Vonage Is Going IPO And a Cheaper Alternative
Vonage has announced plans that its going public. Its had a steady growth in revenues but its still deeply in the red. While I think a lot of people will get rich off its stock, its not a value buy nor is it a long term hold.
There are a slew of companies that offer similar services at Vonage. Although they don’t have as big of a marketing budget and thus aren’t as popular, their services are comparable. [well somewhat comparable]. I recently tried out sunRocket’s service. After being billed erroneously for an 8hr phone call to Australia in the middle of the night on a weekday [which just doesn't work for me, i go to sleep by midnight most fridays too] I decided I’d cancel. They wouldn’t pick up the phone nor would they reply to my emails about cancelling their service. I had to dispute the charge with my credit card company.
So whats the cheaper alternative to Vonage? Vonage currently charges $17/mo for 500 outgoing minutes. Unlimited incoming minutes are free. To replicate this service all you need is a Dlink VOIP router which costs the same as Vonage’s VOIP router. You’ll need to buy a telephone number which you can do at GizmoProject.com for around $35/year and some prepaid minutes. Calls within the US are 1 cent/minute. So you’re 500 minutes will cost you about $8/month as opposed to Vonages $17. Also using the GizmoProject softphone, you can make calls anywhere you can plugin your laptop and you can buy a service that rings multiple phone[both regular and soft] simultaneously. I have a Gizmo softphone at home and it works exceptionally well. Even for international calls the quality is great, something which I found lacking in sunRocket [and even SBC where I often had to shout].
I hope this proves my frugal nature to Lazy man et al! [I'm just teasing]. Like they say, “A penny saved, is a penny earned”.
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May 10th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Thanks, I stand corrected. I was thinking of dropping Vonage for SunRocket myself, but I’ve been a little lazy to get that started. I think I’ll postpone it a few months minimum after reading your comments.
I guess another alternative to your GizmoProject.com solution might be Skype. I don’t know if it’s quite as cheap, but I think the SkypeIn and SkypeOut are pretty close. I think there are some more advanced phone systems that work with it as well. I’m waiting to read if anyone else has done this for their primary phone. I’m sure it would take months to convince the girlfriend to make the switch.
May 11th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Gizmo has a similar feature to skype’s in and out calling.
i’ve heard that people’s machines are run as supernodes under skype affect their performance and bandwidth usage. [don't know if thats true though.]