A question for anyone that has Vonage, or another VOIP phone carrier

[KitchenWitch]

If one wanted to keep their land line and get the VOIP as a second line, would that work?

[AccessGranted]

1. Yeah...you could do that (Woo Hoo - Hoo Hoo Hoo)

I just got Vonage and it's hooked up through my high speed internet modem. It's not plugged into any phone jacks, so you could have a regular phone line through a regular phone company. Is that what you mean? But why would you want to? Vonage is supercheap with a bunch of free features and the sound clarity is way better than I had with Verizon. Verizon can kiss my butt - woo hoo.

[KitchenWitch]

2. If one should lose power and need 911 services

they would be SOL on VOIP. Plus I have need for the second line anyway.

[AccessGranted]

3. Well Everybody in my House Has a Cell Phone So . . .

I'm hoping that if there is an emergency and we had to call 911, somebody's cell phone will be used. I had the same question, but there are five of us - two have Nextel and three have Cingular and most of the time there are at least two or three of us home at the same time. I had the same question when I got Vonage but the amount I would save on my phone service outweighed my paranoia LOL and as I said we hardly over use the phone in the house anyway. My phone bill went from about $88.00 per month to $24.99 per month - a savings of over $750.00 a year. But you are right, if you only had Vonage and your power went out, you'd be up the creek without a paddle in an emergency.

[KitchenWitch]

4. I am a little paranoid -

I have disability issues, and I would more at peace with a landline.

[AccessGranted]

5. I Understand

If you have a disability, Vonage may not be such a good idea because your internet modem could fail or there could be a power failure. I know how you feel, I have degenerative arthritis and have already had one major surgery. I sometimes lose my balance, especially on stairs and I'm always scared I'll fall. I guess I worry too much.

[Fredda Weinberg]

6. I keep a landline extension for when the ISP goes down

Never mind power ... even cable service isn't 100% reliable. My brother has the land line and it didn't make sense to run extra wiring for his temporary guest (that would be me), so I made his PC the firewall and I run my computers behind it, using just a hub for the extra connectors. My Vonage phone includes an extra RJ-45 jack, but I don't use it. I did want my own phone number and voicemail - Vonage gives all the extras for a reasonable monthly fee.

Last week, after my brother had gone to bed, I started working on my thesis and wouldn't you know it? I could resolve URLs, but nothing was pingable. I moved my phone from the Vonage unit to the RJ-11 cable hanging conveniently near my doorway and got Cablevision on the line. I wouldn't have wanted to make the call with my cell phone, which has limited minutes and lousy reception indoors.

So the tech was able to restart the cable modem remotely and schedule service for the next day. I made progress on my application development. All was well.

[mwooldri]

7. Works good for redundancy... and great if you have an alarm or Tivo.

My DirecTv Tivo box is having a hard time working with the Lingo service. I don't have BellShite anymore - goodjob since I don't want service from the DeathStar, or the Ronco PotatoPeeler. More often than not it will fail to dial out to Tivo. It has worked once in the last 20 days. A miracle!

If you have a house alarm they most likely require you to have a landline. And yes people mention that having a landline is best for 911 service or for when the power is out. A cellphone is a good #2 for 911 service, especially as my cellphone will apparently tell the police where I am when I call (and on one occasion I did, and they spotted me - on the highway - after a deer splatted into me). 911 service exists on Voip but it's not real 911 service. My family know the 911 service on the 'landline' phones is not the real thing.

Mark.

[displacedtexan]

8. For $200, you can get 8 hrs of cordless phone/modem backup power

http://store.yahoo.com/herrington-catalog/e924.html

We just installed this power unit to back up our computers,
Vonage phone, etc.