Recently in VoIP Category

Thanks to a tip from Brandon, I just noticed that GrandCentral.com becomes Google.com/Voice very soon. I'm hoping this means it becomes open to the general public soon, because I'd love to have a unified phone solution in my life again. I waited too long to sign up for GrandCentral before Google closed it to new accounts, although I did put myself in the queue to get a number should they ever get around to reopening. Looks like they are reopening, under the new Google Voice brand.

Why do I want Google Voice? Several reasons:

Vonage is aiming to make it easier for people to convert from traditional landline phone service to the Vonage VoIP service. At CES 2008, Vonage introduced several affordable hardware solutions that eliminate some of the guesswork in setting up telephone handsets throughout your house. At the most basic level, new customers can now get a V-Portal box with easy configuration and helpful feedback for troubleshooting any service issues they may have. If you need several phones throughout your house, my landline to voip conversion hack still works, but there are a couple of more elegant solutions to getting handsets around your home. Vonage now offers a bundle with 3 handsets all working wirelessly from the same base station or you can use a networking over power line solution to get your phones to the rooms you need them.

Vonage V-Portal

The V-Portal includes a standard single Ethernet connection and RJ-11 connection for a traditional phone, coupled with an interface that provides feedback about your Vonage service, including handy messages when things go wrong. This is a step up from the solutions originally provided by third parties like Linksys because it takes some of the guesswork out of setting up your Vonage service at home. The box also includes handy features like caller ID, call logging and timing calls.

Vonage Multi-Handset Whole House Solution

If you want multiple phones for your Vonage setup, the VTA-CVR pictured below may be the easiest solution to configure. You connect the black box to the router on your home network and place the three handsets where they are most convenient to you. Each one requires power but needs no special connections to work with your Vonage service. The handsets support a 50 contact phonebook, include caller ID, and have a direct dial button for voicemail retrieval.

Vonage Phone Over Power Adapter

One thing every home includes is plenty of power outlets distributed in virtually every room. Vonage aims to take advantage of this with a phone over power outlet solution, combining the Vonage service box with 3 additional power line converters that can be placed anywhere in your home or office for additional phone jacks. This is especially convenient if you already have handsets you want to use for phone service in your home. The theory here is we all know how to plug stuff into the wall, so there's no need to learn anything new. Just plug the main outlet in someplace near your router so you can connect your Vonage service to the Internet, then choose additional locations for handsets throughout your home. My only complaint with this bundle is that the company didn't think to also build in Ethernet over power into all of the jacks, making them dual purpose for people who might also want to connect their game consoles or other network capable devices.

All three solutions show that Vonage is taking a more serious interest in making VoIP easier for the consumer. While I'd like to see better integration of whole house solutions, like the Ethernet support on all the power outlet adapters, Vonage is taking steps to differentiate from other competing solutions by being more than just a phone service. I'm told existing customers (I'm one) will be given the opportunity to get some of these new hardware options at a discount.

The name Callwave brings me fond memories of desktop software for managing phone calls through a voice modem. As the POTS voice business gradually erodes to cell phone and voice over IP, the company is re-inventing itself with a service to replace your existing cell phone voicemail service with something more useful. If you switch to the Callwave mobile visual voicemail, instead of having to listen to voice messages on your phone you get them delivered to your inbox, which is similar to the GotVoice service I wrote about in 2005. By getting the voicemails in your inbox, Callwave also makes it possible to either automatically dial your phone to connect with the caller or respond to the voicemail via email, which might save you additional time over playing phone tag. Another cool feature of the Callwave service is call screening, so you can accept a call, send it to voice mail, or listen in on the voicemail to see if you really want to take the call. I recently switched my own voicemail to Callwave to try it out and everythings working so far. The service is currently in a free beta period - rumor has it if you sign up before the end of the beta, you'll never have to pay a subscription fee.

