A Landline Phone For $4 A Month
While we probably could have done without it, my wife has been bugging me if we were ever going to get a landline phone. I heard about MagicJack which seems like a really good deal with an entire year of phone service for $40 ($20 for subsequent years). Unfortunately it’s just too unflexible for me. It’s a USB device that you have to plug into a PC and install some software/drivers. Naturally I don’t want some flaky device hooked up to my PC, and just the electricity to set a standalone PC to run it would cost $5-$10 a month.
So I looked into some more standards driven options. Vonage and most of the other big name VoIP providers use a standard called SIP to route telephone calls over the Internet. Unfortunately Vonage $17.99 a month for the least expensive plan. Then I read about how some people are combining GrandCentral(a free forwarding phone number service) with Gizmo (a SIP based competitor to Skype) to give them telephone service completely free (incoming service anyway). Unfortunately for me GrandCentral doesn’t seem to have any numbers available to give to me for free, so I’m SOL there. Gizmo however will sell me a number for $4 a month ($3 a month if I sign up for a whole year).
So I decided to go to the Gizmo route. I picked up a Linksys PAP2t-NA SIP device on EBay and hooked a regular telephone up to it. After some quick configuration (simple but not exactly user friendly) I was able to make a test call to my cell phone. I am quite pleased with the audio quality, which so far is equal or better than an old school regular telephone from the phone company.
So now we have an old school phone number. Still waiting for it to ring…
