So, the promotional one year I had of phone service through my cable company expired. I don’t want to lose my phone entirely, but I rarely use it and it sure ain’t worth the asking rate of $30 though cable.
Any suggestions? I know there’s solid internet sevices, but I don’t know much about them. Ideally, id like to continue using my regular phone.
Do you have a high-speed internet service already? Vonage works well, and the basic plan is $15/month with limits on the long-distance calls.
My wife has T-Mobile cell service, and T-Mobile has a similar (to Vonage) VoIP phone service for their cell customers, and I pay only $10 a month for my home phone to them, including unlimited calling, voice mail, caller ID, etc. etc. I have had no service issues with them.
In the same vein, do not install MagicJack. There is nothing technically wrong with it. It works as intended. However, MagicJack contains spyware. Boien Boeing recently won a lawsuit from the company after the spyware was exposed.
Agree about the Vonage.
Do you have a cell? I haven’t had an actual home phone for almost a decade.
I’ve had MJ for about five months now, although I’ve barely used it because it works poorly over my wireless internet connection.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t aware of the spyware issue or the lawsuit. That made for some wonderful reading, and I appreciate you passing that info on!
Hm, I tried Vonage once before and wound up with some horror stories, so I’ll skip that.
I DO have cell service, but I have my home phone on all my bills and prefer to keep it that way. I use it less than 70 minutes a month. No reason at all to pay much, I just don’t want to disconnect the #. If google voice took port-ins, that’d probably be optimal. Hm…anybody know a way I could port the number to a call forwarding service on the cheap?
I feel skype is probably the answer, but I don’t really understand it well.
I have a similar problem in that I need a landline for the security system, but most of the VOIP solutions really aren’t that much cheaper than what I’m getting from the cable company. Which is still too expensive. I can’t use something like Skype or MagicJack.
I’ve been using MJ for two years with no problems at all. The only ads I’ve ever seen were ads for MJ. I am somewhat of a privacy freak and I’m pretty sure all phone companies record and analyze the numbers called to some degree.
It is very convenient for travel; take along the little USB jack and a headset and make free phone calls from anywhere in the world you have internet access.
Look at your state utility commission’s website. Often they will have “specials” which the phone companies are forced to offer but do not advertise. They usually are for bare bones landline service. Basically like in IL it’s $15.00 a month and you get only a few calls per month
Here’s one for Illinois
I had Vonage for several years, and it was just fine. However, the ongoing bills were something I wanted to eliminate.
When I got married and moved, I searched and found Ooma and have been very happy with it. There is a higher startup cost than other systems because you have to buy the hardware (about $200) but after that unless you want the premium features, there is no ongoing expense from that point on. You need a high-speed internet connection for it to work.
I agree with Vonage, but you need to have a good UPS attached to it so that you don’t lose service.
Been on this for over a year now. No probs at all. If my cable were to go down, tho, I would have no home phone service.
We were in a similar situation… didn’t want to give up the “home” number we had for 15 years but also didn’t want to keep paying the rediculous fees AT&T was charging. We realized we could add a line for $9 on our cell plan… switch the land line number over to that, share minutes etc. Our “home” phone is now a cell phone that sits on a dock where the old land line used to sit. Makes going on vacation nice as well as we can just take the home phone with us (confuses the heck out of my Mom though).
A plain ol’ AT&T primary basic line starts at $11.21 a month, no bells or whistles, caller ID or anything like that. Just a land line that rings when you get a call and makes calls out.
Is that what you’re looking for?
Are you sure the cable company won’t continue the existing service if you threaten to cancel it? A lot of them would rather keep you at the lower rate than lose your $30 all together.
FYI - Vonage has a standard feature called a Network Availability Number - if Vonage can’t reach your Vonage box due to an Internet problem, power failure, etc. they will send the call to any phone number you designate (of course, it helps to set this up beforehand). I have mine set to go to my cell phone.
Ha! Make sure you find out all about the little fees - I thought AT&T was going to be so cheap after I saw that their super basic plan was 16 bucks here (11, not so much) - after everything was said and done that was really a $25 plan, like my current one. Fees and taxes.
Yeah, this was my experience as well.
My current leaning is to port the number to another line on my cell plan. The downside is that my wife hates the notion of not using an actual phone for the “home phone” and losing our answering machine. The upside is, well, it’d be about 8 bucks a month.
I don’t know much about this, but my daughter moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn a few years ago and was able to transfer her very desirable (that is, easy to remember) 212 number to her cell phone. (Just for the record, her number had the form 212-abc-abcd.)
Those of you with MagicJack or considering getting it – go down to Borders or Barnes & Noble and check out the current issue of <I>2600</i> (it’s a small magazine, found in the computer section; it’s a computer hacker magazine). There’s an interesting exposé about MagicJack (including the aforementioned spyware) and how horrible it is.
Check around. Some security companies offer monitoring over the internet now, so you don’t need a home phone for your security system.