Rob Williams - Orangejack

I mentioned Vonage back in January saying how I was thinking about switching to it. I've stopped thinking and I did it! And boy is it great!

Vonage - The Broadband Phone Company is a great service. If you have a cable modem, you can use Vonage (not so sure about DSL). It's available in the US, Canada, and the UK right now. Here's the skinny on it:

• If you switch to Vonage, you can cancel both your local and long distance services. We figured we were paying about $45/mth just to have a phone, voice mail, and $0.05/min long distance. Now we pay $25/mth, and we get more
• We can call anywhere in the US and Canada for the $25/mth.
• We get all the bells and whistles we had to pay for earlier like voice mail, caller ID, call forward, call waiting, etc. It's free.
• We can have our voice mail emailed to us as an email announcement or file attachment. We can listen to our messages online if we like.
• If our internet is down, it'll auto forward to a cell phone.
• 911 service still works
• We could keep our home phone number (check to make sure they can switch yours though)
• There's other benefits that I haven't explored yet

No, I'm not selling Vonage. I'm just telling you what I like about what I've got. The clarity is perfect. I can't tell I'm talking over the internet. It seems just like normal.

If you're interested, check out the site yourself. If you have questions about it, email me. If you do switch though, let me know because if I refer you, we both get a free month of service. If you're not referred, you don't get the free month. So it helps us both out.

Now, add Vonage to Skype and you've got a cool combo. They serve different purposes though they use the same technology called VoIP. You use Skype at your computer to talk to other Skype members (like IM). Or you can pay them and call other phone numbers. You have to be tied to your computer to make a Skype call, but that means you can travel around and still use it...for free. And in my opinion, Skype is not spyware. Vonage, on the other hand, works for your home phone system. It's not tied to your computer, just the broadband connection.

Again, if you have any questions or comments about this stuff, leave a comment or email me. I'm only sharing these products because I'm excited about them and finding some great use out of them.