My telephone charges creep upwards, almost every month, mostly due to increased government mandated charges. I pay AT&T now $ 26 a month for what is essentially local service. Long Distance is on a separate bill from ECG.
What are the alternatives to increasingly expensive land-lines? We live in a low area and have poor cellphone connections. What is this Magic Jack thing? Does it work? What are the drawbacks?
What is VOIP? Just heard about it? Is this another valid alternative.
We have VoIP from Vonage. You get a box that plugs into you router (much like a computer). Then you plug your telephone into the box. That's it. The telephone jack on the box is identical in every way to an incoming trunk line (our two VOIP lines go to our PBX system - just like a telco trunk line would).
For $19.95/month* you get:
A telephone number
A host of goodies like call-waiting, caller-id, voice mail, call-forwarding, etc.
All the long distance you can eat.
VOIP requires an always-on high-speed internet connection (DSL or Cable).
With some VOIP vendors, you can keep your existing number. With all vendors you can choose your area code. Suppose you live in Little Rabbit, Montana but all your relatives live in Boston. By choosing a 617 area code, when your relatives call you, to them it's a local call.
I think the MagicJack gizmo works pretty much the same way, but it uses your computer to replace the "box."
As an alternative, contact your local AT&T office and tell them you just cannot stand this outrageous charge and that unless there's some adjustment, you're going to switch. They WILL lower you bill. By as much as half.
An obvious alternative to the alternative is a cell phone.
Good luck.
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The .95 (or whatever) is the total. No 9-11 fee, no Al Gore Tax, no Spanish-American War Excise tax, no sales tax, nothing. It's .95 period.
IIRC VOIP stands for "voice over internet Protocol. You can purchase the service from Vonage (about $30.00 per month). Free VOIP is available from SKYPE, however you may not have incoming service (others can elaborate about this).
I have a Magic Jack (MJ) and use it quite a lot. I believe that it is also a form of VIOP. It costs about $30 initially and then about $10.00 per year. Even though I have the MJ I still maintain my land line because the MJ is not 100% reliable.
MJ, SKYPE and Vonage all require a high speed internet connection (i.e. cable, HS digital or equivalent).
Each of these services(and there may be more), have their strong points and weaknesses. For example I don't think that MJ has provisions for international calls, whereas SKYPE does. I'm not sure about Vonage.
Rather than going into them all here I suggest you start goggling them for info.
One of the negatives of VOIP has been calling 911. The vendors were to make improvements in this area. Not having VOIP I don't know the current status, but others can jump in with their 911 experience.
After reading the responses so far, I have decided to pay my 25 bucks and keep my landline. At least I know that I have highly reliable service, when I need it.
I also have a tracfone (cheap cellphone) which I keep in the car for emergencies.
For long distance calls I use ECG which is a LD service that costs only pennies per call, instead of ATT LD, which costs plenty dollares per call.
Our basic telephone charge is quite reasonable. What runs up the bill are the various taxes and charges put in by the government.
For example, we have the "911" fee. We have a fee to pay for the operators who "translate" voice to TTY for deaf folks. We have local utility tax. We have the "universal service fee." We have a fee to pay for the system that lets VOIP folks have any area code they want (number portability.)
VOIP is Voice Over Internet Protocol. Magic Jack is a specific implementation. If you have high speed internet your ISP should have already tried to sell you on giving up your land line so I suspect you don't have high speed internet.
If especially elderly folks or young children are involved 911 is the main weak point of VoIP because unlike a POTS line which gives your location information to the 911 system the VoIP carriers simply connect the call to a regular number at the call center.
The other weak point is that many broadband carriers do not have backup power on their equipment. So unlike a regular phone if the power goes off the Internet connection may go off which also disables your phone capability.
USF is one of my pet peeves. I border on what used to be rural area but not any more. The local phone company is Frontier and they get boxes of USF money to help them serve the "farmers". And to top it off no competition is allowed. I ported our number to a VoIP carrier quite some time ago. I mentioned it to one of my friends who lives in the "rural" area and was surprised when I tried to order a port. No other carriers are allowed to compete in "rural" areas.
Number portability has nothing to do with what you described. It means that you are allowed to keep your number if you move to a different provider.
"Walter R." wrote in news:h9io1k$ig7$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
In addition to all the other good opinions, another thing (for some at least) is to look into the "triple play" plans that cable TV companies and Verizon have. I live in North Jersey 07410, and here Verizon has a fiber plan that costs $100/mo plus fees+taxes and for that you get unlimited phone service in US, Canada and PR (I believe), as well as over
300 channels and 15 Mbps down/5 Mbps up internet. With 2 STBs and all the Jersey fees and taxes this plan has cost me $125/mo total. I just renewed the plan and upped the service to 25Mbps down/15 Mbps up, and this costs $10/mo more, and Starbucks WiFi is thrown in for free (as well as 3 mo Showtime).
My gripes were with some first installation problems of the phone, and the D#@N#d ActionTec modem blowing up after the first week. And the initial billings took about 6 months to get straightened out. Ever since it has been rather good.
We don't much use all the phone service we're entitled to, and the TV still has almost no channels worth watching. However, all the baseball and football you might want (I think).
My new "subscription" will not change in price for 2 years, but I have "only" a 1 year commitment.
As I said before, keeping your land-line and paying 25 bucks are not necessarily connected. ATT WILL reduce your monthly charge - you have but to ask.
ATT knows that tens of thousands of people are switching to VOIP or cell phones every day. Twelve dollars a month from you is better than no dollars a month from you.
Only if you have a "plain vanilla" phone directly plugged into the jack or hard-wired. Cordless phones of any ilk are dependent only local AC power in the house for signal transmission.
I have verizon DSL. I called aobut something and after that was done, she tried to sell me FIOS. I said it was too expensive. She said we have an introductory rate for 3 months. I said, What good does 3 months do me? After that it's too expensive. I finally made her laugh and admit it was too expensive.
Exactly. And all the 'services' that telephone users used to take for granted, such as being listed in a telephone book/directory, service during power failures, free maintenance calls, free wiring in your home, direct 911, 611 and 411 lines to Emergency, Repair, and Directory back in the bad old non-competition days are gone. These days your are on your own in a sort of 'Batteries not included' way. Hook it up and fix it yourself! Fortunately the basic networks and telephone numbering plan areas are still there, like a road sytem; even though the type of vehicles (And maybe the type of fuel that powers them! is changing! . Ain't competition wonderful?.
My Uniden fancy phone doesn't do special functions, not even redial, in a power failure, but the phone itself still works then. It has a cord to the handset, and a cordless phone elsewhere.
Obviously yours is different and probably not in the majority. Anyone who wants a phone that requires nothing more than connection to a phone line should shop wisely.
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