I am wondering if there is a way to use your C-phone with Vonage phone service?

• I am wondering if there is a way to use your C-phone with Vonage phone service? - MissouriMT
  • Yes - lesley

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

I live in small town America.  We have one telephone company that serves our rural county which is CenturyTel and it sucks.  If we moved 7 miles up the road, we would be able to get SBC or AT&T.  I have my phone line and DSL internet through CenturyTel and have nothing but trouble.  I am supposed to have unlimited long distance which I have had since May of last year.  Last month I received a $3000 phone bill because for whatever reason, they disconnected my unlimited long distance.  When I called them to pitch a fit, they apologized, said they were rectifying the matter, and told me I only owed the usual $100 which I promptly paid.  I got a disconnect notice today saying they are going to disconnect me if the $3000 I owe isn't paid by March 1st.  I am now on hold with the 5th person I have had to talk to at this incompetent, rinky dink phone company and I am pulling my hair out.  This isn't the first time I've had problems with them.  They've switched my service packages before for no apparent reason and the only explanation I get is "Hmmmm, I apologize for that, I'm not sure why somebody would do that."  Or my personal favorite, blame the phantom employee "she just didn't put in the computer right, but I'm fixing it for you now."

Anyway, sorry about the rant, but I'm truly losing it!  I have decided to call the cable company and get internet through them and try to work with Vonage, but I need to actually plug my C-phone into a jack and I understand that Vonage is all wireless through a router.  I need to know is there a way to plug a phone cord into a Vonage modem?

I am just so frustrated! 

I'm passing this tidbit along.

If you have Vonage and are having trouble connecting to the dictation system, here's the solution. Purchase one of those little two-line plastic gizmos from Radio Shack. I don't know what it's called, but you can plug it into a wall jack and then plug two phones into it. It was used in "the old days" before Cable and DSL lines, and your computer modem and telephone shared the same line.

Pop this gizmo into the back of your Vonage router. Plug a regular phone into one socket and your C-phone into the other.

Dial into the transcription station with the regular phone. Punch in all of the codes and once you're fully connected, pick up the headset for the C-phone, put on your headset, hang up the regular phone, and you're set to work!!! 

I need to plug my C-phone into a phone jack.  My Vonage setup is completely wireless set up by my local cable company.

I've got an analog telephone line, but the local phone company in this area is incredibly incompetent and I am at the end of my rope and am desparate to figure something else out.  I have called this company of Keystone Cops four times trying to order their unlimited long distance plan.  Each time they have apologized for the inconvience and said "somebody dropped the ball" and they are just so sorry.  This morning I called them for the 5th time because I got a letter in the mail yesterday thanking me for signing up for the 5 cents a minute long distance plan!  Now I'm told that they are making "notations" on my account and when I get my bill at the end of the month I will need to call their "investigations department" to get the long distance charges reversed.

So as you can see, my frustration meter is maxing out with these people!  Help me figure out a way I can use my Vonage with my C-phone and tell these people to hang themselves with their telephone line!

Does anyone out there successfully use a C-phone with Vonage with satellite internet?  I have Hughes.net satellite (can't get DSL in my area).  My C-phone foot pedal has a lag in using all the controls of FF, RW, and Play.  I have upgraded my Hughes.net service, increased the bandwith, and am still having the same problem.  If you also had this problem, what did you do to correct it?  TIA

I have a DAC digital transcribe unit and I dial into a DVI system.  I have noticed there is a lag.  When I let off my pedal, the dictation continues to play for a second and then stops.  The auto backspace is skewed because the dictation plays forward too much when I left off my pedal.

Anyone else experience this and is there anything Vonage can do to correct it?

I didn't find Vonage to be very reliable.  Some days I would have no dial tone and the phone wouldn't be working and I would have to reboot my high speed modem, reboot my router, and then reboot my Vonage modem.  This happened a lot after thunderstorms and ice or snow storms.  Some days I'd be working and lose my connection.  I had trouble with dialing out even though I could receive calls and had to wait for Vonage to fix a server problem.

