If you're buying home phone service from a traditional provider,
you're paying too much. Internet phone products sell service via
your broadband connection at dirt-cheap rates. Here's how three
stack up.
SEE ALSO:
Is Your Cell Phone Bill Too High?
Extra features.
Ooma Telo
is a stylish, wedge-shaped box that's roughly the size of your old
answering machine. It costs $200, and the company advertises that
it provides free, "unlimited" calls within the U.S. Caveats:
There's a 5,000-minute monthly limit on outbound calls (that's more
than three days of talk time), and you're responsible for
government taxes and fees. But these should add up to just a few
dollars a month. Check your total at
go.ooma.com/tax_calculator
.
A glitch with the first Telo we tested gave us a chance to try
out Ooma's customer support, which was very responsive. The Telo
has a one-year warranty.
The device comes with cables to connect your router and cordless
or corded phone, and setup is easy. You may select a new phone
number, or port your current number for a $40 fee. The optional
Ooma Premier service ($10 a month or $120 a year) offers free
number-porting plus a bundle of advanced features. In our tests,
Ooma's call quality on a 6-megabit-per-second (i.e., reasonably
fast) DSL connection was very good-in most cases it performs on par
with landlines.
The product's biggest downside is its $200 initial cost, but the
Telo is pretty inexpensive over time. If, for example, the device
runs five years, and your monthly tax bill is $3.50, your phone
bill would average less than $7 per month. Can the cable guys come
close to matching that?
As seen on TV.
Its TV ads may be cheesy, but
MagicJack Plus
works rather well. Roughly the size of a matchbox, the $70 gizmo
plugs into an AC outlet and has ports for your phone and for your
router.
Although MagicJack won't add to your desktop clutter, it lacks
Telo's convenient touch controls for accessing voice mail. And
setup is a bit tedious: You have to plug MagicJack Plus into your
PC's USB port and work through a series of start-up screens. First,
you select a phone number or port your current number for $20. What
follows is a series of upsell offers, including one for prepaid
international calls (at really low prices) and another for
replacement insurance-useful if your dog decides MagicJack is a
chew toy.
MagicJack Plus comes with one year of unlimited calls to the
U.S. and Canada, albeit with a few restrictions. (For instance, you
can't call more than 50 different phone numbers in a day.) Phone
service costs $30 annually after the first year, or you can buy a
five-year plan for $100. Taxes and fees total about $1.50 per year,
the company estimates.
MagicJack Plus's call quality was nearly as good as the Telo's
in our tests. Costs average less than $6 per month for the first
year, and less than $3 per month after that.
Low-price leader.
Want to pay even less?
NetTalk Duo
costs only $50 for one year of calls to the U.S. and Canada, with a
3,000-minute monthly limit. After the first year, the service is
$30 annually. Setup is simple, and porting was recently free for a
"limited time."
NetTalk Duo's call quality was on par with its competitors.
Voice mail messages were easy to access: Press *98 on your phone.
Like MagicJack Plus, however, NetTalk lacks the Ooma Telo's
advanced features, such as a touch-activated device for screening
incoming calls and voice mail.
But for dirt-cheap phone service, NetTalk Duo can't be beat.
Averaging just over $4 per month for the first year, and less than
$3 a month after that, NetTalk is the cheap-talk champ.