To Cell or not to Cell

The reason for the afore-linked Apple vs Windows, Numbers vs Excel showdown was that we’re unhappy with our phone situation. I may have mentioned it before, that we’re looking at a better/cheaper/better way to do it. I don’t have the answer yet, but I have the pricing. It’s this same thing though, I have the lists of pros & cons, but I’m not sure the weight of each point quite yet.

Currently we’re running Vonage for home phone through at&t DSL service, with prepaid, low-rung cell phones through Virgin Mobile. The total cost currently works out to about $85 a month. 

We ended up here to save costs over at&t’s service plans, and it worked out in our favor in every way, because when we dropped at&t’s phone service, they didn’t touch our DSL service cost. In reality though, at&t charges two different prices for the same service; a $45 charge if you’re NOT an at&t phone customer, and a mere $35 if you are. So essentially, if we use at&t as a gateway to VoIP phone service, it tacks on $10 to the total cost of whatever you go with.

Enter our move. There’s another catch with “Dry-Loop DSL,” as they call it. When you move, you can’t “transfer service,” they terminate your current service and start you up again. Awesome, right? I know, totally. It really only mattered to us in that they “corrected” their error, and made our setup $10 more expensive than it used to be. 

What’s $10? It’s a stone’s throw away from where we were, that’s what it is. And there’s the whole pros/cons things to deal with. And honestly, while we’re happy overall with the “phone service” we get from Vonage, we’re not that satisfied with some of the unanticipated, non-cash costs of using them. A Pros/Cons list, you say? Why SURE, I can do that!

Vonage through at&t DSL, Pros

• It IS the cheapest ($86)
• Easy access to phone features from any computer. I can forward calls, change the amount of rings to voicemail, have my voicemail messages sent to my email, all very quickly and easily.

Vonage through at&t DSL, Cons

• Only cheaper by about $10
• Plan is not unlimited, so we have to watch our minutes in order to keep it cheaper.
• Phone must be located by modem. Only ONE phone jack throughout entire house can be used, then
• Phone must be located by modem. Wireless interference makes phone almost useless unless you’re right next to it.

At&t Home phone & DSL service, Pros

• Total cost with discounted DSL service: ~$95.
• All the same features as Vonage
• Unlimited minutes any direction, in the US (all my calls are US)
• Can use ALL phone jacks in house, separate modem from phones, lose most all interference.

At&t Home phone & DSL service, cons

• It’s more expensive
• Features are harder to get to; must access through phone, dialing #’s and whatnot in order to access features. Takes longer, more demanding, less likely to happen.

Cell phone as main phone, Pros

• Always-on status (where’s Random bob? Call him! You have HIS PERSONAL NUMBER! HE’S THERE).
• No wireless network interference, freedom to move about anywhere while having a conversation. Want to talk while out in the shed? Not with our wireless house phone, you cannot.
• I won’t keep forgetting to charge my phone (that I never use so I forget about it all the freakin’ time).
• “Call Features” of the home phone are lost, but become pointless anyway, so who cares?

Cell phone as main phone, Cons

• Most expensive option ($105, before taxes & surcharges)
• Limited minutes still
• Really, do I want to be contactable all the time?
• No “unified” phone number for our family. Who you gonna call? If you need to talk to “us”?
• Did I mention it’s the most expensive option?

There IS a dark-horse option I haven’t mentioned yet: Getting our internet connection through the local cable company. It’s the same cost as through at&t without phone service, so the same cost, and most of the same pros/cons as we currently have. Except that we would possibly be able to separate the at&t line-in from our box, and shove the phone line out of the modem into a jack in our house and push the dial tone to ALL the rest of the jacks, thereby eliminating probably our most annoying con: having essentially one interference-ridden phone for the house.

…of course, this would require that a phone jack be near a cable outlet. Which currently I do not see being the case at our house. Which would mean far more work than I would ever do to rectify what is essentially a very small issue. Which would mean changing things for the sake of keeping them the same.

I don’t know. What do you guys think? Give me holler, let me know. What am I missing?