We have had a magicjack phone for almost two years, since when it first came out in early 2008, and we love it. We travel alot, and even when home here in TV we are out alot, and so we mostly use our two cell phones; but for making calls when we are at home, listening to or recording conference calls, etc, the magicjack phone is great. We have good sound quality and use a phone that also has two extention phones, so we actually have three phones around our home that all are on the single magicjack line, and the signal is fine even when we are outside on our lanai. We only pay $19.99 per year to renew the service, including long distance, voice mail, etc.
Another great option is the 'Google voice' service - it allows you to get a phone number from any area code that you want, which is individual to you, but you direct the calls that are made to that phone number to any other phone that you have. For example, my cell phone is a Kentucky phone number (which is where I lived before TV), which I need to keep for business reasons; however, I have a local 352 area code google voice number that allows me to have a local number to use for here in The Villages; but when someone calls that number, it actually rings my Kentucky cell phone (and it also rings my magic jack phone). I can also make calls from my Kentucky cell phone by accessing my google voice number, so that to the recipient of my call they see an incoming call from a local phone number, rather than from my Kentucky phone number, even though I am calling from my Kentucky cell phone. This alleviated my previous need of having two separate cell phones in order to have a local phone number. I had been concerned about having multiple cell phones because of concerns about the amount of electro-magnetic signals I was subjecting myself to.
I also have google voice phone numbers for some other area codes where I do alot of business, allowing me to make it simple for people to call me using a number that is local to them. They all ring to my single cell phone, and our magicjack phone, as explained above.
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