I just got an interesting article emailed to me. I've attached it to not make this post insanely long.

Stupid *%$#*& <INSERT BROWSER OF CHOICE HERE> (firefox) not wrapping text....good article once I got it into Ultraedit.

-Zeke

edit: yeah yeah....

No no, IE does it too

Quote:

The scary part about TimeWarner pricing is that the 40 bucks doesn't even include voicemail ! They want to charge you another 5 bucks for that.

Good lord they are insane. I didn't read it long enough to get to that point.

the last time I visited England, I added the $5 softphone to my laptop. Then all I needed to make US based calls was plug my laptop into any broadband. I even made a call using the wireless lan card in the airport lounge.
Waaay cool.
It sure beats lugging an ATA and telephone around, or worse, PAYING for access

How do you guys handle hooking up multiple phones to a VoIP service? Do you need an adapter for each phone? I was thinking about waiting until the next house to do this, but if I can install the adapter near my main phone line coming into the house, I'd consider getting it now. My family makes a lot of calls to Italy, so the Lingo plan looks like the way to go (for the 30 day trial anyway).

From my understanding if you unhooked the house wiring from the phone box and just ran a cable from the phone adapter to a wall outlet that should allow you to hook up phones thru out the house..

I just use a splitter and it works fine. I only have three phones connected to it.

For mine, I use one of those cordless phones that supports multiple headsets. Right now I just have two but I could add another headset if I wanted. Running extra phone line was impractical in my apartment, but if I wanted to, I could have split the ATA output as others are mentioning here.

I've had my Lingo service for a few days now (still using a temporary number) and I'm really impressed with it. Calls are crystal clear. Faxes work great (had to throttle down the start speed of the faxes to 14kps). I've sent faxes to local numbers and an office 3 time zones away. Groovy. No faxing would have been a deal breaker for me.

I plugged the adapter between my cable modem and my router and had a dial tone within a few minutes. You can hook it into your LAN too, but I wanted to let the adapter grab bandwidth whenever it needed it so that my calls wouldn't have dropouts. Even with this setup, my ping on my favorite Desert Combat server went from a 26 to only a 38.

I still can't believe that I can get unlimited local and long distance calls to the US (PR and USVI included) plus Canada and Western Europe (Europe does not include cell phone calls) for $19.99 a month! Even after taxes, it'll be under $25 a month. Sweet. Having the first month free is cool too because I wasn't afraid to try it out first.

If anyone wants to try it out and get an additional $25 credit after 90 days, I set up a little site. Yeah, I'm fishing for referrals because I get $25 too, but I had to Google "lingo referrals" to find some guy I never heard of just so I could get the deal. So at least my page has some info on the service!

The only thing I'm mad about is that I didn't try this earlier. I guess I missed out on the "buggy" phase huh? It's just kinda weird how I personally hate talking on the phone but I can still manage to be excited about this! lol

EDIT: Lingo includes unlimited calls to cell phones in Canada too...

Do any of these services have a cheaper metered option? I made three phone calls for a total of about 12 minutes on my home phone line last month (use my cell for everything). I hate giving SBC almost 20 bucks for that. I'd love to replace SBC with a pay as you go or metered VoIP plan.

-Mike

I just got VoicePulse. I went with them over Vonage and Packet8 et al because they are the only ones who claimed they could port my existing number. They did and it works great. No 911 service at all, but I just put the local police dept. on speed dial. Works for me. Sound is clear and support was great when I called. Talked to a real live person right away and he was able to actually solve my problems within seconds while I was on the line. Pleased so far. Screw BellSouth!

Am using the $15 200 min. long distance and unlimited local account.

If you still have a line from the phone company, even if you're not paying for service, it's a requirement that they provide 911 service from that line. So even if your internet goes out, you could call the police. Just hook up a regular old phone and leave it in the corner somewhere.

If anyone is interested in Vonage I can send a referal to them for a free month for both of us when you sign up. Im currently unemployeed so all the help i get with my bills is great.

If anyone wants info on how to do faxing over a VOIP (or at least Lingo), I added a new section based on the trouble shooting I've been doing the last few days. Might save you some of the trouble I went through!

Grrr... I'm pulling my hair out here trying to figure out if my fax machine works with Lingo. It works calling most numbers, but I'm not sure if it is failing because of trouble on my end or not. Is there anyone with free long distance faxing that can test out my setup? My paper try is full, so feel free to send at will. Here is my temporary fax number 313 - 879 - 4229. It's temporary, so I don't mind sharing it. Maybe I can test sending too? (Calling long distance is free for me, so I don't care where you're calling from).

If I can't get this to work (maybe I was lucky during the first week?) I'll have to eat my words and switch to Vonage.

LOL, get in line! My email notification has been ringing for the last hour, lol.

Anyone able to test from their work number perhaps?

I get "Your call cannot be completed as dialed...". Verizon (former Bell Atlantic) POTS land line with Verizon long distance.

Man, you really want me to switch to Vonage don't you?

Thank you. Another nail in my little Lingo coffin.

How long has that number been active?

I tried dialing that number on all the voice and fax lines here (a mix of Verizon and MCI long distance). All don't work.

It's been up for 6 days... I just double checked the number too. Another buddy told me he is getting a busy signal. What a bunch of crap.

Do you get that often w. Vonage?

I have never had someone tell me they couldn't reach me with Vonage, but I use it pretty infrequently. I probably only use it to make a call twice per week. Almost everything is on my cell phone.

Well, I don't know why I'm dragging this out. I'm still under the free 30 day trial.

It won't work in about an hour or so. I'm cancelling. Thanks.

Ive never had a problem recieving calls with vonage, though I have had 2 instances where I couldnt call out but people could still call me. both were fixed in like 20min. If you do go vonage I would definitly suggest using the bandwidth saver and knock it down to the middle setting when I was using the highest I had calls sort of drop. I could hear them but they couldnt hear me and hang up. ever since setting to the middle setting I havent had that happen once.

I decided to finally try this out. Anyone want to refer me?

send me a PM with your email address