Glenn K. Garnes of Webradiousa.com provided me with the following guest post this morning about his choice in internet telephone. Glenn also has some great information on his website about the home office. Go check it out.
Internet telephony used to be a gimmick that only techno-geeks would ever play with, but now even mainstream telephone companies carry much of their telephone traffic over the Internet. Thanks to the availability of broadband speed connections consumers now have some powerful choices when it comes to telephone service.
I use a service called Vonage which is one of the better positioned Voice Over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) telephone providers. Vonage offers the same features you’d find in a well equipped phone package including voicemail, caller ID, call forwarding, etc., but does so for a fraction of what you’d pay to a mainstream telephone company. I used to pay $118.00/mo. for two full service phone lines and now I pay $45.00. The price difference mainly arises from the fact that Internet phone service is not currently subject to the same taxes that traditional phones are. While that may change in the future, there are still some very compelling reasons to use a service like Vonage.
With an Internet phone you can typically travel with your router, and have the phone ring anywhere you have a broadband connection like a hotel, a vacation home, or anywhere else you happen to be, including an Internet café! That cuts down on cell phone usage, and loss of service in areas where signal is not strong. The sound quality is indistinguishable from regular phone service, and the feature list is typically better, including the ability to have your voice mail messages sent to you as an email audio file.
If you haven’t looked into Internet telephone service you may want to check it out.
