VoIP works for me

I am just tickled with how well my VoIP service has worked out for my in-laws while their visiting from Canada. My father-in-law spent a lot of time making calls to Canada for free and loved it. Except for a glitch when a bad storm came through and fried my cable modem, the service works exceptionally well when I have Internet access. I'm pre-paying a flat rate every 3 months (roughly $22/mo) for the VoIP service that includes unlimited long distance to anywhere in the US and Canada. How sweet is that? I'm thinking about switching plan to pre-paying for two full years (roughly $16/mo) and be done with it. I appreciate the fact that ViaTalk does not have pass-through charges, such as the bogus recovery fee, like other carriers.

I'm using ViaTalk. They sent me a free Linksys phone adapter to hook up to my wireless router and cable modem. It was a piece of cake to plug in 3 cables and I was off making phone calls. I think it took less than 3 minutes to look at the diagram and start connecting the cords. The catch is to make sure I ship the phone adapter back whenever I decide to stop using ViaTalk. The penalty for not returning the equipment is around $50. I got rid of my Bellsouth phone service altogether and plugged my cordless phones into the Linksys adapter. No compatibility issues there.

I guess VoIP is not for everyone. You have to make sure you have a back up plan in case your Internet service is down or if ViaTalk is doing one of its maintenance routines. Since we have our cell phones, it's not a big deal. You also have to trust the e-911 service. I made sure my address is correct on the ViaTalk website so that the correct 911 service will be reached. One of the coolest features is the $3.95/mo virtual phone number. ViaTalk only offers virtual numbers for US cities right now. I am hoping that they will eventually offer the local virtual phone number option for Canada calling areas. I can sign up for a virtual number for Toronto so my in-laws can call that number as a local call and still be able to reach us in the US without incurring a international charge on their phone bill. That would be sweet. I think only Vonage offers the Canada virtual numbers. But for now, I get everything I need in a phone service - voicemail (which I can download, listen on my PC as wav files, and save/delete), call forwarding, three-way calling, free 411 directory service, etc. The voice quality is clear. I get a slight echo or delay when calls are coming from overseas or from cell phones with poor signals.

The best part of the deal is no more long distance charges - ever. Between ViaTalk and my cell phones, I'm golden. Gotta love the VoIP concept.