VOIP
More on Vonage...
Yesterday, the NYTimes featured on article in their regular Thursday Circuits section. David Leonhardt writes about his experience using various Internet phone services including Vonage in his piece, A Voice in the Calling Wilderness (registration required). He cites that for the most part it is indistinguishable from landline service, except for rare occasions of problems with sound quality. One time it was because his wife was simultaneously uploading photos to the Web. Vonage claims to have an upgrade to give priority to voice transmission.
Andy Abramson, denizen of the wireless capital of the US (San Diego) and Vonage maven, gives a better view of Vonage's softphone service. With Ken Rutkowski, he broadcasts world tech news on a daily basis as part of KenRadio.com.
He says that he's been using the softphone software on his laptop since Dec. 8th. It's $9.99 a month and includes 500 minutes of use, and is not part of your regular Vonage account.
Regarding the use of Vonage's softphone software on a PDA, his contact with Vonage's Customer Service resulted in this reply:
I apologize for the misinformation, but currently the softphone feature only supports a PC running Microsoft Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, CE or XP (Vonage SoftPhone currently is not compatible with any other operating systems).
An option for a PDA softphone is the software from SJ Labs (www.sjlabs.com). Andy notes that, Their software has been modified specifically to work on the Vonage network, and unlike some other VoIP providers, you cannot just take any VoIP softphone and have it work on Vonage.
Glenn Fleishman also checks in with Vonage Goes Portable on his blog Wifinetnews.com.
...you can get high-quality software VoIP clients; I’m personally enamored of Xten’s suite, which work with Windows, Mac OS X, LindowsOS, and Linux. They’re beautiful and come in free and paid flavors, including a multi-line conference version.
The Xten clients can interface with any standard SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) server, and many of the VoIP providers who offer long-distance over the Internet use standard SIP gateways. But getting from Xten outbound to the VoIP provider is a pain: I had to have the CEO of Xten provide me the details for a couple of VoIP services; those details aren’t on the VoIP long-distance service sites.
Then there’s the question of inbound service. Even though you can use Xten as the default client with Addaline.com, it’s unclear whether you can receive inbound calls via their service. Most of the VoIP in software is focused on making calls to the PSTN and receiving calls from other folks using services like Free World Dial-up, which provides you with a free non-PSTN VoIP number and SIP gateway.
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