[Asterisk-Users] VONAGE or IP Dialtone

[Brian Capouch]

John Todd wrote:
> 
> Vonage is a silly way to do VoIP with Asterisk - you would have to hook 
> their box up to an X100P card on your system, which is preposterous.  

Not necessarily preposterous; I would certainly allow that its 
optimality is arguable.

I agree that Vonage holds a heavy hand over their users, and they prefer 
to dictate policy instead of listening to their customers, which of 
course has been the downfall of many a business.

On the other hand, I have quite a few Vonage phones connected to X100P 
cards: Vonage handles NAT infinitely better than iconnecthere, and 
although I am also a fairly heavy user of NuFone, having a local DID 
number in a given city is often preferable to using an 800 number.

One of my Vonage boxes includes "unlimited free calls to area code XXX" 
and the box that has that feature serves up, via IAX, unlimited free 
calls to our local area code from any of my cooperating asterisk instances.

My opinion is that Vonage/X100P is pretty useful in quite a number of 
cases, and after much piddling I am unable to get the combination of 
call quality, NAT hardiness, and local DID/calling from any other 
service I have played with so far.

B.