I've had Vonage now for almost 5 years. I got in when they had the 500 minutes/month, and I pay around $19 total each month. All long distance is covered, essentially Worldwide. Since it's VoIP, I can take my Vonage router anywhere in the world, and hook it up to an Internet connection. If someone calls my home phone number, it'll ring on the phone that's attached to my Vonage router, and look like a local call. I could be in China, and someone could call my house, and I could pick it up there. No extra charges. The only downfall to Vonage or any other VoIP service, is you're dependent on you Internet connection being up all the time to recieve calls. So if you lose power to your house, you lose power to your Internet modem and router, thereby losing your phone service. I have ATT U-Verse for my internet provider. I just put their router and my Vonage router on a UPS. They've stayed up almost 3 hours when I had a power outage. If I do lose my service, I have it where any phone calls to my house are automatically forwarded to my cell phone. If a call goes to voice mail, I have it set up where I get a copy of the message emailed to me. So I can hear my voice mails anywhere I have access to my email. The only other caveat is 911 service. If you call 911, you're not actually talking to your local 911 service. I think it's a national-type 911, and they forward your call to your local 911 emergency operator. Never had a situation where I've needed it, so I don't know what the delay difference is between calling 911 on a normal land line, and doing it over a VoIP phone line. The only other thing about VoIP service, is if you have a home alarm system that's monitored by a company, it won't work anymore. Most services like ADT require a land line phone system (at least they used to. They may have the capabilty to go over VoIP now.) If not, there's a service from Alarm.com that can use your existing wiring and contacts with their system. They communicate with the monitoring station via cellular or satellite (not sure which one). This is nice because a burglar has no way of cutting your phone line to disarm you alarm system.
