Ditch the internet phone?
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So it looks like I'll be switching my internet service from Spectrum to NH Broadband. Spectrum has increased my bill four times since last fall and their performance seems to be lagging. Getting a lot of notices about slow load speeds on youtube.
As I may have mentioned in the past, I'm not a phone person. I've probably used my internet phone twice in the past 2 months. So I'm thinking of ditching it. That will leave me with the cell phone, which grudgingly, I'll have to leave on all the time -- and remember to charge. Adding internet phone to my new NH Broadband account will be around $30/mo.
So, a poll:
- Keep the internet phone
- Ditch the internet phone
Also, I can save $20/mo by providing my own wifi-router. Poll #2:
A) Pay the $20/mo for NH Broadband router
B) Save $20/mo and supply my own router -
tl;dr:
- Ditch the internet phone
- Supply your own modem and router.
Guess the question is what the internet phone buys you. I'll share our scenario...
We used to have an ATT landline. It got unreliable. The telephone company infrastructure was old and wires kept breaking/getting chewed by squirrels. It also got really expensive. It was much cheaper to ditch ATT and switch our home phone number to Xfinity voice service, aka internet phone. Our house is in a semi-dead zone when it comes to a mobile signal, so we felt we couldn't drop the "landline" altogether. But it wasn't perfect either, as we used to get relatively frequent power outages. Power goes out, no internet, so no "home" phone. But we made do.
FF some years and we get a better, but still not entirely reliable mobile signal. Now though, we can do wi-fi calling, which is basically our cell phones turned into internet phones while we are in the house. We put our phones in airplane mode, connect to our wifi and we're good.
We moved our old "home" number to be Mr wtg's cell number; I already had a separate cell number. This works fine for us, as we have our Panasonic cordless phone system that we can bluetooth our cell phones to. It has five handsets so we can leave those all over the house and pick up calls from our cell phones from anywhere. More on those later... Still has the power outage issue (no internet, no wifi calling), but most of the time we can actually get a good enough connection to get a mobile call through.
We've had our own modem and router for a long time. We've saved a ton of money in the long run because their monthly rental is pretty high.
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tl;dr:
- Ditch the internet phone
- Supply your own modem and router.
Guess the question is what the internet phone buys you. I'll share our scenario...
We used to have an ATT landline. It got unreliable. The telephone company infrastructure was old and wires kept breaking/getting chewed by squirrels. It also got really expensive. It was much cheaper to ditch ATT and switch our home phone number to Xfinity voice service, aka internet phone. Our house is in a semi-dead zone when it comes to a mobile signal, so we felt we couldn't drop the "landline" altogether. But it wasn't perfect either, as we used to get relatively frequent power outages. Power goes out, no internet, so no "home" phone. But we made do.
FF some years and we get a better, but still not entirely reliable mobile signal. Now though, we can do wi-fi calling, which is basically our cell phones turned into internet phones while we are in the house. We put our phones in airplane mode, connect to our wifi and we're good.
We moved our old "home" number to be Mr wtg's cell number; I already had a separate cell number. This works fine for us, as we have our Panasonic cordless phone system that we can bluetooth our cell phones to. It has five handsets so we can leave those all over the house and pick up calls from our cell phones from anywhere. More on those later... Still has the power outage issue (no internet, no wifi calling), but most of the time we can actually get a good enough connection to get a mobile call through.
We've had our own modem and router for a long time. We've saved a ton of money in the long run because their monthly rental is pretty high.
said in Ditch the internet phone?:
This works fine for us, as we have our Panasonic cordless phone system that we can bluetooth our cell phones to. It has five handsets so we can leave those all over the house and pick up calls from our cell phones from anywhere. More on those later...
I have a spare Panasonic system - base station and five handsets - lying fallow in a box in the basement. It's yours if you want it. They may need new rechargeable batteries, as the ones that are in there were used for a time, but those can be obtained quite cheaply.
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Oh, and you can set up a Google Voice number for free. I have one so I can give that out to people I don't want to have my mobile phone number. I don't use Google for much of anything; not sure what privacy stuff I might be giving up by having it, but well...whatever.
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@bernard -
when you say internet phone, I assumed it was something through Spectrum. Do you mean a phone number through something like Ooma?edit: I just re-read your OP. If you want to keep a "landline", instead of going with the NH Broadband option you could do something like Ooma. i haven't checked their monthly cost for basic service, but it used to be quite reasonable.
Though given how little you use it, you probably could get rid of it altogether.
