Name your VOIP Providers?

[Concours14]

Verizon landline>Vonage>VOIPO>BasicTalk>NetTalk.

From $80 a month on a copper land line on down to $29.99/year for VOIP dial tone and all of the units from all the providers can ring 5 mechanical ringer 2500-style desk sets or wall phones.

Anyone else keeping analog land lines in the house? Or am I a dinosaur?

 

[AKhan87]

your a dinosaur!

 

[Falcon_LS]

Yup, you're a dinasour.

 

[OneEyeJack]

None of that makes any difference to me. I have a cell phone, no traditional home phone, any more.

 

[Concours14]

Ok, ok, so I'm a dinosaur..

 

[racer12306]

Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
None of that makes any difference to me. I have a cell phone, no traditional home phone, any more.


Same here, except we do have a "home phone" but it's a cheap cell phone. Good to have around the house and good backup if something happens to one of our primary cells.

 

[JDW]

Vonage............. retired telecom here , I know first hand NOT to put important info over the airwaves .

 

[CarbonSteel]

ViaTalk @ $189 for 2 years = $7.88 per month. I had Vonage for nearly a decade and dumped them after the last price increase. I have never looked back...

 

[redhat]

When doing my whole "network revamp" in my house, we switched the home phone to Ooma from TWC Digital Home Phone, which was previously switched from Verizon POTS copper.

Ooma has been great. No problems whatsoever. It probably does help that the integral network equipment and Ooma box are on a UPS and that the Ooma has the correct ports opened, internal psuedo-static IP thanks to DHCP per MAC and bandwidth prioritization.

I have seen some VoIP solutions similar to Ooma that friends had connected hodge-podge without any thought and they seriously worked like hot garbage.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Concours14
Anyone else keeping analog land lines in the house? Or am I a dinosaur?

I absolutely keep a landline for business, although it's significantly less than $80. My line of work requires me to be on the phone with customers and I can't afford [censored] audio quality.

I've got various colleagues that use VOIP (provided by their internet company), and every now and then their audio breaks up. If it was for personal use, I could live with it. For business - no, thanks.

 

[BubbaFL]

Google Voice + an Obi 100 http://amzn.to/XTAyyN connected to a five-station DECT cordless phone.

$0.00 monthly, unlimited free inbound and outbound calling, free voicemail to email with transcription, spam filtering easy junk call blocking, and (pc-based) text messaging.

 

[ClutchDisc]

We have a home phone, and it's not even VOIP.

 

[Smcatub]

I've got Magic Jack. I don't remember how much I paid, because it cost so little I paid for five years up front.

The only thing I don't like about it is that you have to dial the area code for ever call, even local ones. Aside from that it's been great. Better call quality than I ever got with copper, too.

 

[Trav]

I have a hard wired land line. My fax machine doesn't do well with VOIP. I have VOIP for normal everyday calls.

 

[Michael_P]

Keeping landline for security system. BTW: I still use a flip phone. I spend $30 a month for both. Land line is not VOIP.

 

[racer12306]

Originally Posted By: BubbaFL
Google Voice + an Obi 100 http://amzn.to/XTAyyN connected to a five-station DECT cordless phone.

$0.00 monthly, unlimited free inbound and outbound calling, free voicemail to email with transcription, spam filtering easy junk call blocking, and (pc-based) text messaging.


I would love to do this, but my wife isn't a fan.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: BubbaFL
Google Voice + an Obi 100 http://amzn.to/XTAyyN connected to a five-station DECT cordless phone.

$0.00 monthly, unlimited free inbound and outbound calling, free voicemail to email with transcription, spam filtering easy junk call blocking, and (pc-based) text messaging.

Figure $15/year if you want E911 service.

 

[GrtArtiste]

I will keep my POTS landline until they take it away. It currently is bundled with the 12 MB DSL at a "forever price" which works out to be $80/month incl. taxes/fees for unlimited US/Canada phone. I do make use of fax and don't want to deal with VOIP if I can possibly avoid it.

 

[Garak]

I always remember that an old fashioned telephone will work in a power outage. Anything else is questionable, particularly in the boonies.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Garak
I always remember that an old fashioned telephone will work in a power outage.

Only if you have one of those old rotary phones. These days, most people have cordless headsets which require power, so unless you have them plugged into a UPS, they won't work either. And if you're going to be using a UPS, then you can plug in your modem, router, and a VOIP box into it as well and they'll work during a power outage.