Wayne D's Blog

I keep hearing about people who don't have a home phone and after looking at the cost of my home phone service I'm wondering if I should ditch my phone wired too. I pay $25.87 a month for a bare phone service with no features. I get perhaps four calls a month from people I want to talk to, the rest are hang ups when we let them roll over to the answering machine. I already have a minimalist cell phone plan paying $11.50 a month. We only have a cell phone in case off car trouble. Both my wife and I drive cars older than five years and having something in case of unexpected breakdown is pretty much required.

I'd drop the home phone entirely except for the times when the kids are home by themselves so what are the options? Rogers home phone is out of the question, they really don't have anything reasonably priced. Their baseline price is $36.31 a month before taxes because they don't offer a phone without call display. They also don't include their $5.95 system access fee in their published price of $29.95 a month. Even with their $10 off a month promotion for 12 months their before tax price is above what I currently pay. Strangely they also have a $1 fee for the 5 cents a minute long distance plan that I currently get for free. Call display is an absolute necessity if you don't have a physical answering machine because otherwise you can't avoid the telemarketers.

I decided to search through some of the options for internet based phone services. Skype costs $2.95 a month but because Skype hasn't worked out a deal with a Canadian telco they can't offer Canadian numbers for incoming calls. I suppose I could give people my cell number for incoming calls and only use Skype for outgoing calls but that seems unnecessarily complicated. It also means if someone calls and wants to chat I'd have to get them off the phone and call them back so I didn't use up my scarce wireless minutes. There are a couple of different services that offer an incoming Canadian number which adds from $5 to $15 a month to the price and adds the complexity of having to deal with two companies. The added issue of Skype's proprietary protocol makes using a standard VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) to ATA (Analogue Terminal Adapter) box that allows you to use your current telephones with your internet based phone service problematic. There are workarounds but they require using two boxes based on my limited research. I don't think the extra complexity is worth the $2 a month it saves. If you want to use internet based phone services a VOIP ATA is almost a necessity. Without this handy little box you are dependent on your computer if you want to make or answer calls.

There is a free VOIP service offered under a number of different names including clearpointtel.ca available that has a Windows only software phone program. They offer but discourage the use of hardware VOIP phones because they are an ad supported service. It looks like the cost for a VOIP ATA is about $150. I am looking to replace my home phone service and a software only solution isn't really what I want. There are a large number of VOIP phone providers that offer service at different price points with different packages. I looked at another providers website and one of the prominently featured testimonials mentioned how the provider had given a different area code than the user had requested, not a good sign. I found the reviews at whichvoip.com to be helpful. ITP provides a 500 outgoing minutes a month plan for $9.99 which includes an ATA adapter for your phone. With their free first month of service and free 12th month of service you can get phone service for $99 a year including many of the additional services that other providers charge for.

The risk you take going with a low cost VOIP provider is that they company will fail and you will be without phone service. The other thing you need to keep in mind is that 911 services vary between VOIP providers, 911 calls work but some VOIP providers provide E911 services which send your address details to emergency services. With E911 you are responsible for updating your address details with the provider. Without E911 emergency services can't locate you if you can't tell them the address so it's important to read the companies 911 disclaimer carefully.

The other question is whether to take my current phone (port) number or not. I'm leaning towards not porting but instead getting a new phone number, that way the two dozen people who do call me get it while the thousands of telemarketers who currently have my current number don't get to call me.