UPDATE from 8 January 2008: After living with Callwave Visual Voicemail for a couple of days I'm not impressed. I've received several complaints about the message quality from people attempting to call me, so I'm switching back to my core service. The voice to text feature that sends me SMS messages is also less than impressive - it does a lousy job of recognizing words and converting them to meaningful text. I'm still on a quest to find something more interesting to make it easier to work with my voicemail.

Len asks, I have just converted to cable phone service : Is there away to hook up a battery back up; connected to a land line in case of a power failure?

One of the many things that get shoved under the carpet when VoIP providers talk up great features like no long distance costs is disaster planning. In the landline world of simple phones, the power could go out and your phone would still work. When the power goes out for a VoIP customer, it takes out the cable modem, which kills the Internet connection, which effectively makes the phone useless. For brief outages this might not be a big deal, but what happens when your power is out for several hours? You need a backup plan.

My primary backup plan is my cell phone. I have a call blast setup with Vonage (my VoIP provider) to automatically ring the phone at my house and my cell phone. I get calls no matter where I. If the power goes out, my cell phone battery is generally lasts long enough to endure most common power outages. In the event of a longer power outage, I can always recharge the phone from my car battery or plug in at the local coffee shop while I have a beverage.

If you don't have a cell phone, a different type of backup plan is in order.

The easiest backup to configure for a VoIP service is a uninterrupted power supply (UPS). These are readily available in a variety of battery sizes at the local electronics store or you can find more serious solutions online. The trick is finding one that lasts long enough for your disaster preparedness comfort zone.

The consumer level units are generally only good for about two hours. You might be able to get more than two hours of life for reasonably power efficient devices like a cable modem and VoIP adapter. While you might need a phone within a two hour window, that's still not real protection. If you want to keep your phone online while the power is out, a minimum of 24 hours seems more like a reasonable backup timeframe.

Using the APC UPS configuration wizard, their APC Smart-UPS XL 750VA USB & Serial 120V + UXBP24 Battery Unit will last for 27 hours running a cable modem, a cable router and a mini-tower PC (minus the PC it would last longer). That kind of protection doesn't come cheap at $1200. A bare bones landline with no features could provide a backup for about 5 years for the same price. This is one of the things that's worth weighing before dumping your landline in place of something else.

Another option would be to install a gas powered backup generator in a shed behind your house. A generator with enough horsepower to support most of your house for a half day on seven gallons of gas costs under $1000. If you ration the power, it might last longer.

Ultimately your decision should be based entirely on your own comfort level. I never lose sleep relying on my cell phone in case of emergency and I also have a battery backup to protect my computers in case of short term power failure, in part to protect my data. If I didn't have a cell phone as a backup, I likely would still have a traditional landline as my primary phone because the phone company is generally reliable and their service works through localized power outages.

Other VoIP related articles:

Is VoIP the Right Solution for You?

Will VoIP Work with DSL?

VoIP over Home Phone Wiring

Cellphone to Landline Converter

Download SightSpeed

Cross-platform video conferencing is one of those things that never worked well outside enterprise class software. Apples iChat AV made video conferencing for the masses seem like a reality and AIM made strides to try and offer a video component, but everything in the consumer space tends to fall short in communicating between Mac and Windows computers. SightSpeed changes that with PC to PC and Mac to PC video communication. The app also records video for video blogging. Video mail messages of 30 seconds in length allow people to leave messages. If you prefer to only use audio, that's supported too. Think of this as the Skype of video communication, with outstanding image quality and convenient conferencing between your Mac and PC friends. The basic version is free. If you want to communicate with multiple people simultaneously, SightSpeed Pro is available for $49.95 per year and includes a free Webcam. I doubt SightSpeed will replace Skype as the favorite app for online communication but it certainly raises the bar for everyone else trying to break into the space. If you have relatives who live a long way off or need to communicate with remote business partners, this is the most affordable solution for long distance face-to-face communication. [Windows 2k/XP Mac OS X 10.3.9 $0.00]

Pete writes, Is there any way of making Skype into a cordless phone? Specifically, the computer is in the home office attached to the broadband jack, but we'd like to be able to respond to incoming calls from Europe from the bedroom, since they tend to be late at night.

