What do you do for phone/internet service?

[wildcat]

I am curious to hear what others do. Seems like one can easily overspend in this area. I am trying to figure out the cheapest route w/o sacrificing too much in the way of convenience. Right now I just have a cell $39.99 + gobs of taxes via T-Mobile but the minutes I get are not great. I have thought about going with the 'pay as you go' phone plan. For the net, I just use my friend's or go the library but I suspect this will change soon and I will be paying. So I need to combine the 2, net + phone. Ideas...

[jdw_fire]

Originally Posted by wildcat

Right now I just have a cell $39.99 + gobs of taxes via T-Mobile but the minutes I get are not great.

How many minutes do you have? I have T-Mobile also and I also pay $39.99 + tax and I have 1500 anytime minutes/mo, which seems like quite a few.

[Coach]

Wildcat, I'm experimenting with Vonage for phone over broadband, to see if I can give up my landline. Vonage has a $15 a month plan with 500 minutes of local and long distance. If this all pans out I'll save a bundle and help justify the broadband cost.

Coach

[Nords]

Hawaiian Telcom-- $26.50 for the phone (no long distance or interisland service) and $31.20 for DSL.

Originally Posted by Coach

Wildcat, I'm experimenting with Vonage for phone over broadband, to see if I can give up my landline.

Giving up the landline always seems to put the owner at risk during power outages and 911 calls...

[cute fuzzy bunny]

My experience with VOIP wasnt that great. When it worked, it was fine. When it didnt, I became a tech support middleman between the cable company, the cable modem company, the router company, the VOIP box company, and the VOIP provider. Whichever one you called, it was someone elses fault. Everyone even had a special test to PROVE it was the other guys stuff.

None of them have tech support worth spit.

Vonage took a week to respond to a fairly simple question, although their service worked okay. I couldnt get a LOCAL local number from them though, just one from an exchange about 40 miles away.

AT&T Callvantage actually worked for nearly a year with practically no problems. Then the box started making the phone ring once in the middle of the night about 3-4 times a week. Turns out that when the box reboots or loses its connection, it rings the phone. Swell. After a week of tech support "its your cable connection/cable modem/router/anything that isnt us" and hours of running various tests, I found an internet posting that said the problem was in the new firmware that went out to the boxes to enable E911 service...and gosh...thats exactly when my problems started. I emailed the callvantage tech and told him what the fix was (a newer box from a different manufacturer with different firmware)...he never replied. So I cancelled.

Went with Sunrocket, figuring hell, if it doesnt work at least its cheap. It didnt work. Lousy call quality, all sorts of problems getting busy signals when the # we were calling wasnt in use, people calling us when we werent on the phone and it went straight to voicemail or rang busy. Although both vonage and callvantage worked fine with the same 'setup', I went through several weeks of having new cable wire pulled through the underground conduit to my house, bought a new router and cable modem...and had the same problems. Seems some of Sunrockets "local access partners" rent them the crappiest crudball barely working equipment and dont maintain it. So some people in some areas have fantastic sunrocket experiences and others in other areas dont.

So the summary is: if you're a technically proficient person that doesnt rely on their "land line" for business, important calls or emergencies...give it a try. Whether you fit this criteria or not, the minute you have a problem...good luck to you.

Oh yeah...and its real fun once one of these outfits gets their hands on your "local number" via porting. Took 5-6 weeks to get vonage to release it to callvantage and 2 months to get callvantage to release it to sunrocket.

Oddly...about 30 hours for AT&T/SBC to get it "back" from sunrocket. Guess they had a bigger stick.

[73ss454]

I use Vonage and also pay $10.00 extra for a fax#.

DW and I have T mobil cells.

[Peaceful_Warrior]

I use my cell phone as my "home phone", and the landline is just so I can have DSL. I'm not even sure I know the number to the landline...

[wildcat]

How many minutes do you have? I have T-Mobile also and I also pay $39.99 + tax and I have 1500 anytime minutes/mo, which seems like quite a few.

I signed the contract and after a few months they bumped up the minutes for the same price. F***ing figures.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Nords

Hawaiian Telcom-- $26.50 for the phone (no long distance or interisland service) and $31.20 for DSL.
Giving up the landline always seems to put the owner at risk during power outages and 911 calls...

That's true, Nords. I'll have a cell phone around as a backup, and hope for the best outside that.

Coach

[Nords]

Originally Posted by Coach

That's true, Nords. I'll have a cell phone around as a backup, and hope for the best outside that.

I guess you'd have to know what delivers power to the cell phone tower...

[sailor]

Originally Posted by Nords

I guess you'd have to know what delivers power to the cell phone tower...

typically a big bank of batteries + a diesel genset.

[jdw_fire]

Originally Posted by wildcat

I signed the contract and after a few months they bumped up the minutes for the same price. F***ing figures.

Call them up and ask to change your plan to the new one you want. They will probably want you to extend your contract but they will also probably change it. They did for me.

[Buckeye]

I've had Vonage for 4 years. Started in Florida and brought my box up to Ohio when we moved. 500 minutes (local and long distance) for $15 per month is a steal. Unlimited is only $25. I don't know if we would actually exceed the 500 in a month (incoming and outgoing count against the 500) if we only used the house phone for all calls as we use free minutes on cell phones also. Any initial reservations I might have had about 911 service were completely overcome by not having to pay the phone company to set up my service ($70) or pay them monthly.

I did all the required 911 setup stuff in FL and OH but I did not use it in either place. We did lose service when we lost power for a day during one of the three hurricanes but we just used the cell phones.

[Danny]

http://hearthereeverywhere.blogspot....e-service.html