[colug-432] Digital Phone?

[Brian Miller]

On 04/30/2014 04:09 PM, tom wrote:
> I got an inquiry from a friend who lives in Marfa TX:
>
>
> Any thoughts appreciated.
>
> Tom
> _______________________________________________

Does she have a cell phone?  That would still give her the ability to 
make calls if her Internet went out.  If she's really worried about 
losing her ability to call out, she could get a Track Phone for those 
times when the Internet is out.  And then she could have something with 
her when she's out and about in her car.

Personally, I switched to Ooma (www.ooma.com) for my digital phone 
service (using Time Warner Road Runner for Internet).   You get free 
long distance, and they only charge applicable taxes for residential 
customers.  In my case, that's $3.75/month. The only down side was the 
upfront cost of their equipment, which I believe was about $150.  It 
ends up being a lot less expensive in the long run.

When you first sign up, you have to pick an available phone number for 
your area, but once you get that set up, you can switch your current 
phone number to their equipment,  I think that's another $20 one-time 
charge.

Cool advantages:  The number is tied to your equipment, so if you go 
visit relatives out of state, you can take the equipment with you, plug 
it in, and still get your phone calls.  And since the equipment is 
yours, if you move out of state, it's just a $20 fee to get a new local 
number, and then you pay the taxes for the new area. I think you can 
even select a 2nd phone number from a different area code, so you can 
get local calls from Columbus and Texas, for instance, although I think 
they charge for that.

I can see the Ooma equipment send NTP packets to their servers, so I can 
be really confident the time shown on my phone is accurate.

You can pay for other extra services, if you want them.  One of them is 
the ability to block numbers at their site.  So your phone won't even 
ring.  I didn't subscribe to that, but thought it was a pretty cool 
feature.  They hit me up in my first month with all of the extra cost 
features they have, but haven't even sent me an email asking me to 
"upgrade" since, and I've had them for about 2 years.

You need a wired port on a router to plug the equipment in, and it's a 
fairly simple web-based setup.  The instructions they provide with the 
equipment are easy to understand, too.