Thanks for continuing here.
In case you aren't aware, back in early March, or possibly late February of 2007, Vonage wound up losing a patent infringement suit over to their arch-enemy Verizon. It seems that Verizon was awarded some pretty broad ranging patents in the VOIP (voice over IP) arena and Vonage was apparently infringing on 3 of them. As it turned out for me, I wasn't aware of the possibility of Vonage being found guilty of this infringement so I was left very surprised when I saw the news about it. Not that I don't expect, in our increasingly litigous society, that one company might not be sued by another, or that one company might infringe upon another's patents and intellectual property, but I had no idea that the suit was in the works as I just wasn't following the industry that closely (shame on me). Not knowing that the suit was in the works and that a loss was imminent in that suit, I took advantage of an offer that Vonage was making to sign up for one year of service at a deeply discounted rate that made the per month charge approximately $20 month (assuming I would keep the service for a year).
Flash forward several months, past the time when Vonage was working on an appeal and had an injuction that was just about the equivalent of the death penalty stayed indefinitely, and we come up to the last few weeks when Vonage lost their appeal in the Verizon case, and had also been found guilty in a case vs. Sprint. Things weren't looking good at all, and I started worrying that my phone number, a part of my identity that has been established in business relationships, etc., was going to disappear and I'd lose my service completely. I went out on the web, visited the web page for Verizon Voicewing service and started up an account with them with the understanding that they would be able to port my phone number over from Vonage so I wouldn't need to change anything and go through telling my employer, my co-workers, my family and friends, and everyone else I deal with that I had a new phone number for the I don't know how many-eth time.
I filled out the web forms, went through the various requirements, and waited for Verizon to ship me out a TA (telephone adapter) box for their service which would have a temporary number for the interim period until they were able to get my phone number ported over from Vonage. Ok, a few weeks wait for that to happen, some fairly simple instructions provided that walked me through the process and what was going to happen, and things seemed good. Day before yesterday (10/15/07) was to be the day that the number officially moved, and I got the notice that the number was moved successfully and all I had left to do was reset my TA.
I tried calling home to check to see if the old service was still up and was greeted by a 'that call can not be completed as dialed' message. What the heck?! Uh, it seems Verizon made some mistakes along the way. Not that I expected things to be perfect, but I didn't expect my phone number was going to be lost in limbo during the process.
Little did I know how the next 24 - 48 hours would proceed. I figured that the problem must be that I hadn't reset the TA yet and that things would be fine after that was done. Uh, not quite. I pulled the power, waited 30 - 60 seconds, plugged power back in, waited for the device to recycle itself and then tried to call my home phone number again (from my cell phone). Still got that beeee boooop sound and the 'that call can not be completed as dialed' message. Hmmm, what else could be wrong? Oh, wait, the TA box has a reset button on it, I must have to press that button, or so I thought. BZZZZT! WRONG ANSWER there Skippy.
Pressing that button apparently really screws up the Verizon TA. Or so Verizon Voicewing support tells me when I get them on the horn. They also tell me that the reason that the number wasn't working was something I'd have to take up with their number porting department the next day. Color me not very happy. I finally hung up after getting incredibly frustrated with Manuel, or Eric, or Fred or Pete or whatever that idiot technician's name was (not that they ever say it clearly enough to understand them).
I experimented some more, tried to get the TA to work again (it was working as a network device, but refused to function as a telephone service providing device) and finally resolved to call Verizon and play CSR roulette and hope to get a better technician the second time through. That actually did work out for me, and that was the case. Again, Eric, or Pete or Todd or whatever (I wish I could remember that technician's name as he was very helpful. I do remember he said he was going to be getting married very soon and I wished him great luck in that endeavor) talked to me about things and almost immediately he had determined why my regular phone number wasn't working. It seems that some one at Verizon had forgotten to enter that phone number into my account as they were supposed to have done, so it was left in limbo. He promised to put in a case for that issue and it would be resolved the next day (yesterday, 10/16/07). He then determined that he couldn't help on the TA issue, but he would forward my call through to the technical service people and they would help me. Great.
So, my call goes through to the technical service person and after talking with them for a bit, we determine that the TA I have is now bad, apparently thanks to pressing that reset button (which, by the way, is clearly labelled 'RESET'). I politely informed that technician that Verizon should do a better job of making the instructions on resetting the device clearer -- i.e., instruct customers to *only* pull the power from the device, and *NEVER* ever press the reset button on the device. He agreed that is something that they need to work on and hopefully that will be addressed in the future. Anyway, he tells me that he'll put in a request to ship me out a replacement TA but I likely won't have it until today. Bleh. No phone service for 2 days. What a p-i-t-a.
Well, mid-way through the day yesterday (10/16/07) the number porting issue was apparently resolved. I got an e-mail updating my account status and noting that the porting had been successful, etc. Ok, I log back into my account via the web, into the their control panel app and see that it now shows my proper phone number and not the temporary number it had shown up until that point. Excellent. I tried calling the number and sure enough, no more annoying beep, and no more 'call can not be completed' messages. Ring, ring, ring, answering service (voice mail). Yay! At least I had that. I was then able to have the phone service automatically forward the calls (supposedly) over to my cell phone. That actually worked, or worked intermittently. It worked well enough to at least see that someone was calling and give them a call back if needed. Much better.
So, today I get the new TA via UPS, after waiting around for a good while for UPS to come. They brought that package and another that I was expecting and I went about tearing into the package and pulling out the new TA to place into service and hopefully get things resolved. I moved phone cables around, got the box fired up but then still didn't get the service working. What the heck!?!?! Argghh. Move cables back around, get outbound service working through Vonage again, call up Verizon sit on the phone with the techs again, waiting through unbearable hold music, and finally get the techs and we start trouble shooting everything. I mean everything. Unplug this, pull power here, go through putting the device into the DMZ (de-militarized zone) so it wasn't being blocked by firewall on my router. Still nothing. No matter what I tried, the darned box just wouldn't give dial-tone. Bah.
Finally, I check over things on my account page thoroughly and get through the link for 'equipment.' Hmmm, equipment, eh? Darn it! Apparently when Verizon sent out the new TA, I was expected to go online to Verizon Voicewing's control panel for my account and update the MAC (hardware) address for my TA. D'oh! Did that, saved the new information and within a minute or two the lights on the TA lit up as they were supposed to and voila! service restored.
What a fiasco. Now I'm still left having to cancel service with Vonage. I'm in no hurry there as long as my phone is working correctly, I'm happy. Vonage is pre-paid for another several months, so I needn't rush into cancelling service. Not that I'll actually use their service any more, but at least my phone number has been ported and I'm able to keep that number from here out.
I would hope in a few weeks to be able to offer some constructive comments about Verizon's Voicewing service. Check back later for that, and hopefully it'll be useful.
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