Vonage and BroadVoice comparison
Thursday, February 15th, 2007
The notion of Internet telephony known as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), has been around for a few years now but only recently has it become more than a novelty by offering a practical edge to its use that makes it feasible as a true alternative to standard telephony. Being both cheaper and of a higher quality than the established competition has registered VoIP’s presence with the general public. More people are beginning to show an interest in this technology with many users already signed up to services offered by Internet Service Providers (ISP).
Two ISPs competing for this fairly new market are Vonage and BroadVoice. In the UK Vonage has two main packages on offer: Residential Unlimited priced at £7.99 a month which allows customers to make unlimited local and national calls anywhere in the UK and the Republic of Ireland; and Small Business Unlimited priced at £18.99 per month which allows unlimited local and national calling anywhere in the UK and the Republic of Ireland plus a free fax line with 500 local and national minutes. Currently not every VoIP ISP can connect to emergency services however Vonage does offer this service which really does make it comparable to the standard telephony service.
Other features offered by the Vonage service includes: voicemail messaging, caller display, call waiting, call diversion (sending calls to any of six telephone numbers), 3-Way calling, free calls between Vonage users, travelling with Vonage allows you to retain that same phone number wherever you might be, transfer calls anywhere, 1471 return call, withhold caller display allows you to block your identity when making a call, ring back, international call barring, ring lists, call hunt, Click-2 call installs a button on Outlook express that allows calls straight from an address book. The list of features offered by Vonage is an indication of how the world of communications is changing and the way in which it is likely to be headed in the future.
BroadVoice is a recent addition to the growing list of ISPs, but don’t let that put you off because BroadVoice offers competitively priced packages designed to make Internet telephony the preferred communications mechanism. A package that BroadVoice offers at a staggeringly low $5.95 per month is BYOD which stands for ‘Bring Your Own Device’. Subscribers who wish to use their own VoIP devices are allowed by BroadVoice to choose their own number from 3,800 rate centres, have their device configured and begin making calls within minutes. Of course BroadVoice does offer packages for subscribers who do not wish to use their own VoIP devices but all come at an additional $9.99 premium.
Signing up for either Vonage or BroadVoice is fairly painless while reports of inconsistent quality for both ISPs is on record, and can be viewed at the forums that have been created to highlight the good and bad of using either service. The fact that problems occur when using a VoIP ISP is not completely unexpected, especially when one considers that problems continue to occur with standard telephony services. At least VoIP ISPs are fairly new and have an excuse.