What Phone Company has Clearest Audio?

Hi folks,

I have hearing loss and have recently purchased a corded phone from a company called CLARITY (the quality is great). They make phones that have digital amplification.

My question: I have AT&T/SBC phone service but not a long-distance carrier. AT&T/SBC offers their own long-distance carrier for like $20 or something a month extra. I started shopping around for a cheaper alternative and looked at VONAGE. In VONAGE's features list, they claimed they had "Higher quality calls than landline in many cases".

Is this true? If so, how? The clearer the audio, the better. Is there a better service than VONAGE that carry clear long-distance calls? At this point I am not concerned of cost if it means I'll get better quality.

Thanks for any advice on this matter.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For VOIP in general, including Vonage, the answer is a qualified _yes_ and _no_. Maybe, and maybe not. If you use a router, with various computers on line _and_ VOIP (Vonage or whomever) then sometimes it gets tricky in 'throttling' the line in such a way as to give all or most of your DSL/broadband capacity to the VOIP device instead of your computers, which are fighting to get their share (sometimes more than their share) of the highway. Basically, IMO, the answer would be a qualified _yes_, Vonage (or the other VOIP carrier of your choice) is pretty decent as long as you do not have a bunch of jobs running on the computer at the same time. You do know, of course, you have to have some broadband connection, either cable or DSL or similar, and if either the cable/DSL line is out or the electric power is down, your Vonage line is dead as well, unless you have battery backup on it, which most people do not have.

Personally, I would keep a very slim package of LD on my basic line to use as needed. Although I make all my LD/toll calls by dialing '8' for the Vonage line on my PBX, I can, and grudgingly do dial '9' (regular landline) as needed for LD sometimes. PAT]