Making Skype more like a plain-ole telephone used to be a tricky matter, but not anymore. Skype is doing a handful of things to make it easier to get Skype calls away from the PC. My personal favorite is integration with cell phones, because that allows me to take Skype and all my other calls anywhere, but inside your home, you're likely to get better call quality and burn fewer minutes using one of the VoIP and landline integration tools.

The hardware solutions for integrating Skype with your home phone world aren't cheap, with prices in the $120-140 range depending on what you opt for. On one hand, there's the Cordless DUALphone, which connects to both a standard phone line and to your computer via USB. This lets you receive calls through a traditional telephone service provider and through Skype using the same handset.

A second option from Linksys connects to your PC and skips the old phone service. A base station connects to your phone via USB and provides cordless communication with the base station to provide caller ID, as well as SkypeIn and SkypeOut, in addition to the standard Skype contact calling. The Linksys Cordless Internet Telephony Kit is $129 as I'm writing this.

A third option is free, assuming you have a Pocket PC phone. Skype for Pocket PC will put all your Skype calls wherever your Pocket PC has reception. There's a version for Nokia's Symbian phones coming soon, but so far I haven't seen it.

Si writes, My friend and I want to record some podcasts to make available for people to download for nothing. The only problem is, I live in Devon, and he lives on the Isle of Man. If you don't know the geography - that's quite a way away! We both have half decent PC's etc, so I just wanted your advice on how we might record a podcast live with each other as if in the same room?

There's currently no perfect solution for recording a conversation remotely. If you have the budget, installing a digital phone line on both ends will make the conversation sound amazing. Since it doesn't sound like your podcast endeavor is currently backed by a wealthy sponsor, you probably need to consider one of two more affordable options. You either need to have the conversation in real time over a traditional phone line or voice over IP solution, recording each part of the conversation separately (called a double-ender for reasons I'll explain below) and then piece the resulting audio files together or you compromise audio quality somewhat and go for the simplicity of using a VoIP solution for both talking and recording.

Recording both ends of the call independently is going to provide the best sounding result, assuming both your and your friend are technically astute enough to configure audio recording gear. This is called a double-ender, because recording takes place at both ends of the conversation rather than as one central recording. In this kind of arrangement, you setup a microphone at each end, with headphones to hear the other side of the call if you're using a software phone or just use the handset on your telephone to hear your friend's side of the conversation. Since timing the start of the recording is less than scientific, it's a good idea to agree on a keyword or phrase to designate the beginning of the discussion for later editing. Each of you hits record on your end. When the conversation is complete, save the files from each side of the call and send the missing side of the conversation to the person doing the editing. It's fairly easy to match up the conversation in software as long as neither person did too much interrupting throughout the call.

A second and generally easier way to record a conversation over long distances is to use a software VoIP solution. Skype gets all the attention in this space because it was the first app to come along and make it easy, but for recording I prefer Gizmo Project. The software includes a built in record feature, which makes it easy to capture the entire conversation. The downside is any network hiccups may result in some delay in one side of the call, but the simplicity is outstanding.

If you want to get into more complicated methods of recording VoIP calls, check out Doug Kaye's Skype setup, which includes an awesome diagram for recording VoIP calls using external hardware.

GotVoice

People who know me well are aware that I never check the voicemail on my cell phone. The recordings stack up and gradually drop off after the expiration date because I hate not being able to skip to the end of 30 seconds of um, yeah, I just called, to say, um, can you call me back, um talk to you later..." If I see your number in my missed calls, I'll assume you called for a reason, call back and get the details in less time than it takes to dial. Contrast this with my Vonage service, which takes messages and emails them to my inbox. I love getting voicemail in my inbox. I can listen. When I realize there's nothing important beyond, call me back, I'll call back. Every once in awhile, I'll get a meaningful message providing details and the service pays off, but the email option puts me in control. Today, I saw a new service featured on Download Squad that does exactly this for any voicemail account. GotVoice is configurable to turn any voicemail service into an email deliverable or via their online interface. A scheduling feature checks messages twice daily or on your own custom schedule, cleaning out your inbox automatically. For the time being the accounts are free, which makes it even more valuable as an improvement to any voice mail service. This actually makes the voicemail on my cell phone useful again. The asking for some vague demographic information at the end, which is presumably for marketing purposes to support the service and are answered with the same honesty that any perpetually 29-year-old woman might convey. Current availability is limited to North America. An optional download manages messages outside your email inbox.

