How to use Vonage VoIP phone in India
Are you planning to move from USA to India and wondering if your Vonage phone will work in India? Learn how to use the Vonage VoIp phone in India and how it works with the slow internet connection.
NOTE: This article was originally published in Nov 2011
I just got a call from the US "National Emergency Call Center (911)" asking what is the emergency help I need. I was confused since I do not live in USA anymore. The lady on the phone explained they got a 911 emergency call from my phone. I realized someone at my home tried to make a local phone call in India using my Vonage phone, which was registered in USA and accidentally pressed "911" instead of "91"!
After asking several questions, the lady hung up, but probably dispatched an officer to my old address in USA at this midnight in USA. She wasn't really convinced that I do not live in USA anymore and was using an American phone number from India. The mistake I did was, I did not update my details with Vonage when I left the country.How to use Vonage Phone in India
The 911 call incident prompted me to share our Vonage phone experience in India.
When we moved from USA to India, we decided to carry our Vonage device to India. We thought our friends will be calling us often after we move to India and we will be calling all buddies in USA regularly. That worked for few weeks and then the number of US calls we make or receive went down significantly.
We still use the Vonage phone to call USA from India primarily for my business to talk to client and business partners. And it works great. Using a US local phone number gives much more credibility to me when I talk to clients in USA. Also, we still have our home in USA and the Vonage phone number is used by our property manager and tenant to contact me when they need to talk to me.
If I want to make calls only from India to USA, I can use any other phone services here which is not very expensive. But if someone from USA want to talk to me, like tenant or property manager of my home, they will probably have a hard time to figure out how to call India.
Also Read: Voice over IP or VoIP - advantages of voice calls on internetWill Vonage work in India?
We were not sure if the Vonage device will work in India and even if it technically works, will it be possible to use reliably with the unreliable internet services here. After using it couple of months here, I can confirm that Vonage VoIP phone will work perfectly in India.
The primary use of our Vonage phone in India are:
1. Call abroad for free (USA and various other countries).
2. For kids to call grand parents and chat for hours talking about the new story they learnt in the school
3. Call customer service in India, who sometimes takes hours to answer the calls
4. Make any long phone calls (local or long distance)
I am using a 4 Mbps high speed internet line and Vonage works perfectly fine with it. However, most people in India have the normal DSL connection which offer 256 Mbps or 512 Mbps speed. Sometimes I run out of my high speed quota (75 Gb per month) and then my internet speed goes down to 256 Kbps. Even at that low speed, I did not experience any problems with Vonage service.Is it worth using Vonage in India?
Vonage offers unlimited calls to almost all countries at the cost of about $35 per month. It wouldn't cost me the same in India to use a land line here, unless I make too many international calls.
Moreover, even though we have free calls from Vonage, we still have a regular land line in India which comes with the DSL internet service. So it is an extra phone sitting on my desk, often confusing which is the regular land line and which is the Vonage phone.
To answer the question - is it worth keeping the Vonage phone in India - it depends on the connections you are keeping in USA. If you leave a house and other properties in USA or deal with clients/employer in USA, it is a good idea to keep the Vonage phone when you move to India, atleast for first few months.Disable emergency services, if you are taking Vonage phone outside USA
If you are using a Vonage phone outside the country, login to your Vonage account and update the status to "out of country". This will avoid any hassles with emergency services, in case of an accidental dialing of the emergency number. Also, it will disable all notifications from the emergency services.
Steps to update "out of country" status in Vonage
1. Login to Vonage.com
2. Go to "My Account" tab.
3. Click on Edit 911 Dialing Address
4. Click on the link "Change your 911 dialing status to 'Out Of Country'"
5. Click on the "I Accept" button in the confirmation screen.
If you are travelling outside the country with your Vonage device for a short period or you permanently move to other countries like India and plan to use Vonage there, it is important to do change the status to "Out of Country" (I just learnt it the hard way today!) At least, it can save a trip for the Emergency services when you make a mistake and dial US emergency numbers by mistake.
I had asked couple of people in the past what will happen if we dial 911 from a Vonage phone from India or other countries. I just got the answer. Even if you may not get much help, your call will be still answered!
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Yes, it does work. I use Vonage for my daily office work.