Vonage and Direcway
This seems to be a very popular subject right now. Currently the answer is not so much. I have talked to many folks who have Vonage and Direcway and have heard comments such as users can hear folks on the other end but can not talk back and horrible static. Other problems include calls dropping or not connecting at all. In a few instances, people have made calls normally through Vonage but this seems to be the exception.
I would advise you to steer away from Vonage for the time being if you are using Direcway. I know that both Direcway and Vonage are aware of the situation ? and speaking to a Direcway rep about the situation, he informed me that Direcway is working on their own VoIP solution that will be available by the fourth quarter.
There are a couple of theories floating out there as to why Vonage (and most VoIP providers) are not working well with Direcway. Some have claimed that Direcway worked fine with VoIP up to last summer and then Direcway made some sort of internal change and VoIP never worked after that point. Another common answer is the latency issue. Since signals are being sent up to a satellite then back down, there is a latency period of when the data is sent and received. According to this theory, Direcway?s latency is out of acceptable ranges for Vonage?s systems and is causing the problems of bad reception, no clear signal, and dropped calls. The final theory is that Direcway is not prioritizing the voice packets. Obviously when dealing with voice the packets must be put in a specific order or the voice signal would be scrambled. If Direcway is not giving priority to voice data packets then indeed you would experience many problems including static, loss of signal or not being able to make a call at all.
Fear not, I believe that VoIP over satellite will be up and running soon. VoIP is getting too popular for Direcway and Vonage to not deal with the situation. Personally I am waiting to see what Direcway offers in Q4.
Hope this helps.
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