Tom writes, "I just canceled my land line and am now pure cellular. I read about a gadget somewhere that acts like a router for your cell phone in your home, using the existing wiring. When you come home at night you plug your cell phone into the gadget and all of your house phones are now ports to your cell phone. It's the best of both worlds - you get the cheap cell phone service and can still use all of those land line phones scattered around your home. Have you heard about this? If so can you point me toward a vendor?"

There are a number of solutions that link cell phones to landline connections. Most of the current batch of options perform a hand-off from an active cell phone account to an active landline service provider, effectively forwarding the call to the landline so that you aren't subject to the issues associated with poor connectivity and dead spots in the home. There are two solutions I found that truly pass the phone call to a landline handset.

Michael writes: "I have been thinking about going VoIP at home, but we have a DSL connection. So, my question is this: Would I save any money doing going VoIP? Would I not still have to pay for a LAN line on top of my DSL connection and the VONAGE or whatever service fees? I mean VoIP seems to be more tailored to those who have broadband Cable, or am I just mis-informed?"

The short answer to this question is yes, VoIP works with DSL. Many of the phone companies currently providing DSL and landline phone services are in the process of unbundling DSL and phone services. Depending on who your DSL provider is, you may now choose to get only DSL service instead of needing to pay for phone services to get DSL service. The rate for DSL service unbundled from phone service is fairly competitive with cable Internet rates. There is no special LAN connection required for VoIP. The VoIP phone adapter I use connects into my router just like another PC would. The key is to compare costs of local service to costs of VoIP service before making the connection. You also need to look at what other services you need to connect over your phone lines, like satellite television, for instance. Read on for a more indepth look at VoIP vs. tranditional phone service.

As a DSL customer, you need to look at the features you get from the phone company now compared to the features you get for subscribing to a VoIP provider. Qwest currently offers a package including features like voicemail, call waiting and caller ID for $35 (plus various taxes and access fees) or their most basic service for $30 (plus taxes and access fees). If you spend money on long distance, that's an additional cost on top of the base service. Compare that to Vonage, for instance, which includes all the same premium features found in Qwest's more expensive plan at a cost of just over $27 (including tax). In the Vonage plan, you get long distance at no extra charge. If the cost of the VoIP service is more than the combined cost of your current local phone service and long distance service, it probably doesn't make sense to switch to a VoIP plan.

Other VoIP related articles:

Is VoIP the Right Solution for You?

VoIP over Home Phone Wiring

VoIP Disaster Recovery Planning

Cellphone to Landline Converter

I have no complaints about my Vonage experience so far. The call quality is great. Getting voice mail messages in my email is a dream come true (if you leave one, I may actually listen to it now). I can send faxes using a traditional fax machine. I'm able to place calls using a 900 MHz cordless phone (I don't use 2.4 MHz because it interferes with my WiFi) or any other standard landline phone. The only thing that had me a little perplexed was how I could easily connect several phones the way I would in a normal landline configuration.

I had a revelation during a trip to the drugstore a few blocks from my house. The phone wiring in the house could be terminated at my Linksys Phone Adapter the same way the phone company brings their lines to the house and ties in to all the internal wiring of the house. Both scenarios route all the wiring in the house back to a central office. The traditional landline service routes underground or to a pole along the street back to the CO while the VoIP method connects to my router headed for the servers at Vonage. This same concept should also work for other VoIP providers, although Vonage is the only one I tested.

