Worst. IPO. Ever!

[Mr. Analog]

OK, maybe not the worst, but the Vonage IPO was pretty bad.

[Lazybones]

Ya when Skype is giving it away for free it is hard for the average investor to see value. Also there are SOOOOO many VOIP providers now.. It is only time before they start dieing off.

[Shayne]

While the IPO hasnt gone awsome, its service and price points is fantastic.  Why would I freaking concider SHAWs at $50 a month when i pay $20??

It will be a damn shame if this company goes under, really truely the end of cheap VOIP.

Also Skype is a little different as it still costs money to have a phone number (real) and it also needs a PC.  Worthless for me.

[Mr. Analog]

It's unfortunate that's for sure, their profit margin must be razor thin though looking at some of their numbers.

[Shayne]

loosing $100M a year, the IPO was to generate cash to expand.  Basically you got a brand new company buying its way into a market against the stiffest of competition.  Why does SHAW or Comcast or whoever else need to sell their service for such a high price when vonage isnt?  Granted i dont have the "uber infinite minutes" plan, but i dont need "uber infinite minutes", i need 500 and all the handy features, if SHAW were to do that, even say at $25 maybe $30 I might switch over to them, but $55 (I check their price this morning), im not made of cash and the reason i moved to vonage was because just a phone line from telus with no features and no long distance is $20.

[Mr. Analog]

Why does SHAW or Comcast or whoever else need to sell their service for such a high price when vonage isnt?

I'm thinking because people will pay the higher price thinking they're getting a brick and mortar system that's more "dependable" then the newcomers (when there is no difference really).

If anything, Vonage paved the road for Evil Cable companies to also become Evil Phone companies.

[Lazybones]

Telus has been aggressively trying to get me to go back to them for voice and internet services. Compaired to what they used to offer they are really changing there plans, yet it doesn't compete for my use and the service I have now.

They seem to think that people only switch to VOIP for longdistance, but for me all I wanted was a cheap home line with CID and voicemail. Telus can't at best offer me internet speeds half of those I get now.. Why would I switch back?

[Melbosa]

One thing is that with VOIP, if your line gets saturated, you can drop calls.  This is half the reason I went with Shaw phone service, which I love btw.  I have at times where my line does get saturated, and even with QoS on the router, a spike can drop a call.  This happens if the TCP packet is so tiny that QoS doesn't have time to react... mostly FTP can cause this.

[Shayne]

I have never had this issue.  My router auto does it, i can be downloading torrents, ftp going and such as soon as i turn on the phone and start dialing all my other stuff drops down to like 20kb/s

[Lazybones]

Ya, I have to say my QoS has worked perfectly... The only time I had an issue was when there where problems with the connection it self, but those have been resolved now.

I do encrypt my BT traffic now, so it is no longer shaped at the lowest setting, however it still should not be as high of a priority as my VOIP traffic.

[Darren Dirt]

Isn't Vonage the folks with the annoying "woo hoo, woo hoo hoo..." song in their annoying commercials that got heavy rotation on ComedyCentral.com for an annoyingly long time? 

Ya when Skype is giving it away for free it is hard for the average investor to see value. Also there are SOOOOO many VOIP providers now.. It is only time before they start dieing off.

Like, for example, this decade-old company:
https://www.lightyear.net/products/localres.ly

Telus has been aggressively trying to get me to go back to them for voice and internet services. Compaired to what they used to offer they are really changing there plans, yet it doesn't compete for my use and the service I have now.

They seem to think that people only switch to VOIP for longdistance, but for me all I wanted was a cheap home line with CID and voicemail. Telus can't at best offer me internet speeds half of those I get now.. Why would I switch back?

So looks like that's Melbosa, Lazy... quick informal poll: who all here has gotten on the Shaw home phone wagon, and what are your experiences  -- I personally do very little LD calls, but it sure would be great to give Telus the final onefingersalute

[Adams]

My uncle has it, they had a hell of a time when it was first setup but its now rock solid... except when I call they get a large echo so I think shaw is trying to kill vonage.

Really I have vonage and I would never turn back. I want a cheap phone service that gives me a little bit of LD since Annie (my wife) has relatives in Montreal. Other then that I hate telus. They are crap and over charge. I should not have to pay extra for every little thing. grr.. they get me angry.

heh
Vonage = Good
Telus = Bad
Shaw = In between & too expensive

[Lazybones]

No, I use Primus Talk Broadband over my Shaw SOHO/ I-extream connection.

I liked the Primus rate plans better than Vonage at the time I signed up. All I wanted was a home phone replacment, long-distance was not something I use or was interested in.

Just to give you an idea of how cheap.

Last months bill was $22.10 (55min of Long Distance) after tax and this month it is $17.07 (No Long Distance).

[Shayne]

I can pay Shaw $10 for packet priority or whatever and its still cheaper then freaking Shaw.

[Thorin]

Alrighty, I'll weigh in as well   We have Shaw's Cable Phone at home.  $55 is quite a bit, but we were spending almost that much without making any long distance calls when we were with Telus.  Now, we call my brother-in-law in Toronto, my wife's family in Vancouver, and my sister in Mississippi a fair amount.  Would we be able to save money through Vonage or Primus?  Perhaps.  Am I happy with the service provided thus far by Shaw?  Definitely.  Would I switch?  Comes down to price, features, and reported service response.

So, Shaw's phone includes the following:
Unlimited Local Callling - okay, that's just like a Telus phone.
Unlimited Long Distance in Canada and the US - we're probably logging two hours or more per month so far.
1000 Minutes Overseas (select countries) - this includes the Netherlands, where my dad lives at present.
Call Waiting, Call Display, Call Forwarding, Voicemail - my wife couldn't live without these
Call Return, Three-Way Calling - haven't used it yet.
Enhanced 911 - seems like a minor thing, except I have a child with a peanut allergy, and one of my other children might be the one calling 911, so I'd sure like it if the operator didn't need to ask the child calling what the address is.
Free Installation - was done by my wife's cousin, who happens to have won awards for installations.
Free service calls - wait until Telus hands you a bill for coming into your house to check your POTS installation.
Service Reliability - well, they claim it.  So far, it's been reliable and the one outage they did have was fixed within hours *and the customer service reps could actually tell us what the problem was and an expected outage window!*
Battery Backup - the Cable Phone box that the phone line plugs into has a built-in 8-hour battery pack.  Since it connects directly to the cable rather than going through a router, the phone stays working even if the power goes out in my house (Internet connectivity would fail because my router doesn't have battery back-up).

A comparable Vonage plan costs $40, but doesn't have the Enhanced 911 or the battery backup (as far as I know).  Vonage also uses your broadband connection, so if it goes down your phone goes down (Shaw's Cable Phone is separate from Shaw's Internet Service).  Primus Talk Broadband looks a lot cheaper, but looks to have the same possible problems as Vonage.

So yeah, I pay more in the hopes that my line is more reliable.  Don't know if Primus and Vonage charge any network access fees or any other "extra administrative fees", but Shaw doesn't.