Is Vonage a great choice for phone service?

Question

I have the service and people complain they can't understand me. With breakups in conversations.

Answer 1

I find it depends a lot on the quality of your broadband service and your wiring.  When I moved to a new neighborhood one mile from my old house, I noticed a significant improvement in quality.

Answer 2

The problems you are having have little to do with Vonage as a service provider - it is more about the nature of VoIP and technical issues related to using VoIP.

Break-ups is typically caused by "bandwidth" limitations of your Internet connection.  It could be your ISP, but more likely you just may not have enough bandwidth.  If you have LiteSpeed Internet (like me, 256/128 Kbs) - perhaps you may want to upgrade to faster speed.

Speed alone isn't always the complete issue.  If you are using your PC for downloading files, email, video, browsing, etc., while on VoIP phone, you are competing for bandwidth with the PC.  Only solution around this is to upgrade to higher bandwidth from you ISP or don't use computer when talking on the VoIP phone.

Vonage has a partial solution for people that are "bandwidth challenged".  It is called "Bandwidth Saver".  By default, Vonage service is preset for maxim bandwidth usage (perhaps G.711 codec for highest quality and Fax).  But for situations that are bandwidth challenged, you can reduce the bandwith requirements down to "Medium" or "Normal".  Normal is  the lowest setting and you should give that a try. It is probably using G.729 codec which is good enough for most situations (except Faxing).  It uses less bandwidth and is less likely to have "break-ups"  The links below explain how.

There can be other issues causing breakups.  Are you using wireless router or VoIP adapters?

Are you using "cordless" phones?  2.4 Ghz Cordless phones are prone to interference (breakups) problems too expecially when in vacinity of wireless network devices or other cordless phones...

The problems most people have with VoIP actually has little to do with the VoIP service provider - it is usually technical problems associated with the persons setup, configuration settings, and hardware and bandwidth issues - which service providers just can't have full control over.

I personally use InPhonex and CallCentric for my VoIP service providers (links in my profile).  I also use Skype, among others.  

I refrain from calling any service provider the best - it is just about what works for you.  But, when it comes to being dependant on customer service to get thing working for you, good luck - we all know good customer service is a myth....