Keeping Connected: Vonage Box Review

Home from a deployment a few years ago

There are a lot of things that makes life as a military family tough. We deal with deployments, constant travel when he isn't deployed, moving every few years and being far from extended family and "home". We've been living this nomadic life for so long I'm not even sure where home is anymore…they say "home is where the Air Force sends you" and after almost 12 years, that's pretty true for us.

When my husband first started flying communication was pretty touch and go while he was gone. For the most part we got short morale calls once a week, but since he was flying from base to base during each trip we couldn't rely on him having access to a phone or solid internet. We learned a few tricks  that gave us a chance to talk a little more often but it still wasn't great. For years I was never more than 2 feet away from my cell phone while he was gone.

The longer we spent in the Air Force the more we moved and the more our friends moved. We have friends stationed all over the world and all across the United States. Family is scattered across the country as well. When you add all that to the trips my husband was regularly taking you can imagine why we were constantly searching for better ways to communicate. Email only goes so far…what a difference it makes to hear your loved ones voice! I still remember the first trip he took when we could use text messaging despite the fact that he was overseas. It felt like such a luxury!

We've been stationed at a training base for a few years now but we will be heading back to the operational life style soon. To get ready I've been searching for new tricks to keep in touch while he travels. When Vonage reached out to military family bloggers to try their service I couldn't wait to give it a try.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Vonage it is an internet phone service. You attach the Vonage Box to your modem or router, plug a your phone cord into it as well and you're all set. It makes and receives calls just like like a landline phone service but it uses your high speed internet connection instead of a phone line.

Extra bonus for us military folks (or others who are far from home or regular travelers)?
You can pick a number that is "local" to where you live OR where your family lives. When you move or travel, bring it with you and you keep that local number. Even overseas! So if your family is in New York and you move to Germany…you still have a local New York number. Just like when you were living stateside.

That means when my husband is flying from base to base, he can call us anytime he wants and even better-we can call him! Now that is a luxury.

I was really pleased with the box I got to review. I set it up all by myself, with no problems. I was a little worried because we have a wireless router and I thought that might be an issue when I looked at the instructions. Just in case I ended up using a step by step installation tutorial on the Vonage website which gave me easy access to customer support in case anything came up. Nothing did and it was installed in less than 15 minutes. The box itself is really small and unobtrusive which I like for the aesthetics, and it takes up very little space if you needed to pack it and travel with it.

The sound quality on both inbound and outbound calls has been great. The boys have been loving having a phone that they can hold more easily than our cell phones (goodbye constant hangups!), although they are perplexed that the cordless phone (the one that was so high tech when we bought it) doesn't have video. Crazy how fast technology changes, isn't it?

Keep your eyes peeled for a giveaway over the next few weeks where you will have a chance to win one for yourself!

This is a sponsored post. I received a Vonage Box and one year of service for review but the opinions are my own. Thanks to Vonage for supporting Hearth and Homefront!