New Phone #
We decided we needed a phone so we started looking into possible VoIP based connectivity.
I did a bit of research found out that one of the big telecommunications companies (Primus) offers Voice Over IP service called Lingo. So we signed up and within 48 hours we have the sleek broadband tlephone adapter in our hands. I can say that installation was not difficult, just plug your new broadband telephone adapter into the cablemodem and computer ethernet cable into broadband adapter. This was enough to get the phone working excellent, but their was an issue of getting the internet to work on the pc. So I called up their technical support after trying a variety of ip/dns/gateway settings in WinXP. The technician helped me change a few settings (ip, dns numbers) and poof everything worked.
I can say my first telephone conversation was not that bad over VOIP at all. There was no breakup or spazzing of the signal or noticeable lag. Everything was nice and seamless. To be honest if someone handed me the phone and I did not know any better then who would know you were talking over VOIP and not a regular phone line. So audio clarity was great, with no discernable latency or lag.
Let’s see what all do I get with this VOIP package…hmmmm….. I can see call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail, and voicemail to email right off the top of the list, all incoming calls are free (duh!), and all outgoing calls to anywhere in USA/Canada/Australia and most of the rest of the world is billed at 3 cents per minute ($1.80 per hour) which is damn cheap. Furthermore I get free calls to all other Lingo subscribers.
I think for $7.95 this is an unbeatable service.
