Moving Milestone #4/Vonage Input Request
Well we have settled the negotiation over the inspection stuff on the new house. Now it’s just a matter of getting all the paperwork to go well. In case you are planning on moving soon, I am assembling a list of companies that I endorse and those that I will warn you to never use. I’m thinking I might should create a separate category for such posts.
In the mean time, I’m thinking of dropping Bellsouth and going with Comcast for broadband and Vonage for phone service. Does anyone out there have any feedback? Does it really save you on the monthly bills?
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:45 am
Here’s the analysis that I did, and it included some estimates:
Bellsouth:
Phone service $70.00 per month (all the bells and whistles)
plus, DSL which costs me $45.00 per month
plus, Long distance, which costs me $20.00 per month
Broadband:
Internet, estimated at $45.00 per month
Vonage, estimated at $30.00 per month
So the comparison is $135 per month versus $75 per month. The only thing that has kept me from doing it is the pain involved (i.e. buying a new router and then calling and getting the whole mess set up).
You could always get yourself a Metro PCS cell phone and make it your home service for about $45 per month….
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:18 am
What about Packet8 instead of Vonage for the phone service? I haven’t looked into the cost difference, but they seemed to have better deals.
And just FYI, I know that Bellsouth has often inconvenient outages of service, but they’ve been quite reliable on the whole for us. On the other hand, two or three friends who switched to Comcast are always having their connection go down. Of course, I’ve known people who had the same problem with Bellsouth (depending mainly on the area), but I’ve heard more gripes with Comcast than Bellsouth.
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:28 pm
i here good things about vonage a friend of mine uses it with his cable modem. my only concern would be when the power goes out you’ld lose it and if you dail 911 they don’t get your address. those are two big concerns.
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I think they got the 911 thing worked out. Also, if power/internet connection goes down, it automatically fowards incoming calls to your cellphone.
Someone also just pointed out SpeakEasy.net to me. It’s DSL connection without having to pay the phone company for a phoneline.
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I think the Vonage concept is great, especially when you can tote your phone around with you while traveliing and plug it into any ethernet connection and still make local calls back to your area code.
Since I my line of work is mainly IT support, I can tell you Comcast is one of our least favorites for phone support and line quality. We have had situations where a certain issue only occurs with users on Comcast cable. We call it a “dirty connection” like there is extraneous noise on the cable. On the other hand, in the past two years I can’t remember my BellSouth DSL being down, ever.
May 27th, 2007 at 8:20 am
DO NOT USE COMCAST’S SERVICES if you can help it my friend. I would not even call them services from what I have experienced. Theirs is the worst customer support I have seen in my life. My bandwidth will sometimes go down to below dial up speed, and it has been almost 2 months now and my problem has not been resolved, despite my frequent calling and threats to cancel my account.
The only reason I have not gone back to bellsouth is the difference in price. Bellsouth CLAIMS in my area that they can not offer phone service separately from DSL, but I know damn well they can.So rather than pay for both phone and DSL service, I am putting up with shitty DSL service.
If you can afford it, stay with Bellsouth (AT@T).