I’ve had two lines in my home since the late 90’s. That second line has been in my home office since that time and has served me well. I switched from Bellsouth to Earthlink Truvoice back in 2005 to save money. And then last year switched to what seemed to be a great deal. Sunrocket offered me 12 months for $199 or less than $17 per month. What a deal. They promptly sent out an ATA and right away I had a good service for a good price. I could perform call "hunting" and simultaneous ring. Made me ponder the money I had wasted at Bellsouth all those years.
BOOM. I got an email week before last though that Sunrocket was going to go out of business. NO. I paid up front and only got 1/2 of the time I had paid for. Well, all my crying isn’t going to fix Sunrocket. They are going to shutdown completely. So, I’ve just transferred again, this time to Vonage. But, they’ve just been sued by Verizon (a big, dumb telco who would rather sue instead of innovate.) Vonage says they will have workarounds in place pronto to avoid any hassle with Verizon. In the meantime, I’ll hang on to them.
Why can’t the router makers allow their routers to act a SIP client and as well allow analog phones to use that SIP client to make and receive calls? I have service (free and fee) from Gizmo Project. I can call other Gizmo users for free via my PC (just like Skype, only Gizmo is standards based.) I also can make Gizmo Out calls to fixed and mobile phones. I have to pay for those. I also have a telephone number that routes calls inbound. If I am logged in via the web, they come there. If I am logged on via my SIP enabled wifi Nokia, they come there. And when I make a Gizmo Out call, that number shows in caller ID. Now, imagine if the same Gizmo info could be entered into my router (I have an Apple Extreme Base Station.)