I currently live in an 80-year-old house. The phone wiring has been updated, but the routing of the wiring is a jumble of three different incoming lines routed to different sections of the house. This didn't matter to me when I moved in because we don't have a landline phone. In newer houses, this won't be a problem because all phone wiring should terminate at a central location.

Most home phone wiring is made up of two pairs of wires: red/green and yellow/black. In most cases, the primary line you'll want to connect to route your VoIP service throughout the house is the red/green pair. If the house was wired using category 5 cabling, green might be replaced with white-with-blue-stripe wires and red with blue-with-white-stripes. The yellow and black wiring pair will not be needed.

Required Tools and Supplies

Before starting, I needed a few supplies from the hardware store. I purchased a roll of Category 3 cable, a box of 3 port telephone splice connectors and a phone wire junction box with modular plug. You could get by without using the junction box, but I'm lazy and don't enjoy connecting RJ-11 ends to raw wire. The junction box makes it easy to quickly connect your household wiring to the phone adapter. Note: If you plan on connecting the VoIP phone adapter directly to a wall jack (see below) you probably won't need these supplies.

Several tools are also required. To make the connections, you need a Phillips head screwdriver and wire strippers. To finish up, you may want a cordless drill to fasten the junction box and phone adapter to the wall, as well as some coaxial cable straps to router your Ethernet cable along the wall between the phone adapter and your router.

Make sure there's an outlet in close proximity to your phone wiring (to power the phone adapter) or else get an extension cord long enough to reach.

Making the VoIP to Cat3 connection

First, find the location where external phone lines come in to your house. Determine which lines are internal and which lines route back to the phone company. Disconnect the phone lines coming into the house from the phone company because they might cause noise on the line (or damage the VoIP adapter) and they aren't being used anyway (Word of Caution: Do not attempt this if you still have an active line with the phone company, it will cause your landline service to cease functioning).

Connecting VoIP via a Wall Jack

If your phone lines all originate on the same copper pair from the phone company, this is potentially your stopping point. As Gary S. points out in his experience with this : "First I disconnected the POTS line from the demarcation point in my home. It happened to be on the outside of my garage. Then I simply plugged the Vonage VoIP router into the nearest telephone jack. Since the phone system in the house is essentially a bus, that provided voip service to every phone that was plugged into the wall. Simple and free since I have a number of telephone patch cords, terminated with RJ11’s, laying around from various decommissioned devices."

The caveat to this method is that you lose usage of the phone jack you plugged into as a place to connect your phone, unless you add a splitter off of the jack. It's possible to centrally locate your VoIP box to keep all wall jacks clear, as described below.

Connecting VoIP at the Origin

Next I used some splice connectors to combine all of the various ends throughout the configuration to a single wire that ultimately connects to the junction box. An alternative is to connect each individual line to the junction box (up to 4 in the case of the junction box used in my example). Red wires connect to red wires; green connect to green.
If you already have a similar junction box in the house, connect red and green wires from the old junction box to the new one and disregard the part about coupling all the wires together with splice connectors.

Once all the internal wiring is connected, plug in the phone adapter, connect the Ethernet cable to the appropriate port on the adapter, and connect the RJ-11 modular plug from the junction box to the phone adapter.

Test your connections by plugging a phone into one of the wall jacks in your house. If you get dial tone, you're probably set. It's not a bad idea to place a call to your cell phone just to make sure everything is working.

The final step is to mount the junction box to the wall with the two bundled screws, secure the VoIP phone adapter so it won't come unplugged accidentally and fasten the Ethernet cable to keep it out of the way.

By tying into the phone lines in your home, VoIP passes the ultimate spouse acceptance factor, because it works everywhere the old landline worked, with the added bonus of no long distance charges.

John L. offers several additional suggestions for further improving your VoIP experience:

Keep your VoIP adapter safe in a lightning strike: Route the wiring backward through a surge protector, connecting the wall side of the connection to phone/modem and the line side directly into the VoIP adapter. Of course, it's also smart to make sure the power for the VoIP is connected to a surge protector too.

