Hello? Is this thing on?

By now you've probably seen the advertisements for AT&T's new CallVantage service. If you thought it sounded too good to be true -- you were right, it is.

Digital phone service that works over a broadband Internet connection is all the rage right now. Vonage has been around for awhile, but now Time Warner Cable is offering it and Verizon will be coming out with it soon. TWC's service, of course, will only work if you use their Road Runner service for your Internet connection and Verizon's will only work if you have DSL with them.

But CallVantage boasts that it will work no matter what kind of high speed connection you have -- either cable or DSL. CallVantage and TWC both offer unlimited local and long distance, but AT&T is about $5 cheaper than TWC (and you get the first six months for only $19.95). Also, CallVantage offers a whole bunch of extra features that TWC either makes you pay extra for or doesn't even offer at all.

On paper, it sounds like a no-brainer. We would be saving money, and get all these cool new features -- like voicemail we could retrieve anywhere online or in our e-mail and even be able to forward to people as e-mail attachments. So we decided to sign up.

But first, we noticed that there were some disadvantages. They way it works, we would be sent a special box that would connect to our phone and cable modem. But only one phone could be connected to it. So we would now only be able to have one phone in the house. Well, that was ok -- we have a cordless phone and our house isn't that big. Besides, we figured in the future we could always buy a new cordless phone that comes with two or more handsets. But also, since our service was dependent on this special box (called a telephone adapter, or TA) it meant that if we lost power or the TA became damaged, we would also lose phone service. Plus, when we called 911 it would go to a regional operator -- like when you call from a cell phone -- as opposed to going to our local 911 operator.

These were all things we thought we could deal with.

Now before, we had MCI. It turns out that for some reason, we couldn't switch from MCI to CallVantage. So we had to go to regular AT&T service for about a week and then switch from that to CallVantage (first sign of trouble).

It took a little longer than promised, but eventually our TA arrived in the mail and I eagerly hooked it up to our modem and phone. I was very excited to be so "cutting edge."

We were told that after connecting the TA, it would take another day or two before we were fully switched over to the new service. Instead, it took about four or five days.

For the first few days, it seemed to be working fine. There were a few kinks, but I figured that was just us getting used to this new type of phone service. Then, on our first weekend with CallVantage, the real problems arrived. Often, people on the other end of our phone conversations wouldn't be able to hear us. Other times, our phone would never ring -- instead calls would just go straight through to our voicemail. Our name was not showing up properly on other people's caller ID and their names were not showing up as they should on ours. Sometimes the whole phone just wouldn't work at all -- no dial tone or anything.

Eventually, after reading the instruction manual that came with the TA, it sounded like what I needed to do was download new software for my router. So I tried that and it seemed to fix the phone, but I haven't been able to establish a VPN connection with work ever since.

The phone was working fine for about four days, but then the problems came back and we returned to square one. This time I tried calling their tech support hotline. I was instructed to enter my phone number, and then was told by the recording that my number was not recognized as a CallVantage number. It asked me if I wanted to talk to a representative about ordering the service, and after trying a few times to get through I figured I'd answer yes to that question, hoping whoever I spoke to could connect me. Instead, I got a recording telling to call back during regular business hours (this was a Saturday afternoon).

So I e-mailed them with my complaints. About 24 hours later I got a response apologizing for my problems and telling me to call them -- at the same number that didn't work for me before! This time I did get through, but the person I spoke to was not particularly helpful and had no concrete solutions to my problems.

After one more day of missed or cut-off phone calls, I had it. Kris wanted to bail out much earlier. I was still excited by the idea of the service and really wanted to make it work. But enough was enough. So I called MCI and asked them switch me back. But remember how couldn't we go from MCI to CallVantage? Same problem in reverse. Once again, we have to go to regular AT&T before we can switch back to the MCI service we had before. I had to call CallVantage to tell them I wanted out (we had 30 days to get out before we would be locked in for a year). It took me more than a half hour on the phone and I had to speak to three different people to get that done. We're still on the CallVantage service now, six days later, waiting for regular AT&T to kick in so we can get rid of that too and go back to the MCI service that we actually were never unhappy with in the first place.

So here's the bottom line: if you're considering AT&T CallVantage, don't. It sounds great, but unfortunately it's not all it's cracked up to be. In fact, it sucks.