Dumping Vonage For Good

-

If you already have Vonage or planning on signing up, you may be better off dumping it as there are now much better alternatives. Read on.

Vonage was touted as a pioneer for commercial VOIP phone service back in 2005 when I first signed up for the service.  The excitement of a killer and industry disrupting VOIP service evaporated very soon. The  quality never measured up to the ‘carrier’ quality. I disconnected in a couple of months due to voice quality issues. And what happened when I tried to disconnect was yet another totally frustrating customer service story, “Vonage – expecting good customer service is stupid”.

When Vonage announced unlimited international calling to India (and few other select countries), I hesitated due to my earlier experience. A few months later, we needed a landline phone and I did little research to shop for a better one. At that time, Vonage proved to be a better option for a landline phone that would also double to be able to call anybody in India, despite its voice quality issues and poor customer service.

That was little more than 5 years ago, when most people in India (particularly my friends and family) can be reached only on their phones and internet access at homes was still a rare and privilege in many areas. Things have been changing quite fast in India these days, particularly in terms of communication and access. Almost everybody that I knew have a cell phone now and family and friends have internet access at a reasonable price and connections are quite capable of watching YouTube videos and supporting video chats.

Skype, my new best friend to stay connected, always and anywhere

That means, time has come to fully leverage my favorite, Skype, that I have been using for a really long time to stay connected with my friends. Skype supports instant messaging, video calls, voice calls,  can take with you anywhere in the world and can instantly connect with your friends and family anywhere in the world for FREE. Along with friends and family on Skype, you can call any toll free number in the US  for FREE.  With a better internet access in India, Skype became my best option to stay connected to all family and friends in India and anywhere in the world for that matter.

Calls to India to any number are about 1c/minute

Skype does offer calling plans so that you can call those that do not have internet access or need to reach somebody on their phones, for a price close to 1c per minute. So you are in full control to purchase a subscription that will suit your needs. These days, I use Skype to reach most of my family and friends, I just use a $1.50/month subscription that will give me 2 and half hours of talk time per month.

Unlimited calling to US/Canada for just $2.99/month

And just for $2.99 a month, you will get unlimited calling to any number in US/Canada. Skype does have unlimited international calling for about $13, but India is not in the list.

For about $5 a month, you can also get a Skype number so that anybody in the world can call you on that number from their phones and you can take the call on your Skype (on your Smart phone, iPad or any computer). Best part of this feature is you can get a local number in a country of your choosing.

Replace Vonage @ $40 a month with Skype @ just $6 a month

Needless to repeat, Skype works the best for me. It offers much greater voice quality. Instant messaging, video calls, can take any where  in the world on my smartphone or iPad and use on my PC and reach anywhere in the world. For under $6 a month, I have effectively replaced my Vonage phone that costs me close to $40 a month ($25.99 + taxes).

Give it a try. For most people, this should work just fine. For those, who talk on and on to regular phones to India, you may have to still suck up the lower quality voice and stay with Vonage for the unlimited calling, but for the rest, its time to dump it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Newsworthy News in Red October : Dow Jones & Tax Dodgers

-
Dow Jones Index crosses the symbolic 10000 figure. U.S. stocks rallied, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 10,000 for the first time in a year, on better-than-estimated earnings at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Intel Corp. Bank of America Corp., American Express Co. and JPMorgan more than doubled since the Dow slid to a 12-year low on March 9 as global financial firms began recovering from $1.6 trillion in writedowns and credit losses. International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. jumped at least 54 percent since March 9 on signs the nation was recovering from the worst recession in seven decades. Source: Bloomberg And, about 7500 International Tax dodgers file for IRS Amnesty to avoid jail Some 7,500 international tax dodgers have applied for an amnesty program that promises no jail time and reduced penalties for tax cheats who come forward, the Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday. … The program is part of a larger eff...
Read more

USCIS Selects Final H1B Petitions by Random Selection - Almost a 50% chance for each Application

-
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that on April 12 it conducted the computer-generated random selection process to determine which H-1B petitions, subject to the congressionally mandated H-1B cap for fiscal year 2008 (FY 2008), would continue to final processing. USCIS completed this determination ahead of the preliminary schedule noted on April 3, when it announced it had received enough petitions to meet the cap for FY 2008. The 123,480 cap-subject petitions received on April 2 and 3 were labeled with unique numerical identifiers and selected randomly by computer. The chosen numerical identifiers were then transmitted to the appropriate service center for further processing. Source: USCIS Announcement Number 123,480 looks a lot better keeping in view initial estimates. A good 50% chance for each application to be selected.  Update: 3rd May 2007 Hello friends, I understand your anxiety. But don’t loose your hope and/or temper yet. Please wai...
Read more

H1B 2008:USCIS released Preliminary Numbers

-
USCIS today released the final count of number of unique pieces of mail received for H1B petitions. It received 133,000 unique pieces of mail containing H-1B petitions. I guess, each piece of mail will ' mostly ' contain more than one petition, as no company would send each petition in a seperate package and its most unlikely that a firm applies for just one petition. Probably by the end of next week, we might know the actual number of H1B petitions filed and how lucky one must be to get through the initial filter. Source: USCIS Releases Preliminary Number of FY 2008 H-1B Cap Filings  (26KB PDF) 04/05/2007 During Monday and Tuesday, USCIS received 133,000 unique pieces of mail containing H-1B petitions. This is lower that the original USCIS estimate of 150,000. USCIS based the initial estimate on amounts from manifests received along with the mail. USCIS reached the updated number following a physical count of the mail. Each piece of mail may contain more than one H-1B pe...
Read more