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Review by andegold 
UPDATED: 262 days ago
member for 7.3 years, 1950 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Plainsboro,Middlesex,NJ
 $20 per month
 about 5 days
 "It just plain works! - Update at the End"
 "None that matter"
 "It's great for the home and I'm taking the plunge for my office too."
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Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
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Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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I had originally ordered Vonage but after three weeks they couldn't even manage to find my request for LNP that been faxed (and confirmed received) to them three times. The Packet8 set up was extremely easy and quick. My house is new construction and in anticipation of VoIP the inside was never connected to the Verizon NID. After four or five months running over Comcast Verizon finally brought DSL to the neighborhood and I've been running over that connection for about two months now.
So, I have a Verizon land line for 911, the alarm, and scattered local calls when someone else is on the main line, and use the Packet8 line exclusively for everything else. I can listen to streaming audio, use a GoToMyPC connection and use the Packet8 phone with no noticeable degradation to any of them.
There is an occasional echo which is really annoying but it's never gotten in the way of a call.
There have been a few small outages but nothing serious.
Lack of 411 and even direct dialed 555-1212 service is annoying but I generally prefer SuperPages.com anyway.
Recently added time and date stamp to Voice Mail is long past overdue and it still doesn't work yet.
Interestingly, time and date stamping has always been available on their business class service as is seven digit dialing which is not currently available to residential customers.
I have just ordered a three station Virtual Office sysem for my business running over a Comcast Pro account. This could save several hundreds of dollars a year but would be better if it did not require a minimum of three stations. Two would be enough for me.
02/15/2005 Update - Still moving along well at home. Have been using Virtual Office at work for about a moth now. Have old Verizon line forwarded to P8 for incoming calls while LNP is pending. Occasionally get some quality issues but have only had one or two dropped calls. Nothing I can't live with. My biggest problem is getting used to being tied to my desk again after three years with a multi-line cordless system. Their plain business package probably would have worked with the old phones but I wanted some of the advanced features of the PBX.
So, after one month I'm still favorable and think it's a great solution fo any business that needs the features and more than three sets. For smaller operations that don't need to transfer calls or set up extensions and seperate voice mail boxes it's probably overkill.
08/10/2005 Update - Over one year later and still chugging along nicely at home. There are occasional very short outages and other glitches but they piss off the wife much more than they do me. 411 has been added and this is a very good thing as I do not like the changes that have been made to SuperPages.com over the past several months. The time and date stamp on voice mail now works. Actually, it works better than on Virtual Office in as much as the residential time and date stamp are announced before playing the message and the Virtual Office stamp is announced after the message. I usually delete the message before I realize I might have wanted to know when the message came in.
Also still very happy with VIrtual Office. Features are fantastic. Can't really comment on bandwidth as I rarely if ever have more than one extension in use at a time and other internet traffic in the office is generally low as well.
I received my 911 stickers for both accounts but no word yet on implementing 911 on my home phone which is a Verizon number that I ported in from a different CO.
Just about 18 months of service now. No outages in longer than I can remember. Sometimes there is delay and static but nothing worse than a cell phone. Call quality could be better but reliability is excellent. Still don't have 911 working but I do get updated E-mails from the tech working on it about once a month. They've credited me the 911 fees. 7-digit dialing is fantastic. Virtual office still working great at work.
UPDATE 01/23/2007 Over 24 months of service and still happy. Have cancelled residential account and had that number ported to Virtual Office. Currently running three VO lines over Verizon DSL. Downloads will affect quality of call but normal browsing does not. FiOS is on the way and will probably switch as soon as possible. Packet8 still can't resolve my address properly for E-911 but I have a landline for the DSL anyway. Added a T38 fax not too long ago but don't use it enough yet to really review it. I can't port my old fax line to it because they are limited as to which COs this equipment is in.
FINAL UPDATE 2/19/2009: I've been using the residential service now for four years and really still have no reliability problems or anything to complain about other than the price creeping up slowly over time. As a result of the price creep I am in the process of making the final changes and porting my number over to T-Mobile At Home. T-Mobile does not offer the same full feature set as Packet8 including, in particular, CallerID with Name. This was one of the biggest complaints about Packet8 in prior years until they finally added it about a year or two ago. Now I'm back to number only but am only paying $10/month for service instead of $30 and I only have to know one set of voice mail commands across my cell phone and home phone.
3/12/09 - T-Mobile does have CallerID with Name. They provide different CallerID services to their @home subscribers than to their mobile subscribers and my account wasn't coded properly. As of today my last Packet8 number (originally a Verizon Landline from the CO two towns over) was ported in to T-Mobile and all Packet8 accounts are closed.
I had a great experience with Packet8 and would absolutely still recommend Virtual Office but for my residential landline needs it just didn't make economic sense anymore.
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