I have Vonage for my business line. I can have a phone line, unlimited long distance, a toll-free number, and a fax number all for about $50/month. If I did the same thing through my phone company, it would easily cost me twice as much, at least.
For my purposes, my phone through Vonage is acceptable. Most of my clients are writer-types and prefer email. I can go days without the phone ringing, and that’s fine with me. I think I’ve only had dropped calls about twice with Vonage in the year and a half since I’ve had it. Now faxing, on the other hand, is awful.
I had to fax two things this week (again, I can go months without faxing). I tried faxing a one-sheet document to a number four different times and none of them went through. Never did go through. I did fax to an alternate number and that worked on the first try. It took me 3 or 4 attempts to fax some stuff to Candy and I tried faxing something else to her 3 times without success. It’s ridiculous and unacceptable. Receiving faxes seems to work fine. For sending them, I might need to connect my fax machine to my normal home phone line and just pay the long distance charge. I fax stuff so rarely, that it’s not worth spending the money for a dedicated fax line.
So, while I think Vonage and its competitors will give the old Ma Bell a run for her money in the long run, they definitely need to figure out how to deliver a more reliable service to small businesses if they want to stay in the game.
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