Home phone service

[mel2000]

Originally Posted by Drover

You can find VoIP packages starting as cheap as $7 a month (about $12-$13/mo after taxes) for 500 minutes a month and about 3¢ a minute for each minute over 500. That includes normal feastures such as call waiting, caller ID, 3-way calling, etc.

VOIP rates can be cheaper than that. Several providers offer free incoming, and outgoing at 1¢ or 2¢/minute. I use Google Voice+Sipsorcery+Sipgate for VOIP and pay nothing at all for my unlimited local and domestic long distance calls.

[eevee]

Originally Posted by deechee

No cable?

we have dish network, I believe (some satellite provider). that plan costs just under $60 for everything, including HBO (though we may drop down to a lower plan since we don't watch HBO all that much)

[deechee]

Originally Posted by eevee

we have dish network, I believe (some satellite provider). that plan costs just under $60 for everything, including HBO (though we may drop down to a lower plan since we don't watch HBO all that much)

Oh, okay just wondering.

[WhaThe]

Originally Posted by linicx

The downside to VOIP is if your power is out, or your ISP is down for upgrade, you have no phone.

I'm a middle age male who lives alone mostly so I go with whatever is cheap. If I had a wife or a wife and children I would pay for the old POTS stuff. That stuff is bulletproof as long as nobody cuts the wires.

Reliability

While POTS provides limited features, low bandwidth and no mobile capabilities, it provides greater reliability than other telephony systems (mobile phone, VoIP, etc.). Many telephone service providers attempt to achieve "dial-tone availability" more than 99.999% of the time the telephone is taken off-hook. This is an often cited benchmark in marketing and systems-engineering comparisons, called the "five nines" reliability standard. It is equivalent to having a dial-tone available for all but less than five minutes each year.


Plain old telephone service - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia