Travel Technology - Vonage or ViaTalk?

I know all about Vonage. I'm starting to hear some good things about Viatalk though (best plan is $15.95 a month, unlimited in the US and Canada, with free set up, equipment and activation). Anyone have any experience with them?

The 24 month contract is a bit worrisome. I guess it's just a question of what you value more - price or freedom to bail out.

Thoughts or experiences with the company and service itself?

Run, don't walk, from any VOIP provider that requires a *2* year contract. I can understand requiring a 1 year contract in order to defray the ~$50 subsidy/cost of the VOIP hardware (i.e., Vonage, which I use), but 2 years is absolutely unreasonable, especially for a provider that is not one of the major players (Vonage, VoicePulse, etc.).

Run, don't walk, from any VOIP provider that requires a *2* year contract. I can understand requiring a 1 year contract in order to defray the ~$50 subsidy/cost of the VOIP hardware (i.e., Vonage, which I use), but 2 years is absolutely unreasonable, especially for a provider that is not one of the major players (Vonage, VoicePulse, etc.).

They also have a 1 year (and 6 month) contract as well. I'm just wondering if the service is good, support is helpful, and quality bearable.

Vonage is the industry standard bearer but I'm willing to look around for a new innovator.

I've been using VoicePulse, which is the reviews is often slightly (*slightly*) better than Vonyage, so add them as a possible option. I've had the service for about six months now and have never had an outage or call that didn't work as normal. I wouldn't say I'm a heavy home phone user, but every time I pick it up to dial, there is a dialtone and the call works and the voice quality is excellent.

One of the nice things they have is a "multi-ring" option for free - you can list a bunch of phone numbers (office, cell, etc) and when someone calls your home number, it rings ALL the numbers at once and you can pick up on any one of them - not one phone, then the next phone and the next phone like a hunt, it actually rings them all at the same time. Very cool.

--Doug

I use Lingo. The service is fine, and the unlimited Western Europe is great for us.

I haven't used any other VoIP provider so can't compare but Skype (www.skype.com) is quite good, easy to use and relatively cheap. Plus no contract.

One of the nice things they have is a "multi-ring" option for free - you can list a bunch of phone numbers (office, cell, etc) and when someone calls your home number, it rings ALL the numbers at once and you can pick up on any one of them - not one phone, then the next phone and the next phone like a hunt, it actually rings them all at the same time. Very cool.

Vonage has an identical feature called "SimulRing (http://vonage.com/help_knowledgeBase_article.php?article=231&category=121)."

We've had Vonage for over a year now, first for about 10 months running over a DSL line in Israel, now for about 7 months running over a cable modem here in NYC. We've experienced one day when we were unable to make outgoing calls, but it was communicated clearly on their website and otherwise service has been almost flawless. The voice quality is generally very good. It occasionally dips into digital-cellular sound quality (with the odd dropped syllable or fuzzy word), but generally sounds almost (but not quite) as good as POTS.