I was just reading an article on MSN about saving money and one of the areas covered in the artcle was cheap phone service. I know nothing about Skype, a couple of friends use Vonage and like the service, and I hear and read all kinds of interesting reviews on MagicJack but I don't know anybody who has one so I have to say I know nothing about that either.
Any of my sly bros use any of these services and what are your thoughts about them?
I use vonage so my wife can call home to Brazil, and i used it so i could call her when she went back for a year. heard a lot pf good about skype, and ive never heard about magicjack.
Im really impressed with Vonage. for about 30-40 dollars a month, we could call Brazil (or any of about 20-30 other countries), be on the phone nonstop for a month, and the bill would still be 30-40/month.
i used to use a service called broadvoice, and they were trash. besides a bad connection, they shut me off of unlimited service to Brazil for a month because "i used the phone too much" and had no criteria that specified how much "too much" was. needless to say i was livid and after reporting them to the BBB and threatening court action, i told them to kiss my brown wrinkly spot and canceled (and they tried to stick me with a cnx fee, but i cut that crap real fast.) i explained to Vonage the problems i had been going through and told them i was shopping around, and they gave me a good hookup to pull me in. and i have had no problems with Vonage at all. Crystal clear (unless youre downloading a really large file) and easy to hook up, even with a VPN wireless router.
I have Vonage and it's great. I also have a fax line, and it works, although it was hard to set up (it won't work on all fax machines) and I rarely fax.
A few years ago I had Vonage and it didn't work well, and the cable company had to come to my house and fix some connections and it worked fine after that.
Vonage's tech support was bad. You had to wait on hold forever. I've heard they are better now.
I used Skype when our children have been abroad.
From Skype to Skype it's free of charge.
Quality depends on quality of connection - broadband or not - especially for webcam connection.
As voicecall it worked very fine from Germany to UK, China and NZ.
J