Call Vonage and get through the call center drone layer. Tell them you're in Qatar and that your ISP has reduced your bandwidth available for VOIP and that reducing the "bandwidth saver" to 30 (or to 50) has not helped.
They'll walk you through a serious of tests - a speed test, a Ping test, and a bandwidth test (I think there were three tests) to determine the nature of the problem. The conclusion will be that your latency is much too high (mine was 250 rather than 100) and that your bandwidth is no sufficient (mine was 63 vs. 90). Provided you get someone who knows what they're doing, they'll adjust your "packetization" (love that word!) and your voice quality (which you've probably already done. Within an hour or so my voice quality was almost normal.
Caveat: right after I spoke with Vonage I called Qtel and read the guy (a "supervisor") the riot act. They continue to claim that they're "investigating the problem", but when I told him I knew Qtel had been messing with the available bandwidth he seemed to acknowledge it. Who knows. . .
Anyway, give Vonage a call and see if it helps. It's a long phone call - a good 30 minutes - and you need to be able to focus on the computer. Having kids around while you're on the call is not advisable because you'll need to focus on what they're asking you to do, read to them, etc.
OH - and my cordless phone was dying so I asked him to call me on my Doha land line in the event of a disconnection. . .he seemed willing to do this, though we never had to test it.
OK, I think I got it sorted.
Call Vonage and get through the call center drone layer. Tell them you're in Qatar and that your ISP has reduced your bandwidth available for VOIP and that reducing the "bandwidth saver" to 30 (or to 50) has not helped.
They'll walk you through a serious of tests - a speed test, a Ping test, and a bandwidth test (I think there were three tests) to determine the nature of the problem. The conclusion will be that your latency is much too high (mine was 250 rather than 100) and that your bandwidth is no sufficient (mine was 63 vs. 90). Provided you get someone who knows what they're doing, they'll adjust your "packetization" (love that word!) and your voice quality (which you've probably already done. Within an hour or so my voice quality was almost normal.
Caveat: right after I spoke with Vonage I called Qtel and read the guy (a "supervisor") the riot act. They continue to claim that they're "investigating the problem", but when I told him I knew Qtel had been messing with the available bandwidth he seemed to acknowledge it. Who knows. . .
Anyway, give Vonage a call and see if it helps. It's a long phone call - a good 30 minutes - and you need to be able to focus on the computer. Having kids around while you're on the call is not advisable because you'll need to focus on what they're asking you to do, read to them, etc.
OH - and my cordless phone was dying so I asked him to call me on my Doha land line in the event of a disconnection. . .he seemed willing to do this, though we never had to test it.
Good luck everyone!