Seems Vonage is now charging extra 1.50 to its customers in anticipation of being regulated as a phone provider.
I’m sure a bunch of techies that have a large enough disposable income that can afford to buy broadband then pay for a phone service on TOP of this will be really enraged by this ‘extra charge’ and can sort of sympathesize with them. However, when you add up the real costs of getting VoIP unless you’re a talking monster or truly a really mobile person Vonage isn’t THAT huge a savings with the current price structures of things. Although having more competition in how you get your phone service is overall a good thing. Telecommunications is slowly changing as packet based networks become that much more ubiquitous however it’s not THAT widespread.
I considered getting Vonage for having a U.S. based phone # before leaving for Japan however after adding in Broadband costs I decided it wasn’t really worth it even though I really can’t seem to live without a ‘net connection these days since most of the phone calls that I’ll need to be making from now on will be localized. (Something to always keep in mind. Locality EVEN in the Internet age is something you shouldn’t forget)
