First of all, let me be clear that I generally like Vonage. Their customer service needs significant improvement, and I’d have touble recommending it to someone who doesn’t have at least minimal technical skills, but you can’t beat the price and the…

Vonage just got another $200 million from VCs. Om Malik has more. At that kind of money, I’d love to see sustainably competitive advantage, unique selling points, lock-in, and the like. I simply don’t see it. Ok, I didn’t invest

Type “Vonage Sucks” into google and you’ll see what I mean. While every company offering VOIP will have their fair share of complaints, all of Vonage’s customer service is now being outsourced to india and is a lesson in patience. Sometimes you get disconnected and generally you’ll have to wait for around 30-60 minutes with no one answering your call.

The quality of their phone service is also starting to lag. And while there is no hard evidence out there as to call quality, I do think their rapid growth is starting to tap their capacity.

The cable and old school phone companies have an advantage, because they already have the infrastructure and capacity to deal with large numbers of customers. The reality is that Vonage is hurting with reliablity and customer service that is worse then a bad cellphone provider. They may need the money to build capacity and build a competitive infrastructure.

I currently use Lingo and don’t have any issues with it, so, for $20.00 a month and no long distance costs which includes Western Europe, I’m saving a lot of money considering all the family members I’m calling. $40.00 a month and $100.00 in long distanc now $20.00 total. It’s a no brainer as any limitations with VOIP, the slack is picked up by my cellular phone.

The hardware side of things is impressive ( dedicated bandwidth and backup battery ) with Time Warner, but $15.00 a month and you don’t even get voice mail is pretty stingy. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, does Time Warner allow virtual numbers domestically and internationally where you can allow family members to call you as if it were a local call? Might not matter to those that don’t have family outside of their area, but it’s a good option which most voip
companies provide.

It’s not a comparison contest. Each Voip provider has its plus’s and minus’s. I can only see the service getting better and better and putting the frights up the phone companies that have, up to this point, been charging an arm and a leg for service. Let’s hope they all don’t get too greedy and ruin a good thing.

I’m not knocking Vonage. It seems like a great service. But don’t knock what I get for my extra $15 a month from Time Warner. And as for charging for voice mail, that doesn’t much matter to me. I far prefer having an answering machine so I can screen my calls or pick up if I can’t get to the phone before it goes to the machine. A matter of personal preference, but unimportant to many.

Once WiMax hits or some other broadband wireless technology then we can talk about truly mobile cheap talking (and Video) -

p.s. it’s contend not content :)

We like Voice-over-IP, because we’re cheap. Om likes it, too, but questions whether the recent shipment of hats made of money to Vonage is really a wise investment. But first, an out-of-context pullquote:SiliconBeat is impressed and sum it up succinct…

(link)