My Digital Life

Vonage - Click-2-Call and Outlook plug in

From my past experience with VOIP in the corporate world, I got used to an Outlook plug in that allowed the direct dialing of a number from the Outlook contact view. To my delight I found that Vonage has such a plug in, it is called Click-2-Call and can be downloaded here. Click-2-Call can be used with or without Outlook and installs on Windows XP.

The standalone Click-2-Call application allows you to enter the phone number you want to dial. Once you click on the "Place Call" button, your handset will ring, when you pick up the call connection is be completed. If you have multiple Vonage lines on the same account you can also select which line to use. The Click-2-Call application will minimize to the Windows XP system tray for easy access.

Even though I would not currently recommend that anyone run the current Outlook 2007 Beta 2 (unless you are hardcore), I was glad to find that the Click-2-Call Outlook plug in works. Hopefully Beta 3 is around the corner.

The Outlook 2007 Beta 2 contact view with the addition of the Click-2-Call toolbar (red oval). You do not have to open the contact, just select it. Based on the numbers in the contact records, up to 3 icons will display, from left to right, Work, Mobile, Home. The other numbers in the contact record are displayed in a drop down menu accessible to left of the icons. The plug in usesthe Click-2-Call standalone application and the calling experience is same, however you do not have to click on "Place Call". All that I need now is for Vonage to create a "Line Property" module to use Outlook'sbuilt in calling feature which can associate the callwith a timer and a journal entry.

Vonage - Trying it free for a month

I have decided to give Vonage a trial using their 30 day money back guarantee. So far I am very impressed with the service. I signed up on Friday afternoon the 14th and chose to order the free Motorola VT2442 VOIP gateway.You do have to pay $14.95 for shipping, a little steep. I chose the Motorola VT2442 for two reasons:

1. I have two lines phones around the house; I use one line for our Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) line from Verizon, and the other for my wife's cell phone via a Doc N Talk unit. I could easily reroute the cell phone line on my office phone to connect the VT2442 gateway. (see my previous post)
2. I use a Motorola Cable Modem, why not get a matched set and try to avoid any manufacturer mismatch problems.

The order process was pretty straight forward. The only partially tricky piece was picking a phone number, in my area code there are multiple zones to choose from but no explanation of what they mean, I just picked one and the number I received was fine. Vonage needs to display more user friendly information about zones and phone numbers. I did not need to port any of my current numbers since I want to use this line for home office purposes. On Friday night the account was active and I could manage the account but could not make any calls. On Monday the 17th I received the Motorola VT2442 gateway.There are two ways to install the VT2442 gateway in your network:

1. You can use theVT2442 as a router between the cable modem and your existing setup, or
2. You can plug the VT2442 in one of the ports of your existing router.

You can look at more configuration details here. I tried both methods, but settled on the first configuration. My reason for placing the VT2442 first behind the cable modem is that it can then manage the priority of data and the Quality Of Service in and out of my network and hopefully the QOS won't be blocked by Comcast. This should enhance the reliability of calls. My current Comcast speed tests, using the SpeakEasy test, average 4 to 5 Mbps download and 350Kbps upload.Since I have my Netgear FVS318 well configured, I have no need for two firewalls or a DMZ, I turned the VT2442 firewall function off.Both configuration worked without a problem.The quality of the calls I made (several 30 minute + conference calls) were very good. The calls were better than cellular and pretty close to POTS.

The Vonage service has quite a few configurable features that you can manage from their website. Two key performance features are:

1. A network availability feature, allows you to redirect calls to another phone if Vonage does not detect the VT2442. This usually means that the Internet service is not up.This is a fairly common issue with VOIP service, but I have to say that my Comcast connection has been pretty good since January (under 5 outages). I chose to use my cell phone as my backup.
2. A bandwidth saver feature, allows you to choose the amount bandwidth to allocate for phone calls. This is configurable from 30kps to 90Kpbs. The lower the bandwidth, the lower the call quality. With cable Internet you need to be concerned about the upload speeds, but since I average 350Kpbs, I left it at the default of 50Kbps. So far so good, it will be interesting to try a call while I upload large files like pictures.

Update 7/20/06: Yesterday I had trouble dialing toll free numbers, I called Vonage customer service on my POTS line, they tried to connect me to the next level of support. Once I finally got connected, the call dropped. That call did not give me a high degree of confidence that they could resolve the issue. I ended up rebooting the VT2442 gateway, this resolved the problem. From the help section of the Vonage web site, that seems to be the recommendation to resolve most issues.

I will categorizing my experience under Vonage and VOIP.