In an effort to experience VoIP at its fullest, I got rid of my landline in Alaska and have been using Vonage all summer. Today – it dawned on me that the experience was very similar to that of using a cell phone 10 years ago. While Vonage has a high novelty factor and provides additional functionality (in this case stuff like a “portable 303 phone number” and voice mail to my email), its performance is erratic. Sometime it works great, sometimes it sounds like I’m talking to space aliens from planet mumble, and a few times a day I simply get disconnected (remember the cell phone dropped call phenomenon – of course, if you live in the bay area, you still experience it every time you drive down 280.)
I’ve got Skype / Skypeout set up and have used it a little, but not nearly as much as Vonage. I’ll spend more time on Skype the balance of the summer and see if it’s any different.