Its been a few years since Nick and I have had a real land line phone in our house. For the past few years, we’ve been using Vonage, but its even been awhile since we’ve had any phones hooked up for that – a power supply mistake burned out our original ATA (converts voice to bits). We bought a replacement ATA, but never installed it. In fact, I’m not sure we even have it any longer .. hmmm ..
We’ve been doing fine with cell phones, and I’ve got our Vonage number being forwarded to my cell phone, so we’re still getting calls if we need to. The problem is, though, there’s no way to call out from the house without using a cell phone. We’ve been able to get by with an extra cell phone for when Jarek is over, but that phone is becoming expensive and about to be turned off. Also, I’ve been approved to work from home this week while attending an online training course. Well .. its not exactly an online training course, its a conference call with a web meeting session. Basically – I need to be on the phone for 4-8 hours a day, the next 4 days. This would KILL my cell phone minutes.
The quickest, easiest and most elegant solution to my problem seems to be Skype. I’ve used it plenty for video chat with Jessica in Germany and Nick when I travel. When I looked into the cost of using Skype as a solution to dial other land lines and/or cell phones, I was floored at how cheap the subscription was. I was able to buy 3 months worth of unlimited US/Canada calling for $7.95 .. kind of a no brainer, I think.
It happened immediately. As soon as I entered my card info, and hit submit, my service was ready to use. Talking to Nick just now (a test call from my new found geek goodness), I think we’re going to look into getting a Skype phone for the house and then have that for Jarek to use when we’re not here. It doesn’t allow for emergency servies to be called, but I think we’ll be ok with that.
I’ll be happy to get rid of my Vonage account too. We’re paying way too much for what is now essentially a phone number redirect to my cell phone. With Skype, I can buy a phone number (which is discounted with subscription), and have voicemail options – for 3 freaking bucks a month (cheaper if you buy a year’s subscription all at once). Yeah .. time for a change 🙂
My head hurts. Wow. Maybe I’m getting old(?). I have one cell phone and that’s it. I do miss my land line, but it really is not necessarily. I mean, really necessary. I’m trying so hard to just keep it simple. I don’t even have an iPod. Apparently, I’m not cool cuz I don’t own an iPod. 😉