Home phone
Earlier this week I decided to cave in and get a home phone. It's not so much that I need one, but at times I want to have a bigger phone that rings louder, or has better battery life, or better sound quality, or I can have a two hour conversation on without costing a small fortune.
The main reason I did this is I'd like to be able to work from home for at least part of the winter (at least the really bad commute days), so having a phone that I can use for hours on end during the day is important.
However, I decided that I still don't need an actual phone, so I went with Vonage, a phone-over-internet (VoIP) provider instead. It looks like a pretty slick system, just a small box that you plug into your network and then plug your phone into. In my case I have just a phone cord going to my punch-down block in the basement so all the phone jacks in the house can eventually (currently I only have one physical phone) be on Vonage. The box supports two physical phone lines, and you can easily have two boxes connected to your network (based on what UDP ports I had to open in my firewall). It's only $14.99 a month for 500 outgoing minutes (incoming and Vonage to Vonage calls are always free) or $24.99 for unlimited minutes. I decided that 500 minutes should be more than I need.
The Vonage service is pretty nifty. I can get notified of new voicemail via e-mail, with or without the actual voicemail audio, if I so choose. I can configure a whole host of things related to my phone line from their website. A really cool feature is that for only $4.99 I can get a virtual phone number -- a number that works only for incoming calls. This number can have any area code that Vonage supports (which is most of them) so that friends and family can call me as if it was just a local call (which are always free to me). And there a lot more cool options like that, with hopefully new ones able to added quite easily.
The sound quality is exactly what I would expect from my phone. They give you a selectable quality level of 30kbs (low), 50kbs (average), or 90kbs (default - high) so you can tailor your bandwidth usage to your available bandwidth. I've not tried using the phone and doing a large upload yet, so I don't know what happens when my uplink is busy.
The most interesting thing is that your phone number is tied to your box, which is reasonably small. You can take you box with you on a trip and be carrying your local phone with you. I can see how this would work out great for a business traveler that books a hotel with broadband access, especially since calls to you will follow you wherever you go. Of course this plays havoc with 911 calls, so they make you click through a bunch of screens talking about this and make you enter your physical location before they'll activate the 911 service, but it's a small price to play for the convenience.
All in all, it's a pretty slick system and I think I'm going to like it a lot. I'll report back on any issues that might crop up.
The main reason I did this is I'd like to be able to work from home for at least part of the winter (at least the really bad commute days), so having a phone that I can use for hours on end during the day is important.
However, I decided that I still don't need an actual phone, so I went with Vonage, a phone-over-internet (VoIP) provider instead. It looks like a pretty slick system, just a small box that you plug into your network and then plug your phone into. In my case I have just a phone cord going to my punch-down block in the basement so all the phone jacks in the house can eventually (currently I only have one physical phone) be on Vonage. The box supports two physical phone lines, and you can easily have two boxes connected to your network (based on what UDP ports I had to open in my firewall). It's only $14.99 a month for 500 outgoing minutes (incoming and Vonage to Vonage calls are always free) or $24.99 for unlimited minutes. I decided that 500 minutes should be more than I need.
The Vonage service is pretty nifty. I can get notified of new voicemail via e-mail, with or without the actual voicemail audio, if I so choose. I can configure a whole host of things related to my phone line from their website. A really cool feature is that for only $4.99 I can get a virtual phone number -- a number that works only for incoming calls. This number can have any area code that Vonage supports (which is most of them) so that friends and family can call me as if it was just a local call (which are always free to me). And there a lot more cool options like that, with hopefully new ones able to added quite easily.
The sound quality is exactly what I would expect from my phone. They give you a selectable quality level of 30kbs (low), 50kbs (average), or 90kbs (default - high) so you can tailor your bandwidth usage to your available bandwidth. I've not tried using the phone and doing a large upload yet, so I don't know what happens when my uplink is busy.
The most interesting thing is that your phone number is tied to your box, which is reasonably small. You can take you box with you on a trip and be carrying your local phone with you. I can see how this would work out great for a business traveler that books a hotel with broadband access, especially since calls to you will follow you wherever you go. Of course this plays havoc with 911 calls, so they make you click through a bunch of screens talking about this and make you enter your physical location before they'll activate the 911 service, but it's a small price to play for the convenience.
All in all, it's a pretty slick system and I think I'm going to like it a lot. I'll report back on any issues that might crop up.
posted by Mark at 9:46 PM
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