Replacement for Home Land Line?

bennie Asked: Replacement for Home Land Line?

I’m in southern Indiana (USA). I have Vonage service for $20/month, which is pretty cheap, but I’m thinking I can do better. In our household we have 3 cell phones and the VOIP service. The only reason we have the VOIP is that many people know that number for us.

So, I want telephone service which is either a free or very cheap for incoming calls, and will allow me to transfer my existing number into the service. I don’t care at all about outgoing calls or international calls. My preference would be all calls go directly to a voice mail service and then receive a text message with the message transcribed and an e-mail with a wav file attachment.

Anybody know of any services like this?

Answers:

Matthew L Answered:
what you can do is get a basic landline phone from the telephone company AT&T for about $16…or get the magic jack which IS a landline for only $20/year…number or not, you can just update everyone of what your new number is and have it forwarded to your cell phone through a free service like GOOGLE’s PHONE service…anyone who calls you at that number can have that call forwarded to your cellphone and save yourself the $20/month.In actuality, even landline phones are going up in prices, although they are the most reliable.Otherwise what you can really do is work it out with even GOOGLE to “port” your number over.Your phone number just needs to be “ported” over from another provider, since AT&T had to make ALL phone numbers available to all providers instead of having a monopoly over it…if not, you can go with MAGIC JACK and ask them about porting a number over.

Jeff Answered:
Try VOIPO.  It’s a great service wherever you are in the U.S.  At $149 for 2 years it’s a much better price.  Even after you add in the FCC fees and taxes it’s still about $7.70 per month, much less than the $20 you’re paying now.  And it comes with caller ID, call waiting, and a couple dozen other extras.

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