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May 11, 2004
Say goodbye to the phone company
In this day and age, could one get rid of local phone service? We're paying about $150 per month for internet access + two cell phones, do we really need the extra $25 to Verizon for a phone line we hardly ever use?
My first choice would be to switch to free pc-based services like Skype and (shameless plug) SightSpeed, but somehow I doubt that the same people who insist on calling our home line rather than a cell phone (read: family) will start using these.
The best choice seems to be voice over ip service from Vonage or Packet8. They'll send you a little box that plugs into your home network, and you plug any standard phone into that little box.
Sometimes you can even keep your phone number. Calls to other subscribers of the same service are free and the low cost plans allow about 500 nationwide minutes for $15 - $20 per month.
Vonage claims that we can keep our current phone number - I'm going to look into it.
Posted by sam at May 11, 2004 10:28 AM
Comments
I might consider this.
Posted by: darien at May 13, 2004 06:31 PM
we'll do it if you guys do.
remember that you have dsl, which is tied to a phone number. you could either switch to cable modem or use this as a second phone number.
Posted by: sam at May 13, 2004 07:33 PM
It doesn't seem like we would save much money with a second phone number. We pay $30. a month for DSL, and $20. a month for local phone line; toll and long distance calls are on top of that (usually we have about $20 in long distance calls). Our cell phone is another $20+, with limited minutes. I don't know if we can even get cable modem here.
I also think we pay way too much for phone service, considering how little we actually use it.
Posted by: darien at May 14, 2004 10:55 AM