Voip
 

Heads up for those who love viatalk.com....just noticed they have a one day sale at half off...$7.97 month for home phone (also can be used as an app on your cell)
Equipment free

For what its worth, I've used ViaTalk for more than 5 years at our NY home and have been very happy with it. I particularly like the extensive capabilities they have to block unwanted calls. You do need a good solid Internet connection with enough upload bandwidth, but most every high-speed Internet providers offer that nowadays. I'd say 1 megabit per second upload would be a practical minimum for most households, but of course more is better (up to a point).
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bc

I had ViaTalk in New Mexico for 3 years. Had a lot of problems with it probably because I had a slow broadband speed. I went to Ooma when we moved here and have had no problems at all even with basic Comcast broadband. You have to buy an Ooma unit up front ($129 on Amazon) but then the service is less than $4 per month.

Can't go wrong with Magic Jack.. I believe $39.00 for the first year. Less for subsequent years. I have several hundred hours on our line with absolutely no problems. That amount includes the hardware

I also have had Magic Jack for 10 years. Great product minimal cost. I like it because when I am out of the country I can call the States for free.

Back when the old SunRocket voip provider went belly-up, many of the refugees descended on ViaTalk as an alternative and ViaTalk could not deal very well with the massive influx of new customers. Perhaps your experience was during that timeframe. Most, if not all of the issues were solved with infrastructure upgrades some years ago. Anyway, I also have an Ooma line. ViaTalk is for my home phone, Ooma for my business. Both are fine. My boss had MagicJack and it was always difficult to carry on a conversation with him when he was using a speakerphone. It was pretty much a half-duplex situation (I could only talk when he stopped and vice versa). As such I'd be leery of MagicJack.
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bc

I just got my Magic Jack and I have a question...

I've done the number port, and I got an email from MJ telling me we won't be getting incoming calls for a week or two until the port is complete. I didn't know that when I bought it, but I can probably live with it okay. However...the voice volume seems very low on this end. (Apparently it's okay on the other end.) Could this volume issue be related to the port? Is there a chance it might improve when the port is complete?

Finally, if I'm not satisfied with MJ, will I able to simply go to Ooma instead...and still keep my current number?

Thanks.

P.S. Two more questions. 1) Does Ooma also have a time period where you don't receive any incoming calls? The more I think about it this is pretty bad. The caller gets the typical message to record a message, but the call or message is not recorded in any way by MJ. 2) I see quite a few different pieces of hardware on the Ooma site. If I would decide to go with Ooma, what is the basic equipment I should purchase?