VOIP

[2009 Edit:  Company went belly up and left a bunch of people in a bad situation with very little notice.  Have since moved on to Vonage and am happy enough with them.]

I've been using Sunrocket now for about a month, and have been almost completely happy. Sound quality is consistently good. One or two occasions where there was a lost packet or something and the voice was garbled. Another occasion where I sounded fine but the other party sounded a bit like he was in a large auditorium (he was not). But overall fine. Worth the minor problems with the low price and abundant features.

There are no setup charges, and they even send you a cordless phone system (if you click on the phone under the bird on the homepage). They promise to refund any of the unused yearly fee ($199) if you cancel, and they even sent a pre-paid return label if I wanted to return the equipment after first trying it out. Overall, a good, clean, no BS service.

I had one experience with customer service, which was good. I had not signed up for the free additional phone number at first. Then I couldn't see how to do it on the website. Instead of calling, I opted to chat with a customer service representative. Other than the fact that he seemed to be an amazingly slow typer, he was helpful and it all worked out fine with no problems.

One other strange thing that I discovered. When I call a number (I was calling our current home phone) and hang up, the ringing continues for a long time. This could be annoying if I ever call somebody, and they see it is me and decide not to pick it up. It would keep ringingn and ringingn for them.

So, I'm going to cancel our normal land line. Will save around $40 a month by doing that (including long distance charges, fees, taxes, etc.). We are lucky enough to have broadband without DSL, so we don't need the phone line (or need to pay extra for naked DSL).

I make no money by writing this -- just a good product, and I hope the company does well. If you are a reader who knows my email address, let me know if you want to sign up and I can get some sort of credit for doing a referral.