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CNET editors' rating:
3.0 stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 1.5 stars out of 49 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Easy setup; useful and flexible online account management tools; provides a backup number in case of power outage; lets you keep your current phone number.
The bad: Too expensive; only one calling plan; some calls aren't very clear; unlimited long distance applies to calls only within the United States.
The bottom line: If you're an existing Verizon DSL customer, VoiceWing is worth considering. If not, you'll find a better deal and better call quality elsewhere.
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 01/25/2005
- Updated on:03/18/2005
- Released on: 07/22/2004
During our informal VoiceWing tests, we did experience occasional interference, sometimes to the point where we had to hang up and redial to continue the conversation. Upstream traffic was the culprit: callers on the other end of the line reported crackling and echoing in our voice. Incoming voice traffic sounded clear call after call, even during long data downloads. Luckily, VoiceWing comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can check out the service yourself before fully committing. For more information regarding voice quality, click here for CNET Labs' tests.
The VoiceWing adapter also has a second phone port should you want to run a phone to another room in your house (you'll need a long phone cable, though). A better solution for setting up multiple phones is to connect to the VoiceWing adapter a cordless base station that has multiple handsets.
Verizon VoiceWing's Web interface is straightforward and easy to use. Sign in, and you're presented with a useful first page that consists of a list of recent incoming, outgoing, and missed calls as well as voicemail messages. Click the My Account or My Phone buttons to add or adjust features. If you have chatty teenagers at home, you may want to keep an eye on your monthly minutes. Like other companies selling residential VoIP services, Verizon reserves the right to cut you off if it suspects you are using VoiceWing for business purposes and running up a huge number of minutes each month. Unlike other VoIP services, however, Verizon sets a limit: exceed 5,000 minutes in a month, and Verizon will investigate your phone behavior. That may seem like a generous allotment of minutes, and it is for most people, but 5,000 total is only 166 minutes a day--a total that any teenager can chew up easily.
Verizon set up a unique billing system for VoiceWing. Your flat monthly rate gets charged to your credit card, but in addition, the service sets up an Extra Services Account on sign-up. This account handles international long-distance calls and directory assistance charges, which your flat-rate monthly fee does not. Whenever your Extra Service Account falls below $2.50, Verizon charges your credit card between $15 and $100 (you choose the standard amount) so that you continue with a positive balance. Although it makes billing easier, we're wary of automatic charges. Be sure to monitor your monthly statements carefully, especially if you coexist with teenagers who have international acquaintances.
If you want Verizon VoiceWing service, you won't have any trouble choosing a plan. There's one residential, unlimited-minutes plan, and that's that. You'll pay $34.95 a month, which is $15 more per month than the unlimited-minutes plans from BroadVoice, Lingo, and Packet8, and $10 more than Editors' Choice award-winning Vonage. Verizon DSL subscribers pay $5 less per month for the first year and are given the first month free, but that's still more than you'll pay with VoiceWing's competitors. If you are looking for a VoIP service for your business or just a low-cost plan that gives you 500 or so long-distance minutes per month, you won't find it here.Though they still aren't worth the premium, Verizon VoiceWing's calling features are unquestionably useful. The service's call-forwarding feature lets you forward calls to another number automatically, when you're on the phone only, or after five rings. For important calls (It's a boy!), you can also set it so that incoming calls simultaneously ring your main phone and up to three other numbers. VoiceWing enhances the standard do-not-disturb mode by letting you list phone numbers from which you will accept calls; you can keep telemarketers at bay during dinner but let your daughter's cell phone through, for example. You can configure VoiceWing to work in conjunction with your Microsoft Outlook contact list, then select from those contacts in order to place or schedule calls. Other features include call waiting with caller ID, caller ID blocking, return calling (*69), repeat calling (*66), and three-way calling.
As with any VoIP service, two of our immediate concerns are local number portability and 911 emergency services. VoiceWing provides the former, assuming you're asking to switch a landline over to the service (you can't port cell phone numbers), with the usual caveat that if you use DSL for your broadband connection, you must retain a landline in order to maintain your DSL service. Cable subscribers, on the other hand, can dispense with landlines completely, transferring their local numbers as long as they contact Verizon at least 14 days prior to the desired transfer date.
Verizon VoiceWing, however, does not support emergency 911 calling. What it does instead is to demand you provide your physical address upon registration. (Vonage treats 911 the same way.) Once you register your address, calls to 911 will be directed to a local emergency service provider. The catch is that emergency personnel won't automatically have your address or phone number on the screen when you call. Families who frequently use babysitters may not feel comfortable with this arrangement, but this is as close as VoIP providers can get to 911 service at the current time.
And keep in mind that if you take your telephone adapter with you when you travel (you can plug it into any broadband network, including in one a hotel room), your 911 calls continue to contact the same service. Furthermore, as with all VoIP providers, 911 service (or anything else about the VoIP service) is unavailable during power outages. VoiceWing does come with a handy feature that lets you input a backup number (your cell phone, for example) where calls will be routed if you temporarily lose power or your Internet connection.
