The Obi110 and my quest for the perfect phone service

I'm looking into this with Google Voice. Anyone want to talk about it? (Don't worry about the price. When Amazon itself has it in stock, it's about $50.)

Specifically, I want a very simple, transparent setup, where I pick up my wireless handset and dial a number and a person picks up and talks to me. I don't want to mess with a "circle of trust" or calling special numbers or codes or whatever. I want it simple. Will I get that?

An update on my experience with netTALK

We switched to netTALK several months ago and our results have been mixed. We cannot afford a monthly fee so we're sticking with it, but we are not 100% thrilled. Maybe 75%. The sound quality is iffy; depends on the call. Sometimes calls do not complete and we have to call people back. Caller ID does not work as it is supposed to, and the voice mail is just awful. I do have a workaround for voice mail using our Google Voice account: I have the netTALK number set to ring our house phone first, and if nobody picks up, rather than going to voice mail, it rings our Google Voice number, which is currently set to go straight to voice mail. so effectively you get 4-5 rings, then voice mail, which is as it should be, in my opinion. netTALK's voice mail is not customizable. You get the default greeting no matter what you program in. It is improved from when we first signed up; it used to say something like "the number you called is unavailable." Now it says "The netTALK subscriber you have dialed is unavailable," or something. So at least it doesn't sound like a dead number. Google Voice voice mail is fully customizable.

We did have to tweak the router settings some so that the port that the netTALK is on bypasses the firewall. That improved the voice quality by quite a bit. Sometimes it's excellent. More often than not, though, it's frustrating.

The short version: A lot of downsides, but we're willing to put up with them because it's so cheap. Were we in a different financial situation, we might not be.

netTALK Duo coupon

The netTALK Duo is available for half off (before shipping fees) at the main site through November 15, if you want to give it a try. The coupon code is NTLKCRZYDISC.

Really Cheap Phone Service, Part II

My netTalk device arrived in the mail today. There were very clear setup instructions with it. The first thing you do is go online and choose a phone number. I remembered being told that Lansing, Iowa, numbers were available when I first looked into this, but Lansing was not an option; the nearest exchange available was Decorah, and that's not very near. I checked the nearby Minnesota and Wisconsin exchanges, and again, nothing near, in fact it was worse. So I called netTalk Support and after an extremely short wait time, I was given a number in Lansing, which is about 12 miles away and is where the children go to school anyway. It's under a different phone provider, which is probably why it's available. Anyway, so now I had a phone number which would not cause our friends and neighbors to keel over at the thought of paying long distance charges to Davenport, Muscatine, Decorah, or someplace like that.

I connected it all up as per directions and about 2 minutes later I made my first call. I was able to call our current home number with no problem. MagicJack wouldn't let me do that.

So far so good! We're going to give this at least a week and see if we can find any serious downsides before canceling our Mediacom phone service. But I'm anxious to stop paying that $40 a month or whatever it is (bundled so it's hard to tell exactly).

Anti-recommendation: MagicJack (really cheap phone service)

I was so excited about MagicJack, the VoIP phone service that costs about twenty bucks a year (not a month, a year). I ordered one and tried it out this morning. Good voice quality, check; quick connection time, check; call my  neighbor to tell her how great it is... Wait a minute there! It would not call any New Albin number. Lansing was cool, but not New Albin. I could use my house phone to call the new MJ line, but I could not call home from the MJ line. This was not good.

I spent some time with live chat support and they seemed mystified, and eventually escalated my issue to the engineers and said they'd e-mail if they found anything to help.

So I googled and found out that there are a TON of small local exchanges that suddenly (as in, since about mid August) no longer can be called from a MagicJack line. Just can't do it.

Here's an incredibly long discussion of the topic. You can read the first page and then skim from there.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24566829-HELP-Magic-Jack-cant-call-local-ISP-area-code

And here's a running list (editable) of exchanges that people have found so far that don't work with MagicJack:

http://typewith.me/pdoGh5rvgf

The short version is that MagicJack has begun to block the small telcos, which are not cost effective for them. Which is fine if you don't call any of those exchanges, ever. You won't even notice. And besides, who would miss someplace like New Albin, Iowa? or Great Falls, Montana? Or the entire state of ALASKA??!! Yes, it's true. If you have a MagicJack, Alaska just got rubbed off the map for you. No polar bears for you, buddy!

I'm going to try netTalk next. They promise me they don't block anybody. Of course now that I have given them the idea, maybe they'll do that, too. But I'm going to try. I am on a mission.