Tell me about VOIP

[paulney]

I have a couple of questions about VOIP and Vonage service (or if there's a better plan - I'd like to hear about it, too)

Let's say I currently have a landline with unlimited local calling from SBC. I make almost no calls outside my local area, and I have a specific international provider for my dirt-cheap international calls.

Is there any way VOIP will benefit me in thsi situation?

Now let's say I want another line inmy house for my home-based business, and I'll be most likely making quite a few calls outside my local area. I want to have 2 lines in the house: keep the old number for personal calls, and have another number for business. Can VOIP do that? Have 2 lines on one box?

What do I need in terms of equipment? If I buy a Linksys wireless-G router with VOIP ports, would that be enough to hook my phones to it?

Thanks.

 

[Zim Hosein]

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/voip

 

[paulney]

Thanks. Off to read that.

 

[FoBoT]

i use sunrocket
i get second phone number (in an atlanta area code for in-laws) for the same price as vonage. and if i pay for a whole year, the price is even better, haven't gotten around to that yet. i wanted to try it out month-month first.

it works fine. we have 3 cell phones including one we keep in the house as backup, so if it gets too crappy, we just use our cell phones

sunrocket gives you a "gizmo" (a specialized router) for free and i just configure it for my ISP and then plug my SMC barricade wireless router behind it

sunrocket is "rumored" to be preparing to active the "Gizmo"'s second line port, maybe for free/you would then be able to have a second line. currently i think you would need a second gizmo for a 2nd line. but you can have multiple phone numbers on the first line, so it just depends on if you mean simultaneous use or not

you need a good ISP to support good quality

check your connection with this test:

http://www.testyourvoip.com/

this test is representative of my experience/quality

 

[paulney]

Ok, so if I don't expect a huge volume of calls, I could have 2 phone numbers on the same line, I just won't be able to use them simultaneously.
This sounds neat.

So, if I get this ATA box from Vonage, I need to plug it into a router, and that's what Linksys with VOIP ports is for, right?