<p>I have had Vonage for about 10 years and am very happy with it. I love the “simul-ring” where it rings both the Vonage phone and any other number to which I assign it, so my cell always rings my office direct line, that was if I am out at meetings, etc. I can see who is calling.</p>
<p>We have an ATT MicroCell in the house to boost that service, I figure if we lose internet connectivity in a power outage, then I still have the cell phone.</p>
<p>OP - I do not have a land line but I do have two cell phones (One personal one and one business) hooked up to a Bluetooth home phone system - AT&T - this works very well! and a VOIP business phone which plugs into my work Router and is plugged into battery back up which is different then the websites where you use the website to make a call.</p>
<p>Please keep in mind if your power goes out, you more then likely won’t have a working home phone if you decided to ditch the land line. Sure you could have the type that uses your bandwidth… but if your power is out my guess is you more then likely do not have power to your cable modem to provide any bandwidth anyway… Unless you have some sort of generator or battery back up (which only is good for x period of time).</p>
<p>My VOIP phone works very well but it is a pretty expensive phone - I think these retail for a couple hundred dollars a piece. It is very clear and picks up everything. One problem with VOIP phones in general is if your cable service isn’t very steady your phone could go in and out - one thing I hear from some of our folks at work is that when they are having cable internet issues they can hear their customers but their customers can’t hear them or there is some static on the line where it sounds like the call is breaking up. This is an ISP issue.</p>
<p>We’ve had Magic Jack at home for a few years as our home ‘landline’ and it meets our needs. Everyone at home has their own cell phone–the Magic Jack number is given to those we prefer not sharing our individual cell phone numbers.</p>
<p>Fendergirl,
we have a generator and it can handle our computers so that is not a concern.</p>
<p>I will say I’ve talked to customers who used magic jack and a lot of them complained about it’s quality. But for twenty dollars a year i thought it was decent. </p>
<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>Our phone is provided via the cable provider. This most recent outage (Sandy) left us w/o internet longer than power. Prior outages prompted us to buy a generator and we connected the modem before anything else, and the cable & internet stayed in operation during prior outages. No one missed the phone service all that much b/c the voice messages from emergency town communications still arrived as email, but we all struggled using either the MiFi card or the iPhone as a mobile hot spot to power computers! Definitely a first world problem. </p>
<p>Bookreader–does Cablevision charge a lot for the phone line when you do not have the Triple Play? We have so many services rolled in there that I am no longer sure what we are paying for, but I thought the phone line with unlimited USA phone calls was only $15/month.</p>
<p>Vonage customer here. But I am curious about the other options noted in this thread. My major complaint with Vonage is that their promotions are a bit of a bait and switch. After the initial period of service my bill BALLOONED to where it was about the same as a Verizon land line. Of course, I live in a state where the added taxes are significant.</p>
<p>CT1417
We are currently paying Cablevision about $30 a month (including a myriad of taxes. sigh) for phone service. We can call any number with this service. I wish it was $15. Does that price include taxes? We do not have any other service bundled with this service.</p>
<p>LakeWashington,
We did use Vonnage for a few years, but we did have problems with outages and we were spending $35 a month (this was a few years ago) and it was a bit cheaper to switch to Cablevision. We have not had any outage problems with Cablevision.</p>
<p>Another alternative to traditional landline or to internet home phone service is a ‘home’ base cell phone like Straighttalk’s unlimited home plan for $15/month. </p>
<p>[Welcome</a> | Straight Talk](<a href=“http://www.straighttalkhomephone.com/]Welcome”>http://www.straighttalkhomephone.com/)</p>
<p>That’s intriguing lizard. I’ve never heard of this option.</p>
<p>I am bringing this old thread up rather than starting a new one. We have no traditional landline at home and we have 2 Magic Jacks which we use as our “home” and for me “office” phones. The sound quality is marginal. There is a bit of a lag, so my wife constantly answers the phone like this, “hello… hello? hello? hello?” 
and it can be hard to carry on a conversation when you are constantly stepping on and gettting stepped on. </p>
<p>So, the good news is I recently bought an OBI device (Obitalk). It also attaches to my computer - well, actually it attaches directly to the router - and it works with Google Voice, so there is no monthly charge for this. The sound quality is excellent; pretty much the same as a landline and far better than Magic Jack. The bad news is that Google is going to stop supporting this device in mid 2014 so it will no longer work with Google Voice!! bummer! Too good to be true. There are other services that it will work with (not free I guess) but I haven’t started to research yet what I will do when I have to replace the Google phone.</p>
<p>Skype also discontinued its support of my Logitech Skype wireless phone, bummer. The lesson is that when you use Voip, you need to buy the device made by the provider.</p>