Internet telephony, or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has been around the consumer market for a while now. Personally, our family has been using Vonage for almost 2 years now and let me tell you, the experience has been wonderful. Currently we are paying about $25 per month for both local and long distance phone calls. We no longer pay the added fees traditional telephone companies make consumers pay. My most favorite feature of this service is having the ability to bring my home phone with me anywhere there is an high-speed Internet connection. I can make and receive calls just as if I was home. There is a whole lot more I could tell you about VoIP, but I will point you to the experts over at cnet.com. They do a much better job at explaining this exciting technology.
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Your next telephone may not actually be a telephone. It may look and work like a phone, but it will connect to the Internet, not a telephone line, and it will cost less than today’s phones. You’ll also get better features and ease of use. Over the next few years, more products using Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, will be coming online. But there’s no need to wait–today’s batch of Internet phone products have useful features and can save you money, starting now…more
i have been very curious as to how the internet phone thing works. my main questions is how do you GET calls when using the technology? Login and leave it open on a desktop? I may just ahve to take the plunge.
The beauty of vonage service is that you can use regular phones. And receive calls the regular way. It does require some equipment that they will give you or buy it from a retailer and get a rebate. I am thinking about going that way myself but I am trying to figure out how to make it work with verizon’s not so naked DSL.
Marty,
If you follow the link that I have provided, it will answer all of that for you. Like BH is saying, you do have to have some equipment, but that is usually given to you if (i.e. you high speed internet provider will include the modem with its service, a company like vonage may include the “phone box with theirs ( I think we had to pay something like $30-40 for ours). Oh, and you need a router—man, just let me stop with this
! Just follow the link and if you have any questions, come back here.
BH~
Maaaaaan, that is just one of the MANY reasons why I had to kick DSL to the curb a long time ago. I was talking to someone about this same thing who also had DSL, but saw the redundancy with paying the phone company and paying for vonage. I just told them to get the absolute cheapest plan their local phone company offers (maybe something like local calling only). That way you won’t feel the cost with still having to pay the phone company for access.
fyi– did you know you can route the vonage signal throughout the house? You can use the existing phone wiring that is in your house—oops! But I guess you can only do that with cable Internet.
[...] rs. The service we use is Vonage. Below is a link to a post I did reviewing this service: All about Internet phones The cost savings is huge, however I would be a little [...]