Ring Boosting: "Most consumer ATA units are not really equipped for this type of installation. Most do not provide as significant amounts of current while ringing or in normal operation as the telco (or other more expensive equipment) – If you have a lot of telephones that are not cordless (ie line voltage actually has to power the phone) or any old battery/bell ringers, outdoor ringers, etc. You might find that your phones do not ring every time you get a call, only some phones ring, or you cannot have more than 1-3 handsets on a call before things get quiet on you."

"If ringing is the issue (it typically is), the only ways to solve it are to remove phones from the circuit, reduce the total amount of wiring in the circuit (lower line resistance) or to add a “Ring booster” type device to the line. These devices cost anywhere from $100-$300 but are a far cry from rewiring your house! You can also of course just go with multi-handset cordless phones or the like which will reduce the number of phones on the circuit without reducing the number of handsets.

VoIP as a second line: "If you still keep a landline, but want to patch in your VoIP line to the Line 2 pair (the outside two wires – black/yellow), you can do that too! As before, you can either wire the red/green from the ATA to black/yellow in your [junction box], or you can plug it into any wall jack – the easiest way to do this is to buy one of those L1/L2 adaptors from Radio Shack that breaks out one phone jack into three plugs – one will be L1/L2 (normal), one will be L1 only, and one will be L2 only. Just plug the ATA into the L2 port and you won’t have to do any wiring at all!

Other VoIP related articles:

Is VoIP the Right Solution for You?

Will VoIP Work with DSL?

VoIP Disaster Recovery Planning

Cellphone to Landline Converter

There are five key points to determining whether VoIP meets your phone needs:

1) Service needs to be reliable.

Phone service is something we count on being there when we need it. When the power goes out, unless you use a powered phone, you can pick up the receiver and get dial tone. This is a comforting feeling, knowing you can reach people in an emergency. VoIP can't provide that level of reliability yet, unless you have a backup generator on your property. This isn't as vital with the prevalence of cell phones, but still a concern for some people. For VoIP to work reliably your power company and ISP must also be reliable. If either have frequent outages or frequent seasonal outages due to storms, VoIP may not be your best choice for phone service.

2) Sound quality needs to be exceptional

Cell phones are the one technology that we seem to accept poor service from. Calls still routinely drop and there are major dead areas with no service in many parts of North America. For VoIP, we rightfully create landline service expectations right down to call quality. If you try a VoIP service and get latency don't use it unless the service is free. Vonage and VoicePulse both deliver great call quality that meets or exceeds landline service.

3) Hardware requirements need to pass the spouse test and the newbie factor

This one is a little vague, but unless your spouse is a geek, he or she will not want to plug in a USB headset or handset and talk at the computer. Fortunately most VoIP services now offer alternatives that mimic or are landline phones. I chose Vonage for my home service specifically because I could use a traditional phone to place and receive calls.

4) It needs to be easily portable to a new residence

While cellular service is more portable than either landline or VoIP service, VoIP is a close second. In the case of my current Vonage setup, I can disconnect the Linksys Phone Adapter from my home network, connect it to another network and bring my phone number with me. Unlike landline service, I won't get charged a fee for the privilege of keeping the same number when I move from my current residence to a new one. Even better, for an extra fee Vonage will provide me with a second number in another area code for $4.99 per month, which might be attractive for people like me who live in one state and have family in another.

5) Pricing needs to be affordable

For me, this is where VoIP made the slam dunk. I get all the calling features of a landline phone service, including call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, and 3-way calling, as well as services like *69 that a traditional phone company might charge for. On top of traditional phone services, I get voicemail delivered to my email or to my cell phone and cool features like Click2Call from Vonage that let me select a number from my Outlook contacts and pre-load my phone to call the party without ever dialing. The price is more attractive than any landline service I've had in the last five years, with the added bonus of free long distance.

