We've been subscribed to Vonage (broadband phone service) for almost two years now. What's the verdict?

Well, we're not giving it up, but I would not recommend it to to everyone. I still love the fact we're not giving any money to the traditional phones companies. It's still saving us money--our bill is about $19 a month, which includes more minutes than we use, calls to the UK, caller ID and voicemail. I like getting email notification when we get a voicemail, which is convenient when I'm at work.

They've finally added 511 service, and TiVo seems to be surviving without a connection. We have the phone jacks wired so we can plug a phone into any of our normal jacks.

BUT. The connection just isn't as good. We still have the randomly-generated DTMF tone problem, which I know other Vonage users have problems with as well. Also, the connection has dropped a couple of times. (That could be our Internet connection--hard to tell sometimes where the problem is.) Sometimes there is an echo on the line, or noise. The other day I was unable to get into my conference bridge for a work call--it couldn't recognize my touch tone entries. Also we've had to install some patches when we got our new router, things like that.

So if you are on the phone a lot, or use your phone extensively for business, or are not tech-savvy, I wouldn't recommend it. But for us, it works well enough that the benefits outweigh the problems.