I may be an anomaly among people my age, but I have no desire to give up my home phone to just use my cell. Partially because I don’t get super great reception all around my house and partially because I just like having a normal phone.
Now my dilemma, I just wish I could consolidate my “telecommunication” bills down a bit. Right now we pay Cox for cable and internet, AT&T for our CallVantage service for the home phone, and T-Mobile for cell service. I want to get down to having to deal with fewer companies.Cox’s digital phone service is ridiculously expensive so that’s a no go, AT&T has yet to roll out Uverse completely here in Lakewood and I really like T-Mo’s cell service.
What I would really like to see would be T-Mobile offer a VoIP solution in the US. What a perfect way to compete against the entrenched incumbents and allow T-Mobile to offer a cell/home phone solution.Yes, I know they have HotSpot@Home, but their phone selection is rather limited and I like having a separate number for home.
It’s just not the same. Maybe one day they’ll see the potential.
What you could do is go VOIP on your own, port your number from CallVantage and get an SIP phone or ATA from someplace like voipsupply, and then go through les.net or broadband.com or something for your services. This is something I’m going to be trying out.
There’s Skype, too; you can get a phone that plugs directly to your home network with unlimited inbound/outbound calling to the US and Canada for a total of $90/yr.
Agreed. I much prefer for people to call my house and leave a message if I’m not there than to call my cell phone. I’ll get a message on my Blackberry when I get a voicemail at home, so I can choose to check my messages when I want to. It’s a lot easier than people asking why I ignore them when they call my cell.
We recently switched from Vonage to Comcast Digital Voice since we got a good deal on a Comcast TV/Internet/Phone bundle. Our cell service is with AT&T, so there’s no way to integrate all of them. Comcast, Cox and Time Warner supposedly have a deal with Sprint to offer a bundled wireless service, but I’d like to avoid Sprint at all costs.
I could get a deal on AT&T CallVantage with my AT&T Wireless service, but there’s no combined billing, just a service discount.
What’s a home phone number?
Chad: While an interesting concept, I’d rather just stick with someone stable to provide my VoIP service…especially in light of what just happened to SunRocket. I also tried the Skype thing for a bit, but the fact that it doesn’t usually work when you have to use touch-tones for menus is a no go for me.
John: I agree. no point in the $5.00 discount if there’s no combined billing, especially if you’re happy with your current service. Now if they had both, that would be great. I just have CallVantage on auto-pay so it’s not too bad. I just hate AT&T as a company though so I can’t switch my cell service to them.
Jeremiah: ah my old friend, it’s an ancient for of communication that died out with the Mesopotamians I believe
One bill to rule them all.
You’re asking for big brother. You realize that, right?
Ryan Ryan, big brother already exists, I’m just asking to pay him in one place