Vonage

I read an article that I found very interesting and in relation to economics that we talk about in class. The article was titled, "Vonage Makes Phoning Through the Internet Convenient and Cheap." I found this article on the Personal Technology site from the Wall Street Journal. The article is written by Walter S. Mossberg and it was published on February 26th 2004. When I saw the title of this article it automatically caught my attention because at my job a lot of customers have been asking me about this Vonage and I didn't even know what it was.

In the article it talks about a new device called Vonage. Vonage allows you to make phone calls anywhere in the world for very cheap rates just using your computer. I think that this is a very good idea. I would say that eight out of every ten households own a computer by now. Out of those eight, six connect to the internet via broadband or DSL. That is all you need to work Vonage. It is developed so brilliantly because the technology is so up to date. You have standard low rates and no by the minute charges. For example it is only $35.00 a month you get unlimited local, long distance and regional calls in the United States and Canada. The low rates are defiantly giving competition to all the other telecommunication companies. These low prices also include a bunch of other features you have to pay extra for with other local companies such as voice-mail, caller id, call waiting, call transferring and three- way calling.

Some other features that differentiate Vonage from other telecommunication companies is that you can choose to have any area code number that you want. So if someone lives in Florida but has all the family in New York, you can choose to keep the New York number and make all your calling local calls. That is for the cheaper plans that give you a limit on the long distance. The option of picking an area code of your choice is also good from the business perspective. If you have a business phone number but change your location you do not want to loose the well known number.

With every new and wonderful invention there are always some downfalls. Because it is so new there are sometimes interferences from the internet when you are downloading huge media files. It is a little tricky, but possible, to switch all your phone lines to one extension on the Vonage system. And the biggest downfall of all is that Vonage numbers are not listed in the phone book! But "I