Vonage IPO

[SALvation]

If you are/were a Vonage customer from 12/15/2005 - 2/13/2006, you are eligible to get in on the upcoming Vonage IPO. You can register for an allocation of shares at www.vonageipo.com (http://www.vonageipo.com). Note that you have to be a U.S. citizen, and must buy a minimum of 100 shares at an expected IPO price range of $16-18/share. You also have to open a limited brokerage account through one of their selected brokers.

[ME BIGGD01]

Does anyone use this service and if so how does it work? Any problems>? I would like to get another line just for fax and some calls but I heard there are many problems with these services. I would rather know from people that actually have the srvice.

[OUTLAWS Tip]

Also make sure you check out all of the surcharges tacked on. I seem to remember a friend looking into it. The Fee was $25 a month but the actually monthly bill was like $40+ I think.

[SALvation]

I use Vonage but don't use it for faxes. As for the bill, the monthly price is $25/month for unlimited, but there are almost no taxes and surcharges. The bill after its all said and done is about $27/month. I think you can even check for yourself on their website.

As for the quality of their service, it's OK. Sound quality is between a land line and a cell phone. Once in a while I get an echo, but that is maybe 1-20 calls if that.

[OUTLAWS Tip]

hmm, I just checked and it looked like about $27 also. Maybe my buddy looked at the startup cost the first month and thought that was the monthly charge.
:o

[JIMINATOR]

voip services are pretty much not usable for data services (fax, alarm, tivo, etc). there is latency associated with the service (echo is a result when latency voids out echo cancellation, especially when interfacing to other voip lines) and data really expects a tighter timing than what voip can provide. there is also a bit of runon talking that happens, because you can't hear when the other person starts talking until a split second later. anyway despite the negatives the price is right and that is what i use. (although not vonage).

[Death Engineer]

I use vonage at home and our business uses it for 3 lines (including one which we share with a fax machine). On the whole, it works great. I will say that if your internet speed is subpar (<500Kbps on dslreports.com), you will need to bump the bandwidth/quality level all the way down in order to avoid interruptions. Even at this rate, the audio quality is on par with a late model cell phones.

The gotchas are: #1 911 service is not like your typical land line. See vonage.com for details. #2 If the power goes out then you are out of luck.

The biggest feature is the call forwarding and the fact that you can take the phone hardware with you and use it from anywhere with an internet connection.

I would recommend vonage to anyone that already has high speed internet and is spending more than $25.

As for the IPO, I received that email and have been trying to verify that it was for real since Monday morning. The email just wreaked of "scam." There are enough AP stories on it now, I guess I'm just overly cautious. The last thing I need is having my phones forwarded or messed up by some joker with a mass mailer though.