[TriLUG] Digital phone recomendations

Barry Gaskins barry.gaskins at gmail.com
Fri Jan 20 21:41:22 EST 2006


   Hi Everyone,

   My wife wants to save some money and get digital phone service.  We are
currently paying about $50 per month to BellSouth for local phone and a few
dollars a month to Quest for what little long distance we use.  My wife and
daughter are using virgin Mobile for there cell phones (which they plan to
keep).  We have roadrunner cable / broadband.  I have a coyote linux
firewall feeding into network hubs feeding every room with internet (windows
boxes for wife/kids and linux boxes in my computer room).

   The time warner digital phone service is $39  per month for unlimited
calls but that does not seem to be the best deal.  Vonage has a $25 per
month plan for unlimited calls that we are considering.  But the box they
show has 2 phone jacks on it.  I can't figure out if I can just run a phone
cord from one of those jacks into a phone plug in my wall to make all  of my
current phones work or would I be limited to plugging 2 phones into the 2
jacks on the box I would get from vonage.  Since I have a wife and 3 kids
and  8 phones in the house that does not sound very appealing.

   I would ultimately like to get a card to put into a computer and have a
linux box running asterisk that can do all the cool stuff that would enable
but my wife is tired of waiting for me to figure out all the stuff that
would require and I don't have any time for that right now.  I plan to do
that at some point but I am thinking about doing vonage or something just to
try it out for now.

   So does anybody have any suggestions on what company to use or warnings
about what to avoid? Does anybody have their digital phone plugged into the
house phone wiring to make all the regular phones in your house work?

   Thanks
   Barry Gaskins



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