Since I don’t have nearly enough projects going at the moment, I thought I’d throw another into the mix; switching my verizon phone line to a Vonage digital setup. My cable modem provider, Time Warner Roadrunner, recently launched their own digital phone service, but they only offer one $39/month unlimited plan; that’s a little overkill for me. Vonage had a 500 minute plan for $15/month that was more my speed. BestBuy had a deal on the Vonage start up kit ($29.99 after rebate), so I gave in.
After filling out an online form on the Vonage site, I gave setting up the digital phone box a shot. Its pretty straightforward, you just insert their box between your cable modem and router. Their instructions tell you to power everything (pc’s, router, cable modem), which I did, but I really don’t think it was necessary. Picked up the phone and I had a dial tone.
On the first test outgoing call, it rang a few times then switched over to a quick busy signal. Hmm, troubleshooting says that either I didn’t dial a fully qualified 11 digit number, to reboot my equipment (pc’s, router, cable modem, phone box) or change some port forwarding settings on my router. Hmm, the router is on the other side of the phone box, so I’m pretty sure that’s not the problem. so I powercycled the cable modem and phone box. After 3 minutes, the light on the phone stopped blinking. Second outgoing call worked like a charm! Must admit I like this setup process better than Verizon’s point, considering I haven’t had to talk any humanoids yet.
The process for moving my existing number to vonage looks pretty straightforward; I have to fill out a form and attach the first page of my last Verizon bill and fax it over to them. Then they’re supposed to grapple with verizon to get the number moved. Hmm, I wonder if I’ll have to cancel anything at Verizon after the number has been moved…
I’ll try to post my progress on getting that number moved and any other interesting tidbits I run into along the way.
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