Lingo is a Voice Over IP service that offers free calling to land lines in most of Western Europe, as well as the usual VOIP features (i.e. a hell of a lot more features than your regular phone company). Lingo was the provider I used before Sunrocket.
I signed up for Lingo around January, 2005. VOIP technology had been around for a while, so I was hoping it was fairly mature, and would provide me with a safe, reliable, and (above all else) cheap alternative to SBC.
I went with Lingo primarily because it offered services and pricing comparable to other VOIP providers ($20 per month, about $21 after tax, including free calling to Western Europe).
Setup was incredibly efficient...I received my Lingo router (the device you plug your phone in to) and welcome kit within a few days by mail. I connected it to my router and was up and running in minutes...no problems at all. I didn't notice a significant drop in my download / upload speeds either during normal use (surfing, email, several chat clients, website design updating / uploading via FTP and Dreamweaver's site management tools).
My setup was:
Comcast cable line -> Comcast cable modem -> D-Link Wireless / Wired router -> Lingo box -> Random telephone.
I also had a computer connected to the router on a wired connection, and a laptop connected wirelessly.
I'll add a note here to say that I *loved* getting my voicemail by email, automatically, as an audio attachment every time someone left me a message. Having a built-in converter on their server to encode the file as an mp3 would have been a nice touch, though.
Call quality over the next few months varied...sometimes excellent, occasionally blurry. I also got great connections to friends in Europe and to cell phones and land lines in India (not free, unfortunately...when is a VOIP provider going to provide free calling to India?). I also didn't notice many service outtages, though I did have to reset / power cycle my hardware once in a while. I also noticed their website being down or having server issues several times during the period I was with their service.
Billing is directly from your credit card / bank card, the one you used when you signed up. There's also an online itemized bill that lists calls, call durations, etc. Very competent website account administration.
On the whole, a great service. I liked it, and would still be a customer if my ex-room mate (may she forever rest in the hell I am specially preparing for her) hadn't run up a massive phone bill (international calls not covered on the plan), which I couldn't pay. Needless to say she then vanished, so now I'm stuck with a huge bill which I'll be paying off in small chunks. This also necessitated finding an alternative VOIP service to use till I've got Lingo paid off and happy. I also referred a friend to Lingo, and she loved it as well...both of us saved tons of money over our regular SBC home phone lines, and also began making a lot of free international calls. The only catch was that we had to pay attention to the numbers we were calling to make sure they were land lines (and therefore free) as opposed to cell phone lines (which can be expensive...Lingo's rate for cell phones in Italy was over 30 cents a minute).
My current alternative, Sunrocket, leaves much to be desired.
