[geeks] Voip options

[Mark G Thomas]

Hi Dan,

 On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 01:14:56AM -0600, Dan Duncan wrote:
> I used Vonage for some time and went to a similar service from my cellphone
> provider but I will soon be changing providers and will lose the option so
> I'm looking for advice.  I don't know that I want to go into the VOIP
> business, hardware-wise, but I am looking for options.  Has anyone used
> Magic Jack and is it possible to seriously lock it down by running on a thin
> client or a VM?  (The thought of a windoze pc on my network makes me
> shudder.)
> 
> My typical usage is hundreds of minutes a month on conference calls (mostly
> toll free numbers) and occasional spikes of long distance numbers (mostly on
> call pages and calls to field engineers, but also family) and I already have
> analog phones throughout the house so I'd like something that accomodates
> that.  If not, I guess I can go back to vonage.  Is skype practical for that
> sort of usage?

I've had nothing but positive results with Vitelity for SIP VOIP service.

  http://www.vitelity.com/index.php?p=retailserv

  "We offer Local DIDs throughout the US & Canada. We offer Unlimited 
  Inbound for $7.95 US48 or PPM (Pay-per-minute) for 1.2" per minute 
  plus $1.49 US48 / $2.75 Canada per month."

For extra flexibility you can run Asterisk on an appliance or used PC,
or if you don't care about running your own in-house voicemail and writing 
your own dialing plans, just use a SPA device to interface to analog phones
or use SIP hardware and/or software phone clients. I've been setting up
friends and clients with Linksys SPA8000 devices, in some cases registering
directly with Vitelity and in others throwing a local Asterisk server into
the mix.

You need to provide and support your own device, however they offer a 
web portal to open trouble tickets and interact directly with the 
technical folks on their end, if needed.

Mark

-- 
Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com)
Web: http://mgtinternet.com/
Tel: +1-215-512-0112 US: 877-512-0112