For a long time now i’ve been leering at my SBC phone bill and feeling pretty sour about it. Between the trumped up “taxes,”"surcharges,” and “regulatory fees” and the overall inflated rates for simple services i have been pretty much at the end of my rope.
Well all that ended today.
A little brown parcel arrived via UPS from Vonage in New Jersey. Inside was a simple Linksys router, an ethernet cable and an envelope with two manuals and a simple review sheet of my account. I connceted the router between my cable modem and my AirPort Base station, switched it on, plugged in the telephone and what-dya-know, it works!
I traded my SBC DSL for comcast cable, My two phone lines and one fax line for this Vonage line, and a T-mobile cell phone and my monthly bill has gone from approaching $300 with seriously humble usage, down to $40 a month for unlimited phone calls through out north ameria. plus the $20 a month for cable, and the $60 a month for two mobile phones and i’m saving quite a bit of money.
What’s also pretty cool is that my voicemail now arrives as .wav files in my email inbox. And all the neat-o phone features which SBC had “packaged” together in order to charge me more, and tax me more, like 3 way calling, call waiting, voice mail, call forwarding, call hunting, repeat dialing, caller ID, and ID Blocking are all free. They just come with the service, like it should be.
but it’s not the money. It’s not the savings. And it’s more than the features and novelty of VOIP. It’s the deep, inner feeling of joy at having chosen to step away from the “phone company.” I am absolutely thrilled to live in an SBC Free zone.
If you would like to know more about Vonage, i suggest you let me know. I can invite you as a referral and if you choose to sign up we both get two months of our phone bill for free.
stoked!
5 Comments
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hey, can you tell me if I can use Vonage on a LAN? My building has a LAN and it comes out of my wall. I have no access to the actual LAN room, though.
My cell phone contract comes up in Feb I think and I am looking to get a phone. I just don’t want qwest, for reasons you well understand. I don’t want to renew with verizon as I use about 300 mins a month of my 900 min plan.
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A LAN is a local area network.
You can use chat, and other networking tools and software on a Local Area Network, but in order to make use of external servers, the internet, vonage etc. you have to make contact with a WAN (a wide area network.)
This means that if your building is essentially wired locally for everyone to have access to the internet, then yes, you can use vonage.
But to isolate it onto a local area network, you would be better off using bonjour or rendevouz or some other sort of intranet communication device, because you can’t make use of an internet service unless your network has access to the WAN.
Make sense?
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you mean that a WAN is connected to it inter-web, but a LAN may not be?
yes we are WAN.
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[b]LAN:[/b] local area network
[b]WAN:[/b] wide area network
In Brief:
When you turn on your computer it is not connected to a network.
You areall alone in the cold, cold world.
When you connect your computer to a router, wirelessly, or with a usb, or ethernet cable, then you are connected to a [b]L[/b]ocal [b]A[/b]rea [b]N[/b]etwork. You can access other computers, printers, and peripheral devices which are also connected to the router.
When you connect your computer, or the router connected to your computer, to a modem, you are connected (potentially) to a [b]W[/b]ide [b]A[/b]rea [b]N[/b]etwork. This is a your connection to the internet. It’s called a wide area network because usually we don’t actually connect directly to the internet, rather, we connect to our ISP (internet service provider) who allows us access to the inter-web.
So:
In order to use a sevice like Vonage, you have to be connected to the internet. If you are, and you have a static IP or even a dynamic IP these days I think, you can certainly use Vonage.
If you need a land line, I couldn’t recommend Vonage more. It’s a great price, and you get your voicemail as little quick time movies in your email inbox. It’s superb!
Right now in San Francisco the local cabel provider is trying to snag business away from Vonage by offering the same thing for three times the price. It’s silly to think that anyone would pay $40 a month for VOIP telephone service from ComCast when you can get Vonage for dirt cheap.
Check ‘em out.
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I found out I can transfer my number to vonage! Do you want to refer me? If not I can find someone else to take the credits I bet. Just put my name in at their website referal thingy.