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- The Phone Company - Or more precicely, the particular regional phone company providing monopoly service in your location. These companies include the likes of Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, and others. They will provide the phone service you are used to, but with many new features for an added cost, including voicemail, caller ID, and special call functions. Of particular interest is "distinctive ring" which allows you to assign two numbers to a single phone line and have the phone ring differently depending on the number called. If you need separate phone numbers for a home office, or for different family members, yet don't use the phone so much to need to lines, this can be a cheaper option. Even if you do on rare occasions make simultaneous calls, a cell phone can fill in.
- Your cable company - Another monopoly with a wire running to your home. Many cable companies are starting to offer digital telephone service running over their cable system. They install a box where the cable comes into you home and run a phone line from the box to the demarcation point for telephone service to your house. The rest of your telphones operate as they would if the connection were from the central telephone office. Although the cable companies claim battery backup, you may find that your phone does not work when the power goes out - whereas it would likely continue to work if connected directly to the telphone central office.
- Internet telephony services - such as Vonage - can provide your local dialtone and often include unlimited long distance for an amount slightly less than you would otherwise pay for local service itself. Such services are currently less reliable than that provided by your phone or cable company because they are dependent on proper function of routing in the internet and availability of adequate bandwidth to carry your voice signals. During times when the internet is under heavy load or subject to denial of service attacks, you may have difficulty getting through. At presently, inconsistent latency (i.e. intermittent delay) in transmission of packets over the internet will occasionally reduce the quality of a call, and makes such service inappropriate for fax transmissions (although some of these services provide alternate means for sending and receiving faxes).
- Internet telephony through your PC - such as Skype
- can provide a local access number and the ability to dial regular telephones using your personal computer. Skype provides free calls between PC's and low rates for domestic and international calls (Skype is based in Europe, so most of the pricing is in Euro's). Because it runs over the regular Internet, these services are currently less reliable than that provided by your phone or cable company (during times when the internet is under heavy load or subject to denial of service attacks, you may have difficulty getting through). Additionally, inconsistent latency (i.e. intermittent delay) in transmission of packets over the internet will occasionally reduce the quality of a call, and makes such service inappropriate for fax transmissions (although some of these services provide alternate means for sending and receiving faxes). A nice feature of internet telephony is that you can receive calls at home, while at work, or even while traveling.
New Options in Telephony
Just twenty years ago one had very few options when considering telephone services for the home. In most parts of the US, one had a single phone company to choose from and once choices were limited to selecting the carrier for long distance calls. Today there are many choices, even for local phone service. Many are chosing to drop their land based phoneline entirely, relying entirely on their cellular phone, where competion between cariiers has dropped costs and increased functionaility to the point that for moderate use, a cell phone may be cheaper than a wired phone. With free weekend and evening minutes include in most cell plant, When one needs a cell phone anyway, the marginal cost of using ones cellphone as ones primary number will often be zero and the only real cost is the occasional, or not so occasional bad connection or dropped call (carefuly consider the number of minutes in your plan before choosing this option, however).For those still in need of a land based phoone at home one now has several options, outlined below:
About this site:
This site is intended to bring together in one place, information and links that are useful to those adding technology to their homes. I am a new user of these technologies, and ask for help from anyone that can correct any information I might post, or who has additional links or resources to suggest.