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For 29.99 USD a month, Vonage is the way to go.
No fscking around with codecs.
No gcc bullshit.
No patching, only to have an OS upgrade break your app.
Pay for it, be done with it, move on. What's your life worth? Time = money.

It's more like $120 in savings a year... Or do you think the taxes on the phone line use and maintenance charges won't apply to your line just because it's data and not voice being carried over it?

in the absence of evidince to the contrary, I'm forced to admit that you're probably right about the maintenance charges, but I would argue that you are very wrong about the taxes. Those taxes are levied by various government bodies on analog line voice communications. If I'm not using that communication mode, why should I pay the taxes? If they want to levy a tax on packets, let them pass a different law. Isn't that the whole point to Vonage?

And w/r/t SBC's billing, the taxes are currently billed on the "phone" portion of my bill and not the "internet" portion, so if this is for real I'll try to disconnect my voice line, and if they tax me anyway I'll try to fight it and see what happens :-)

The only way to create a level playing field is for the people who own the wires (SBC) to not be the ones selling DSL. There are a million subtle ways SBC can make life difficult for Covad (and any other third-party DSL providers that enter the market). As long as SBC sells its own DSL service they will have an incentive to do so.

I know this first hand from being in the middle of a he-said-she-said argument between Covad and SBC, with me and Speakeasy in the middle. I tried really hard to make it work, since I genuinely *like* Speakeasy and their customer support so much.

Now I use Comcast internet service. I'm no fan of our local cable monopoly, but they do run a cheap, fast pipe to my house. Even when its clogged up w/ traffic, its twice as fast as my DSL line was. After learning their internet service worked so well for me, I disconnected my phone line and use Vonage for voice service. I can assure you, I was filled with tremendous geek joy when I called SBC and asked them to shut my service off.

Vonage has a softphone as well so you can take a phone number wherever you go as long as you can gain access to the Internet. Even Dial-up works.

I know you were joking, but I recently decied to try out Vonage. With a cable connection you cant even tell its using the internet, and the ability to get a real phone number anywhere (well, almost) in the US beats a landline hands down.

After 2 weeks with it, I've decided I'm going to drop my landline.

BZZZT Sorry buddy to you too. He's right and you're wrong.

Vonage Area Codes and the associated text:

"With Vonage, you are no longer tied to your "local area code". You can select any Area Code you want from our list of available area codes. This means even if you live in New York, you can have a California area code."

How 'bout Vonage? I'm thinking about trying 'em out.

I know for a fact that Vonage has a 911 service. I've called it. they just ask you your full address beforehand. that's the only reason I didn't go with over Vonage, as they didn't have a 911 service.

This will mean extra $$$ that the VoIP providers will have to put out, which ultimately means extra $$$ that the consumer will have to put out.

This will mean extra $$$ that the VoIP providers will have to put out, which ultimately means extra $$$ that the consumer will have to put out.

I'm using Vonage for VoIP phone service, and they already allow Dialing 911.

Are there other VoIP service providers that don't?

I'm using Vonage for VoIP phone service, and they already allow Dialing 911.

Are there other VoIP service providers that don't?

i got a free SIPphone software with my LindowsOS, you have to know someone who his also connected to the SIP network for this to work.. So its useless for me anyway..

This ruling was awaited, but it is the easiest in the long VoIP cases yet to be judged. FWD is just a signaling/directory service, from what I understand.

Now consider Vonage which sells phone service on top of broadband, yet is not registered as a telephone service provider. Or AT&T who claims that its VoIP phone-to-phone services are not subject to the same regulation than other phone-to-phone services.

The key issue yet remaining to be assessed is the question of access charges. These are the cost billed by a local carrier to a long distance carrier, which is much higher than the cost of the very same local leg leased to, say, an individual or a business.

AT&T, preceded in this regard by many other smaller long-distance carriers are using local business lines to deliver regular phone-to-phone calls on the local market, in order to go around access charges. AT&T claims that because it uses the Internet to carry the calls, they are VoIP and should be free of access charge. Obviously local carriers don't really see it this way...

My guess is that the FCC wanted to look pro-Internet in this big VoIP debate, so it is ruling now on FWD before they have an opportunity to look at the Vonage ("PC/phone") and AT&T ("phone/phone") cases. These two are much trickier to regulate and their implications, whatever the outcome may be, will be far-reaching.

My wife is on the phone right now, VoIP. I'm browsing, as is she.

We're using Vonage, with a cablemodem (TWC RoadRunner).

