Number, Please.

I have a new toy. It's an internet phone device called the Obi100, made my Obihai Technologies. Coupled with the magic of Google Voice it offers the promise of a home phone for little more than the cost of the device itself. (In this case, about $40)

I've been playing with one the past couple of days and the voice quality is very good and the latency is almost nonexistent. You'd be hard-pressed to tell this was VOIP, and that's even with the relatively modest speed of my internet connection (5 Mbps, on a good day.) On Amazon the reviews for the Obihai is as universally positive as anything I've ever seen. Four-and-a-half stars, and that's after almost 1600 reviews. These reviews were pretty much why I bought one.

The only continuing cost to use this phone is if you need 911 service (911 nd VOIP are apparently strange bedfellows) but that costs only a buck a month. Cheap.

I still have a land line but I've been considering dropping it and going cell phone full time. However, with a little technical wizardry I can port my current land line number to the Obihai, keep the benefit of two phone lines, and stop dropping $45 a month in AT&T's greedy little pockets.

In case you're wondering why I'm bothering, I use AT&T's DSL but they've almost tripled the cost of my internet service over the past couple of years, with no increase in speed. I suspect this is their clever way of driving me into the arms of U-verse (which would be no faster than DSL) but the associated phone service is VOIP. I figger since I'm doomed to go cable anyway (little birdies tell me that DSL is being phased out as quickly as possible in my area) I may as well do it on my own, albeit limited, terms.

I'll keep you posted.

=Lefty=