Stop Insulting My Wi-Fi, Vonage!

I'm pretty crazy about the conventional VoIP phone services I use with my broadband-Ethernet connection at home (I'm referring mainly to Vonage and Verizon Voicewing). Sure, I get some dropped calls, slightly-worse-than-landline-audio-quality, and sometimes even complete malfunction (either callers go straight to my voicemail or the number I'm calling rings endlessly with no answer at all).

But those hassles are acceptable given the unlimited calling I get across the U.S. and the affordable international rates that these carriers charge. And I like using a regular phone. Besides, it's not my only phone: I still have my landline, just in case there's a power failure or my DSL goes down.

Skype has started to encroach on Vonage's territory with standard phones and cheaper calling plans. As a result, Vonage has been fighting back with products such as the UTStarcom F100 Wi-Fi phone and the V-Phone (the latter of which Chris gave a mostly thumbs-down review, back in August). 

I'm a fan of Vonage's home service. But because I was so let down by Vonage's seemingly wonderful Wi-Fi phone, which I have so far manged to get working a total of two times, I wanted to give the company another chance and see if it had improved on the V-Phone two months in. I brought it to Berlin, where I am now, hoping to save money on calls back to the States. So far, I have saved some money, but I've also had to break down and use my cell phone, which charges about a dollar a minute to call back to the States from most places in Europe.

As Chris said, set-up is a cinch! The V-Phone is literally a cute little orange USB drive with a mic input and a blue light that indicates a connection. There's no software to install. In fact, all I did was insert the V-Phone into my PC's (sorry, no Macs) USB drive and the software automatically loaded up from the Web within 30 seconds. This part is wonderful and got me totally pumped.

But my experiences over the past couple of days confirm that the call quality is still just as lousy as Chris reported back in August. Though I managed to get a couple of decent calls out to friends and colleagues back in the States, my speech was indiscernible to the Continental Airlines operator I dialed about four times, and another colleague on a conference call wanted to know why I was calling from a bus station (I wasn't—I was calling from a relatively quiet cafe in Berlin called St. Oberholz, on the Rosenthaler Platz, which I highly recommend to anyone passing through this town who needs a free Wi-Fi hotspot, along with amazing coffee and Linzer Torte, in which to work.) I also got sudden, non-stop recordings in the middle of toll calls to U.S. numbers telling me that the number I was calling was restricted—isn't that veird? Not to mention annoying.

What really irks me is that Vonage never seems to admit or accept responsibility for certain products it makes that simply don't work with any sort of tolerable consistency. When I spoke with tech personnel at the company several months ago about the Wi-Fi phone, I was told the problem was my encrypted Wi-Fi network at home. I have since tried that same phone at a number of open, unencrypted Wi-Fi hotspots and it rarely works (and when it does, call quality is choppy at best). When I inquired about my issues with the V-Phone, I was once again told that the problem was my crappy Wi-Fi connection. And to try the Audio Wizard, which I tried, and which changed nothing.

First of all, stop insulting my Wi-Fi connection, all you manufacturers-of-Wi-Fi-enabled-products-that-don't-work!

But seriously, I don't care whether it's the crappy Wi-Fi connection or something in the Vonage software: Neither of these products work consistently enough to merit their  $40-$80 price tags (plus $25 per month for unlimited calls). I'm all for VoIP and some of the innovative-sounding products companies like Vonage are releasing—I just wished they actually sounded as good as they look on paper.

So can anyone tell me about some seamless VoIP experiences, if they have any? I'm finding it hard to believe they actually exist.