VoiceWing allows you to sign up for as many as five alternate phone numbers (virtual numbers), each with a separate area code if you wish. Your primary VoiceWing number can be in any area code that VoiceWing offers, though that means your next-door neighbor will need to call you long distance if you don't have the same area code. Currently, VoiceWing offers area codes from roughly 80 percent of the United States (there's no availability in Alaska, Hawaii, the Dakotas, Idaho, and Iowa, for instance), and no area codes in other countries such as Canada, which some VoIP companies offer. If you are interested in VoIP because of the chance to have a virtual number (perhaps you're tired of listening to your father complain about his long-distance bill from calling you so often), VoiceWing isn't the best bet. Each virtual number costs $9.95 per month, quite a heavy rate compared with providers such as BroadVoice, which charges $9.95 to set up the number and $1.95 per month to carry it.
We judge a VoIP service's performance on how calls sound under baseline conditions, as well as during data uploads and data downloads. The overall weighted average is based on calls made under these three conditions. Baseline conditions are given the highest weight of 66 percent; audio quality during data uploads and data downloads each factor 17 percent of the weightings. The scale for the voice-quality ratings is from 0 to 10.0, with a perfect score of 10.0 equaling our reference analog connection.(Higher scores are better)
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Overall weighted average | |
All PCs off | |
During download | |
During upload |
As with most of the VoIP services we tested, we found the baseline audio quality of Verizon VoiceWing service to be comparable to what you would expect from a traditional analog (landline) phone connection. Baseline quality refers to the audio quality of the VoIP service when the telephone adapter, or TA, is the only device sending and receiving significant amounts of data over the local network. The only other devices that are permitted to transmit and receive network traffic during baseline testing are the broadband modem and the router.
Like most VoIP services, VoiceWing deviates from the clean sound of analog call quality by exhibiting a very faint but still noticeable background noise on both ends of a call; in the case of VoiceWing, it resembled a rustling sound. We found that the presence and the persistence of the background noise varied from call to call, and it was also influenced by which end of the call was generating audio, that is, who was speaking. The background rustling sound did not interrupt nor did it force the end of any one conversation, but we were more aware of it on some calls; it was reminiscent of the background noise of analog telephone connections we took for granted around 20 or more years ago.
We give VoiceWing an extra knock on performance, however, because we experienced a problem that we did not see with any of the other VoIP services: When we dialed in to automated phone systems, such as VoiceWing's voicemail, we had difficulty getting the automated system to correctly interpret the key presses. We therefore had great difficulty checking VoiceWing voicemail while using the VoiceWing service. We tried a telephone unit other than the one we typically use during VoIP testing and had better luck, but we never experienced a 100 percent success rate.
The bundled Linksys PAP2-VN TA we tested connects to an available port on your Ethernet router, which is the most common connection scenario we saw with the TAs that came bundled with the VoIP service subscriptions. (Some services instruct you to place the TA before your router on your home network, that is, between the modem and router.) Unfortunately, most home and small-business broadband connections don't have enough upstream throughput to support both voice and data packets. The end result is that under those circumstances when you are sending large amounts of data from your PC--such as sending a large file attachment with e-mail or uploading photographs to an online photo-finishing service--the voice quality of your call will be adversely affected. Since most broadband connections have a high enough upstream throughput, you'll likely hear the person on the other end just fine, but they will have great difficulty hearing you as whole words drop out. We found that VoiceWing was less egregious about this than some of the other services. Depending on how frequently you upload files from your computer, this might not be a significant issue for you.
We noticed a significant drop in both upstream (15 percent) and downstream (18 percent) Internet data-throughput speeds from our test computer while VoIP calls were taking place. We experienced similar data-speed losses with nearly all the VoIP services we tested; the throughput degradation we saw with VoiceWing was about average for the services we've tested. This drop in data throughput indicates that the bundled TA is at least somewhat successful in giving priority to the voice data packets, in an attempt to minimize the loss of audio quality. However, as mentioned above, the TA doesn't do the job well enough, as we found it difficult to carry on a phone conversation while simultaneously uploading files.
Of the VoIP services we've tested, VoiceWing was one the slowest to connect a call from the moment the last digit was pressed to the moment we heard ringing. It took VoiceWing between about 5 and 6 seconds to make such a connection--compared to approximately 2 seconds for a traditional analog connection.
Performance analysis written by CNET Labs Manager, Daniel A. Begun.
Find out more about how we test VoIP.
Toll-free phone support for Verizon VoiceWing customers is available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET. The online FAQ is useful primarily for newcomers, but the online knowledge base contains a considerable amount of useful information. Verizon guarantees a next-business-day response to e-mailed support questions, which we confirmed during our tests. Should you run into serious problems with the service within the first month, you can take advantage of Verizon's 30-day, money-back guarantee.- See more CNET content tagged:
- Verizon Communications
User reviews
- Average user rating: 1.5 stars out of 49 reviews
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"DON'T GET VOICEWING - PHONE SERVICE & CUSTOMER SERVICE STINKS"
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