If you don't mind my asking, why was your regular landline so high? Did you have a lot of long distance on it? My landline is about $30/month with all of the calling/voice mail features and 100 rollover long distance minutes.
Before switching over to any VOIP, ask yourself how well your cable and your broadband have been working. VOIP's are a bit more sensitive about their signal quality. Also, if you have 2.4Ghz portable phones, upgrade them.
I have Vonage... I don't know.. I just don't keep my computer on all-day so I don't think it can run while my PC is on sleep mode since it uses USB. Vonage, on the other hand, uses the internet, which is always on.
I used to have that TW bundle in austin and it worked fine. But the price will eventually go up with them
I suggest hooking the Magic Jack to a fishing line on a Ronco Pocket Fisherman then cast it and see if you can real in Billy Mays...
I've got Vonage, but am keeping an eye on MagicJack and ooma. If I'm not mistaken, MagicJack requires a computer be on 24/7. ooma is like Vonage -- but you pay for the hardware upfront ($200-300) and don't ever pay monthly bills (assuming they stay in business) unless you go with their premium service.
Yeah.. I have Vonage also... it just works out well for me... A friend of mine has ooma and that also works great.
Apologies for the dupe thread. Rookie move. Anyway, I've had Vonage. I'm looking for a cheaper solution. Having a PC on all the time isn't an issue.
My parents have Vonage with a 713 number and they live in Saudi. It rocks, a local call for me on my cell phone but they answer on the other side of the world.
Here's a free alternative using Google Voice, Gizmo5, and GVOut. I just had to buy a Linksys PAP2-NA device, but you can hack pretty much any ATA to make it work. Computer can be off for all incoming calls, but has to be on and running GVOut for free outgoing calls. Simple Way: http://www.jurand.net/free-voip-gizmo5-gv.html GVOut: http://www.magicjacksupport.com/new-toy-gvout-google-voice-outgoing-proxy-dialer-windows-t7191.html If you're technically savvy, you can try this method which doesn't require a computer to be on at all: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1480557 These are long threads that are full of basic level questions, so you should be able to find answers to your questions there. Good Luck!
I have a SIP client on my iPhone, and use Callcentric, a free DID, and Google Dialer to make outgoing calls with Google Voice occasionally. I'm thinking about building a Asterisk box to play with that setup in your last link. The SIP clients on the iPhone have crappy codecs, and I think I'd have better results with Asterisk and a cheap PAP.
