I recently bought a Magic Jack to evaluate, and I finally got around to moving the house phones over to it. Unfortunately it is not yet possible to port your number to Magic Jack, so for the time being I have forwarded my Packet 8 number to the Magic Jack number. We will see how it goes. In the mean time I am looking at ViaTalk again since I can port my number to them and it will end up being about 1/3 of the price I am paying for Packet 8. They also have many more features that Packet 8 has not even dreamed about yet. Just worried about the stability, but I will get around to that.
I called Verizon (my local carrier) to talk to them about getting a basic message rate line. Their website indicates that it is possible to get a line for around $6/month. That $6 turns into over $21 with all the taxes and fees. That basic message rate line charges $0.10 for every local call. It is no wonder everyone is switching to VoIP and cable. I complained a little and the rep was insisting that VoIP was terribly unreliable and all the usual arguments. I actually got made fun of by the rep for complaining about $21/month being too expensive for a featureless phone line that costs at least $0.10 for every call.
I called DirecTV and asked about updating over broadband rather than phone line. They still do not support it, but do support VoIP by putting *99 as a prefix. Well, that means that I still need VoIP and can not move to a Cellular only solution. I checked the last Packet 8 bill and we had 904 minutes for the month of October. That’s way too much money to spend on cellular anyway. Right now we spend about $8/month for prepaid. So anyway, Packet 8 worked with DirecTV without that prefix, so I put the prefix in and connected the DirecTV to Magic Jack. I’ll see how that went tomorrow.
The biggest downfall of Magic Jack is the inability to port a number to it. Without monthly fees I would feel a little hesitant to do that anyway. I’m just so used to paying something every month to make sure that my phone number is mine, and would worry if Magic Jack went out of business, or just decided that advertising based VoIP was not profitable, that my number would also disappear.
I also have a Grand Central account and looked at that again. From what I can tell they plan to allow number porting once they leave beta stage. Knowing Google, that probably means in 2015. I can’t wait for that. Still is a great service. It is useful for screening calls and is what I use to hand out to places that want my phone number as an ID or to process a sale at a store. That would solve the problem of our home phone number. I could port to them and let it forward to me forever. I understand they plan to charge something after it comes out of beta. That’s also an unknown that I do not like, but probably would be willing to pay.
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I love the idea of Voip myself. I don’t have the stability or connection that I’d like to have however. For the time being I’ve forgotten about it. I plan to try the magic jack as soon as I am able however.
I love magic jack, I don’t think it was really made for only home use, I mainly use it on the road because I can call my family for free. At home I personally prefer vonage, been with them for about 5 years now. Just wish they would get call blocking.
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