepless nights.
 

YVONNE M. RENFREW  [[email protected]]

Telephone:     323-222-0500 [Toll Free 888-752-7752]

Facsimile:       323-222-5600

 


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