Bye Bye Vonage phone line
Posted on 12 December 2008, at 11:19 am, by Wayne Schulz
I rarely make calls on my home phone. The only people who call on the home line are telemarketers and my college – both of who beg for money on pretty regular basis. Last week I received a letter from Vonage that my monthly Residential Basic 500 service bill (I only pay for the $15/mo 500 minute plan) was rising by $3.00 to $18 per month. For quite some time now it seems Vonage has been working to move their subscribers upstream to their $ 25/mo unlimited plan.
The problem I see with Vonage – and most wired carriers – is that their service completely duplicates my existing cell phone coverage. Why do I need two phones? In the last year I have received exactly zero calls on my home phone line. Everyone calls my cell phone (or even better – I encourage them to email). The only thing that I use my home phone line for is to call in when I receive a credit card in the mail to validate it and listen to some lengthy fifteen minute pitch that tries to sell me credit protection and a half dozen other services I don’t want or need.
So today I called AT&T and began the process to port my number OFF Vonage and onto my BlackBerry Bold.
Will I still receive telemarketing and college fundraising calls? Probably but I actually USE this line and it is only $9.99 per month on an AT&T family plan (plus the $30 BlackBerry data).
Vonage and all other wireline carriers need to wake up to the new reality. There’s not that much need anymore for wired phones. The concept of a phone on the wall in your kitchen is going to seem quaint in 5 or 10 years. People will eventually wake up to the fact that they’re duplicating service that is already being provided on their cell phone. What family doesn’t already have a cell phone for every member? Family plans are widely available (and used) which allow for minute sharing at only an additional $9.99 per user. These minutes can be used in the house or while on the go. Most weekend and evening time is free.
Cutting my home phone line is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I only kept it because I wanted a line for a babysitter to use in case I decided some day to use a babysitter for the kids. However I’ve suddenly awoken to the notion of how old fashioned a wired phone is. The fee increase by Vonage pushing me toward a higher plan was the last straw. Bye Bye home phone line. I haven’t used you in the last year and I won’t miss you.
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December 12th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I use my wired (wireless, though XD that’s oddly illogical) phone quite a bit. It’s included with my internet plan and it gives me free calling to a good bit of countries–one of which is the US, which is useful for calling my family! Around here (france) it’s also more expensive to call a cell phone than a normal phone, so I usually give my home phone number to anything that doesn’t need to reach me at any time.
I think cell phone plans here are a lot more expensive than in america, though, and I can see how it’s worth it for someone living there to get rid of it.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I agree to a point. However, when you live in a house with multiple people (for example, husband, wife and kids too young for cellphones) I prefer strongly to keep my cell phone reserved for “business” and not have casual friends etc calling on it as well. I still like to think of the cell for “important” calls and not just yip yap.
December 12th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I also canceled Vonage recently. I ported my number to OneSuite SuiteAdvantage. Their VoIP is software based and the software client is pretty awful actually, but since all I wanted to do was keeping the number active just in case someone tries to reach me via that number, that was fine with me. SuiteAdvantage costs only $3/m and sends voicemail to my email account. I also considered Skype, but with no number portability and no voicemail emailing(come on, Skype!), it was not viable option.