Many of the references I make here are in regards to the Vonage service, but similar features are available with most other commercial VoIP phone service providers.

Other VoIP related articles:

Will VoIP Work with DSL?

VoIP over Home Phone Wiring

VoIP Disaster Recovery Planning

Cellphone to Landline Converter

I've mentioned my history with voice over Internet Protocol phone services on several occasions. In 1999 I worked for a company that installed an enterprise call center unified messaging product that brought traditional phone lines into a Windows NT server and routed them across a local network, integrating voice services with email servers like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange Server. While this solution worked effectively for large companies requiring phone infrastructure for handling large call centers, the price started in the six figures range which meant home users had no hope.

Since then, I've dabbled in VoIP, watching new products come and go with limited success, as each new product failed to meet the expectations established by landline services from the progeny of Ma Bell. Even Vonage, the service I'm currently subscribed to, had some issues early on. When Skype appeared on the scene with a beta product in 2004, I knew VoIP finally worked well enough for people to consider it a viable alternative to traditional phone communications.

Skype is a decent software-based option for making calls between continents on the cheap or handling non-critical communication, but it falls down in the spouse acceptance factor (a benchmark any technology must pass to be used by non-geeks). It's hard to find a wired phone for placing calls with Skype and more people expect wireless communication with their cell phones through the use of a Bluetooth headset. At the moment, the two options for making Skype calls are either connected directly to the PC via a headset microphone or connected to the USB port via a wired handset. European users have a slight advantage here because there is a wireless handset option though a distributor that only sells in the EU. Add to Skype's frequently call latency issues producing an echo effect and the ability to find any user by searching the database for '*' and I couldn't recommend Skype as the legitimate successor to the Baby Bells.

Several services offer a cross between traditional landline phone service and the software based phone service offered by Skype. Qwest is trying to keep customers as they move from landline to VoIP by offering both services, although their site implies that the service is only available for small business customers. The Qwest service offerings include features like integration with email for additional charges on top of their core service. Verizon offers similar features for a flat $34.95 per month. Lingo may be the most comprehensive service for international calling, with several flat rate plans for anyone making large numbers of calls outside the United States and Canada. VoicePulse offers $24.99 pricing on its unlimited plan including free long distance, a traditional 10-digit phone number and a reasonably user-friendly Web interface. The main thing I don't like about these services is the confusing assortment of hacks required to get the equivalent of a standard phone handset. In some cases, you get a wired handset that plugs into your home network. In other cases, you can use a standard phone, but you need to order hardware from a specialty vendor. All this leads to my reason for choosing Vonage.

Vonage offers competitive pricing at $24.99 per month in, which includes unlimited long distance in the United States and Canada. Service is available to Canada, Mexico, parts of the United Kingdom and the United States. The Web interface works exceptionally well, with configurations for routing voicemail to my email, which is far better than having to dial a number to listen. The idea of getting all inbound communications in a central repository was one of the features that attracted me to the concept of unified messaging back in 1999 when I installed the enterprise call routing systems. Combining Outlook with Vonage voicemail and news aggregation via NewGator, I have everything combined to a point that's almost complete unification. But that wasn't what won me over.

In addition to owning Vonage, Cisco also owns consumer networking company Linksys. Just recently, Linksys started carrying wired and wireless routing products integrated with ports to connect a standard landline phone to the Vonage phone network. Linksys also carries a standalone analog phone-to-VoIP converter. The prices for these things are cheap. In most cases you can find the standalone product for $9.99 or less after rebate at places like Office Depot, Best Buy, and Frys. For $24.99 I can connect my 900 mHz phone, a fax machine, a standard wired handset, a 2.4 GHz phone (which doesn't play well with my wireless network) or any other phone compatible with traditional landline service. The service obeys all the rules of traditional service, like 11-digit dialing and 7-digit-dialing, as well as the now standard 10-digit dialing of cell phones. The call quality from Vonage is better than any landline service I've had in recent memory and the spouse acceptance factor of a service that looks and behaves like a "normal" phone is transparent.