Does anyone here still have a home phone? If so, you can save a lot of money with VOIP, specifically the OBi 100. I’ve been using it for the last 3 years with Google voice and haven’t paid a cent for my phone since.
Not an advertisement, just want to see if anyone doesn’t know this trick since we are all pretty like minded here
I have an Ooma Telo. Not free, sine you must pay taxes and E911 fees, which in my area run <$4. I pay $10 for premium service, which includes caller id, enhanced voicemail, and a second numbet, which I use for fax. Rock solid so far.
Nope, we cut THAT cord years ago. We decided since we had cell phones, why mess with home phone numbers and decide which to tell folks, or perhaps tell them both and try one and then the other, then I figured why not use the cell phones for our home phones. Well, then you need to have your cell phone with you or in my case, my shop is all steel and cell phones won’t work out there, what if we are downstairs with no good cell signal, etc. Lots of reasons using cell for your only phone wasn’t that great.
No, not really, I negated all of those reasons with a Blu Tooth gateway.
Now our home phones are our cell phones, our cell phones are our home phones AND our cell phones. The gateway takes the incoming cell call and bridges it to the house phone wiring. Want to make an outgoing call? Pick up a phone, any phone in the house, start dialing and use it like normal. The great thing is that with newer phones and caller ID the caller ID of the cell phone is shown on the home phone. I ran a wire to my shop and now my cell phone sitting in the house being charged rings and the gateway takes and rings my shop cordless phones and I can pick up or make calls in my shop while the cell phones sit in the house.
single normal ring if my wife gets a call, double-ring on the house phones if my cell is getting a call. That way I know if my shop phone rings and it’s a double-ring, I answer it. If it’s a single ring, I ignore it.
So as soon as we enter the house the cell phones connect to the gateway and our cell phones now power every phone in the house and my shop and our garage, even when sitting on a table in the house somewhere. I built a small set of shelves I put into a wall in the kitchen. They are recessed and made with 1/4" oak plywood. the shelves have on the left side 2 outlets - one outlet is where I plug in a cell phone charger with two USB outputs. the other outlet i the shelves powers the gateway. The gateway has a single short phone cord from itself to a phone jack I built into the right side of the shelves. The gateway sits on the bottom of the two shelves, our phones sit on the other shelf and charge. This way none of the phones sit on an already crowded kitchen counter, the cords and gateway sit up out of the way on a shelf. No mess, no wasted space, we always know where the phones are.
@jbanks25 I use Ooma also, and even though VOIP is never perfect I have not had any issues faxing over Ooma. But, I do pay for the premiere. I agree with @dougc405
@shadowspapa I have the same kind of deal. Bluetooth connection rings over house phones when I am at my house.
My use case is a little different from yours I think though. The reason why I have a home phone at all is my 3 year old. If someone is watching her and somehting was to happen and they didn’t have a cell phone for whatever reason things could get bad quickly.
I’ve heard good things about Ooma from an Indian co-worker. He is able to dial family for very cheap. I haven’t seen a reason to switch form what I have though since I don’t have that kind of need.
I always hated the echo and other weirdness of VOIP when I first tried it a couple of years back and when the Internet is down, so is the phones. VOIP won’t work for a vast part of the U.S. that doesn’t have broadband, like us can’t possibly get cable or DSL. Our only means of Internet is cellular - since we have cell phones, and our cell service provides our Internet, VOIP wasn’t an option. I never liked the thought of having no Internet and no phones - since it’s rare you lose 3g, 4g and voice at the same time, we’re usually ok now.
Anyone on Mediacom here knows that it’s often the Internet drops for who knows how long, not having Internet OR phones due to the Internet dropping bothered me. For those with communistcast or some other ISP endless cheap bandwidth at terabyte speeds VOIP must be good, though. Voip and Skype also killed our monthly alotment so I had to cut my son off when he was staying with us - a 30 minute skype session or other communications like that to his wife in Korea killed us financially due to the bandwidth used.
It’s been about 15 years since I last had a land line. I had VOIP for a couple of years after that until my provider went out of business. Since then, it has just been cell phones.
No cable but you get DSL? There are practical limits even with DSL - we can’t get DSL here as we are too far from any switching and the lines here are already overloaded anyway, cross-talk, FAX machines keep retraining until they are at 1200 to 2400… tells you of the line quality!
No cable, no DSL, satellite sucks so there ya go and we ain’t alone.
We are at the edge of the DSL cutoff. We can get 3 mbps service but not the 6 mpbs service. We usually only get about 2.5 mbps. I guess we feel lucky… Could be worse… lol We are about 2 miles from the relay station…
But it is worth it. I love having our critters on our own land. 2 horses, 2 donkeys, 12 guineas, 3 koi in the pond, 4 dogs, 2 cats and 3 turtles. Plus my son is now raising 4 rabbits to show in 4H…
Bravo for your son - and giving him that chance. I farmed 320 acres for a while, have lived on an acreage or farm since I first got married. It’s worth the inconveniences to have the abilities.
