House Phone

[vidar]

hey i think this is the wrong area but does any one have a house phone on their boat? ive got 1 i use with my laptop as i am to cheap to get a cell when i want to make a call as i am still on land i am eigther at home or i pull into a mcdonalds in the area wich offers free wifi and call. there like 20$ a month for unlimited calls local or long distance and was wondering if anyone uses this instead of a cell.

Vonage - VoIP Internet Phone Service for Home, Business and International Calling: Vonage - A Better Way to Phone for Less


dont mean to advertise i was just wondering if anyone uses it?

[Vasco]

My house phone is a voip phone. I also use Skype a lot. Problem is you will need a good connection.

[sailtotrail.com]

Most of this information is most useful for those in the U.S. It can also be helpful if you're outside the U.S., but still calling, or being called from U.S. numbers.

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for so I'll try to break down a few points I've gathered from testing a zillion different options.

Vonage is fine. I'd go with Broadvoice for about $5 less a month. I've used both and Vonage seems to be worth $0/month more in terms of call quality.

I don't know how much time you spend on the phone, but for maximum flexibility and minimum price, I like the following combo...

Skype (with Skype Out) - for long duration calls. I've had better success with Skype over unknown wireless connections than Vonage/Broadvoice and it costs about a tenth of the others.

+

T-Mobile To Go - This is a cell phone thing, but great for making short calls. A $100 refill gives you something like 1000 minutes that don't expire for a full 365 days. Any subsequent refill resets your 365 days for all the minutes. Most prepaid plan minutes expire in 30 or 60. With the cost of the phone, your total should still be under $150.

If you can get an invite, Google Voice allows you to tie these services together in such a way that you can make calls to regular numbers on
Skype using Skype-In rather than Skype-Out.

Another option to add to the arsenal is Gizmo5. This service combined with Google Voice allows unlimited free incoming and outgoing calls when combined with Google Voice.

[VERTIGO]

Magic Jack.... works perfect.

[rebel heart]

We have a landline at the marina so we can have DSL on the boat. There's a phone signal as well (and a number for us), but we never hooked a phone up to it. Just use our cellulars. Internet access is via our DSL, and I have a USB/Verizon cell adapter.

All my Internet access (cell, dsl, and verizon wireless card) are paid by my company, so I certainly wouldn't foot the bill for all this crap myself.

[iiii]

Second the MagicJack!

[vidar]

well i dont really use a phone to often maybe once a month for something or another. and i didnt realize there were so many that you could choose from thanks guys!