Vonage to the Rescue

I am currently in Vermont with my family getting away from the hubbub in NYC this week. I had no idea my mobile was going to be out of service here and was stressing a bit about how I would stay connected for work purposes … until I recalled that nice feature of Vonage, the softphone. The hotel we are staying in offers free wifi in all the rooms and across the entire property from what I’ve been told though I’ve only tested in two rooms (we’ve moved once, long story and perhaps another post)…

The Vonage softphone is a $9.95/mo add-on that gives you 500 minutes talk time unlimited local and long distance calling. It’s a software application that creates a SIP phone (Session Initiation Protocol) connection to any other phone of your choosing. The call quality is pretty good, not great — had a few drop outs which don’t seem to plague Skype on this PC, but may be more connection speed related than anything else.

All in all it’s a great work-around for my situation and something I am glad to have. There’s no way I could afford to be disconnected at the moment given work-load… I just wish Vonage gave this away as part of package allowing me to use my existing number with them rather than having to add another number and charge… maybe as competition cooks a bit more they’ll reconsider.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.