<p>Does anyone use internet-based phone service (aka VOIP)?</p>
<p>My husband was looking into voip.com and it does seem appealing. We are not yet ready to get rid of our landline but we would like to minimize this monthly expense as we just don’t use it all that often. So, we are looking at other options. We currently use CableVision (we use them for internet and phone. We do not have cable tv as we do not want that service so no triple play deals for us.) </p>
<p>I’d love to hear your experiences with this kind of phone service.
Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>I have friends who use vonage. It works well for them. Of course it goes out when the power does, so if this happens where you live, consider it. They had to come use our phone when we had the big storm in June and they had damage and needed to call the insurance company.</p>
<p>When we switched to Verizon Fios tv/internet, they also switched our landline to Fios, so we lose the phone service when we lose power. One less reason to keep the landline.</p>
<p>I have phone service through AT&T U-verse. The service itself is fine and there are many nice customizable features. But as the others said, it depends on the internet connection. When the power goes out, so does the connection. We keep a second land line, though, since we live in hurricane country and power has gone out for 3 weeks before.</p>
<p>We have a Net-Duo appliance. All of our 3 “land line phones” work off of this single device. $50 for the first year, $29 thereafter. Works great if you have a good internet connection. But I stress you need a very GOOD internet connection, as in cable, not DSL. Even comes with e911, an important feature.</p>
<p>I showed the comments to my husband and he replied:</p>
<p>for the voip… power is not an issue because we have battery backup and a generator and fairly reliable cable internet, connectivity is not a problem… it is the service of voip.com or others vendors specifically that we need to know about</p>
<p>Toblin,
He is right now looking into Net-Duo. Thanks for the suggestion. We will see if it is a good fit for us. The price is certainly amazing. </p>
<p>Do you find that the voice quality is good? I am frequently frustrated with my cell phone as the connection is not always perfectly clear so I prefer to use our landline for any lengthy calls if at all possible.</p>
<p>Flyingandbird,
We will look into that option next. </p>
<p>He looked at Net-Duo last night and it looked like it would only save us $10 a month (once taxes were figured in) which is a small savings. The savings did not justify the time it would take to understand this new system and get used to it. Oh well.</p>
<p>Why do you need a land line? Have you looked into adding another cell phone to your cell phone plan and then using bluetooth capable phones for your “landline”? Most companies will allow you to switch over your current landline phone number to that new cell phone. Use an old “dumbphone” so you don’t have to add a data plan. This will most likely cost you $10/month. Check with your cell provider.</p>
<p>dumped the old landline last month when we got Fios triple play and were able to ‘por’ or keep the old house number. It was bittersweet, as the landline was the only thing that worked during Sandy, but for nearly $40/month it wasn’t worth it, as we had cell phones that worked reasonably well (not perfect) in Sandy. </p>
<p>So far, no problems w Fios. We have a 2nd line set up with an OOMA VOIP that we use for the fax. We set that up with a local number for my mother, who doesn’t have a cell phone, actually she still has a rotary phone!</p>
<p>We have cell phones but we don’t always have them on our person or even hear them when they ring. So, we have kept our land line, but dropped long distance. I would never use our cable company for phone service, as our internet/cable is not reliable and Mediacom is an awful company (but we have no choice; it’s the only option). They bombard us with offers to bundle phone/internet/cable but we would never consider doing that.</p>
<p>The standard phone systems for business are now voip. If you get a bundle from a cable company, that includes voip in most cases. </p>
<p>With a company like vonage, it is piggy-backing over your cable connection, not a voip connection that uses part of the bandwidth to your home. That is why if your cable service goes out, you would lose your voyage while you can lose your cable tv but your phone keeps working if you have a cable bundle. </p>
<p>So for example, I’ve never noticed whether I’ve had voip or not, except for when they first rolled it out and had lots of services regular phones then charged a lot for - like call forwarding. </p>
<p>In other words, it’s not voip that’s the issue but how voip is enacted.</p>
<p>Many people do not have good cell phone signals within their homes but they have excellent internet connection.</p>
<p>A couple of good options are:</p>
<p>ooma - very good VOIP solution. It is almost free after initial investment, you just need to pay tax and fee for about $7-8 a month. The box cost about $100+, there is a premium monthly service, but you don’t need to get that if you just want basic phone. There is also one time fee for number transfer.</p>
<p>obihai - similar to ooma, but they just sell a box that you can use to connect many different third party VOIP phone service. And if you happen to connect it to google voice, it is all free after initial cost of the box of about $50. Google voice might start charging by the end of the year, but odds are that it will continue to be free for North America calling.</p>
<p>Note that both of these require existing internet service.</p>
<p>My husband and kids all keep their cell phones with them at all times. I am the one who is challenged to keep my cellphone handy. I’m often no wearing clothing with a pocket. Having to carry the thing everywhere seems like such a pain! Oy vey. And if I leave it downstairs and I am upstairs, it’s likely that I won’t hear it ring (problems of the first world, I know).</p>
<p>I use ooma, in the premium service, they will ring both your land line and cell phone(s) the same time, so if your land line goes down, the cell phone still will work. I only gives out my land line number, so if I change the cell number, I don’t have to notify everyone.</p>
<p>You can buy a land line wireless phone system that will connect your cell phone via blue tooth and when your cell rings, your land line will ring as well. This is to solve the problem that you have to carry cell phones around in the house. Costco sells such a system for around $100, its made by Panasonic. U have to replace the current wireless phones.</p>
<p>There are other solutions that for about $30+ you can add a box to your existing phone system to do the same thing, but I saw some complaints about echos and delays.</p>