It just got really annoying for me.  I mean the unlimited long distance was great, but I need something more reliable.  My local phone company ended up offering an unlimited long distance package at a reasonable price and I jumped at it.  Now I've got a regular 'ol analog phone line with unlimited LD and I pay about $40 month and that's with an in-line service package which means if I have any jack or line problems, I don't have to pay extra for a technician to come out and fix it for me.

Just got my new phone bill and freaked out. I'm supposed to be on a $39.95 monthly plan including unlimited long distance. My bill was $74!!!! The LD charges were $45!!! The phone company said I could get local LD and I could save a whopping $5 a month (how nice).

I'm looking for a new provider and used to go to a site where you could compare phone services but can't seem to find it now. Does anyone have that site?

I've thought about Vonage..does anyone have their service and how is it? Would it clash with my KVM switch and router?

Thanks for any help. As my name implies, in the past few years, technology has me going nuts lately and I seem to have "lost it."

I recently looked into this subject myself.  If you have Verizon available in your area, you can purchase a plan at about $55.00 per month with a two-year contract.  You will receive a card that you can insert into your laptop, which will provide you with unlimited Internet access at the speed of DSL.  As far as I know, there are no other cell service providers that have come up with this type of card yet, but I'm sure it's bound to happen in the future.  Another option is to purchase a satellite telephone and phone cards as you go along, but the cards are really outrageous in price.  One last thing that I would suggest is that you phone cell providers in your area to see if they have any technical gadgets you could attach to the cell phone for Internet access.  Many of the satellite phone companies have separate packages you can buy, which can be attached to laptops or PDAs.  I also have a TracPhone, so I know it does not come with hardware that will do the trick.

Good luck to you in setting everything up.  With the way that technology is moving, I'm sure there must be a way to accomplish what you want. 

They had a judge sign a Chapter 7 bankruptcy order on 10/2 and have begun cutting off phone service to residental and business customers.  I found out about this when I attempted to make a long distance call today (I had the unlimited long distance home phone plan) and got notification that I had no long distance service available.  Upon calling them the representative told me that they're working on cutting phone service to everyone and at any time I could lose service.  I've called the "mega" phone service for my area, BellSouth, and signed up to switch hopefully before the line is disconnected by LecStar.

Interestingly I had signed up for their service through a cooperation they had with my power company.  The power company just found out yesterday about the bankruptcy and services starting to be cut off and is in the process now of calling every power company customer who had phone service with LecStar and telling them what is happening so that hopefully no one else will be caught off guard with a disconnected phone service. 

difference.  Also, have you tried a different headset?  Also someone told me one time that there is a microphone under your volume control on the right corner of the C-phone.  It's a tiny hole.  If you break off a Q-tip and stick that into the hole that will squelch a lot of background noise and that worked as well.  As far as getting your C-phone service, I heard that Dictaphone is "sunsetting" C-phones at the end of this year.  Meaning, they aren't going to service them anymore as they are considered an obsolete technology.  So, I would contact Dictaphone and see what your options are.

I know very little about Lanier equipment.  I've not used it as extensively as Dictaphone.  Is there a local appliance repair place in your area?  You might ask one of those places to take a look at your equipment and see what they think.  Kinda scary, cause they could do more harm than good, but maybe worth a shot.

Not much help, I know.  But I thought I would share what tiny bit of obscure knowledge I do have. 

Anyone else experience this problem with their C-phone?  Is there a problem with my C-phone?  At first I thought it was my telelphone line and called the phone company.  They sent a technician out to replace the lines and check the house, but the hum is still there on the C-phone.

It's driving me batty!

through cable, have you tried to take an incoming call?

We only have one phone line.  I rarely get/make calls and when I do we have cell phones.  I just started working with a C-phone and got digital phone.  I can go a month and my phone not ring, so far have gotten 3 calls today, but I'm afraid that if I try to answer the phone that I will lose my report. 

I guess I could pull up a report and have my husband call on his C-phone and test it that way and then if I lose it no biggie. 

and a foot pedal.  You call into a number (hopefully 800 number), put in your codes, and a voice file comes on.  You use the headphones and the foot pedal, and transcribe on your computer into a word processing program, then send the finished file back per their directions.

The c-phone is not connected to the internet in any way.  There is no downloading involved.  It is just a phone by means of which you get your voice files.  It needs a phone line and you stay on the line the entire time.