Especially for overseas parents and students

Parent Cafe
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<p>I’m not trying to sell something, but I thought you might find some information about Vonage phone service useful. It’s a voice-over-internet phone system that does not have to go through the computer. We got an account after we left our younger daughter in the states in July and it has been a money-saver all the way around. The basics are a device that plugs into the router and an extra phone dedicated to the Vonage number. </p>

<p>When you sign up there is a list of available area codes, so we picked one for our daughter’s college town and also an additional “virtual” number that is a local call for my mom and sister on the other side of the country. We pay a flat rate of about $26 per month, and there is no additional long distance charge for calls we make from our home in Germany to anywhere in the US (we have reasonable long distance rates to the states anyway, but this is still a better deal for us). The real benefit, though, is that it is a local call for D, my mom, and sis to call us whenever they want. And just about everyone else in our family in different parts of the US has either a flat-rate long distance plan or a cell plan that lets them designate certain numbers as free calls, so they can also all call us for no additional cost beyond the flat rate they would be paying anyway.</p>

<p>The potential snag is that the company does not ship the router plug-in thing overseas, but that can be solved by having it shipped to a family member in the states who is willing to forward it on. </p>

<p>Living overseas, we are cut off from American TV commercials (deprived life, I know!) but heard about the company when we were in the states over the summer. Then we learned more from friends here who got an account. We did find the company’s website to be lacking in answers to some of the questions we had about it. It was easier to ask our friends about details, so if you are interested, feel free to think of me as a friend and send questions my way.</p>

<p>Oh, one other thing they offer that I might get in the future is some kind of USB plug-in phone that you can use to access the number through a laptop away from home, wherever there is an internet connection available.</p>

<p>Study abroad students–it might be a good deal to check in to if you have a long-term living arrangement with dependable high-speed internet access.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the info, for some reason, this thread got started when I wasn’t looking. </p>

<p>We looked into Vonnage, but our internet service is so iffy, we are just having son call our cell phones or house using Skype from his computer. So far, so good. (we do miss the advantage of having other family and friends call us using the easy Vonnage way.)</p>

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<p>We can buy rechargeable phone cards that charge 5 cents a minute.</p>

<p>Ours are boys. They don’t call us unless there is an emergency (once or twice a year). They prefer email.</p>

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<p>We have used Vonage for years and it is a great deal, the quality of the signal depends on the quality of your internet.</p>