After having agonized over it for months researching the technology and comparing offerings from various I settled on AT&T cecause (a) They claimed their differentiator was call quality and (b) because I had a 30-day risk free trial and so I had nothing to lose. An added incentive was $19.99 per month offer during the current promotion.
So far, I have been quite pleased. The call quality has been very good. In fact my international calls have been perceptibly clearer than my original land-line service.
Pros
- Great price
- Lot of features
- Voice mail -- Can check online, can receive email notification of voice mail
- Call forwarding, waiting, caller id etc etc
- Can set up multiple phones to ring at the same time to locate you ...cool!
- When you lose power you'll lose phone service -- Since I lose power maybe once a year, I can live with that
- You have to dial 10 digits even to call your neighbor -- I think in some bigger locales people already have to do that even with their land-lines
- You may not be able to keep your existing phone number. This is dependent on whether or not the provider has coverage in my area. If I had gone with Vonage, for example, I could not have kept my existing number. This was a very important for me
If you are hesitating because the phone adapter that hooks to the cable/DSL modem has only one phone outlet, don't worry. You simply connect that to the traditional phone wall outlet. Since phone lines are wired in parallel all of them will go live!