Our cost: RR:$45/month, Vonage:$27/month.

FWIW, Vonage gives us free voicemail, 500 minutes LD anywhere in the Continental US, caller ID/CallWaiting/Call forwarding/3 way calling, and $.05 per minute to the UK. In comparison, our local Telco gives us local only with NONE of the features listed above, for $32/month.

Check out Vonage here.

more consolidation of communications in the hands of a few small companies backing their horrid non-open standards.

We should get excited about small businesses (well small compared to AOL/Microsoft) like vonage and clients based on open protocols like Jabber

As a final problem won't this mean increased amounts of data being shunted onto the internet? Do we really need videoconferencing?

Oh well, maybe it'll stop people travelling as much.

Yes, I'm a misanthrope. I want people to stay home and watch the TV and shut up.

'Course, there's no need to hack your router for VoIP bandwidth if the VoIP box handles it for you. The Motorola VT1000, the phone adapter currently being issued by Vonage, has a built-in one-port router with "Quality of Service" management. If you install it upstream from the rest of your network, it reserves adequate bandwidth for VoIP. At least in theory.

Vonage will let you port your number to their service. You can even port your Cell number to vonage as well. Check here for their LNP information.

Vonage will let you port your number to their service. You can even port your Cell number to vonage as well. Check here for their LNP information.

On the other hand, if you use a TiVo, and always record on the lowest quality, you're not going to notice too much of a difference with satellite, though bad weather will noticably chop up the signal (wind and wildlife vibrating or reaiming the dish, dense clouds/fog, heavy rain, ice forming on it in cold weather, snow buildup, etc), I remember when times were better and I shared a 4BR/2BA house with a bunch of friends and we could easily afford every channel DirecTV offered, nice clear warm night, open all the doors and windows, and turn on a movie with a signal so clear you would have thought you were on analog cable and lived inside the headend.

Broadband, however...I've had Verizon and Qwest and some time or another for a DSL provider. They both suck so bad that I don't even trust them with my landline anymore, they lost my business to Vonage. Cable is the least of all evils. They'll let you get internet service a-la carte without television if you want (which is how we did it in said big-ass house, plus half of us worked for @Home, so we got 30Mbps/10Mbps for free anyway). The half of us in that house that worked for @Home, both used and loved @Home. I knew, at the time, about as many people who worked for Qwest and one guy who worked for Verizon. All the guys who worked for Qwest really had a hard time even selling their service to their customers, and were @Home customers themselves and loved cable. The guy from Verizon might know where the power button on a computer is if it's got a big, neon sign flashing, pointing at it, and the button itself is illuminated and clearly labelled.

The correct answer should be intuitive by this point. 8:o)

I think downloading games is great. I'd like to save a tree and lower oil dependence (plastic is made of oil and shipping the physical game package uses up oil, etc).

BUT many services are competing for my limited bandwidth, VoIP (Vonage), online music (Apple Music Store), streaming radio (somafm), BitTorrent. It makes me wonder if this promise is nothing more than a wishful thinking?

Until something is done about increasing bandwidth all these predictions read like a bad Popular Science article on flying cars.

The acid test will be how long it will take for Vonage to respond to this Advisory. They ship affected Cisco routers.

They can run a telephone communications business with a mere fraction of the people that AT&T does, but can they effectively managed their system when something goes wrong?

Voip is nifty- its supercheap, loads of extra features for free, and you can plug in to any DHCP internet socket in the world with usually no configuration.

I think then that you have pointed out the real flaw: insufficient marketing. Although your argument about DSL requiring a phone line is valid, most broadband users in America use cable modems. Even so you might find that a basic phone circuit + VoIP price is less than you currently pay for your unlimited POTS price. I have VoIP phone service from Vonage. I have an ordinary 212 phone number, use my ordinary cordless phone to call any other phone number in the world in the usual way. the only difference is that instead of hooking up to the local telco's box, my phone hooks into a piece of Cisco hardware (free from Vonage) which connects in turn to my router and broadband circuit. For $27/mo I get unlimited local calling, 500 minutes US/Canada long distance (3.9c/min after that) and all manner of features (voicemail, caller id, call waiting, forwarding, blah blah blah). Combine that with the $30 I pay for cable modem service, and for $57 I have broadband + telephone.

If I read this right its jut for the softphone not for the sevice that will make it work on top of that. If all you want is the soft phone, there are plenty of freeware ones available with the same featues. I've used X-Lite in the past and found it to not suck.

As one might expect, the press release is a bunch of marketing crap, utterly lacking in tech specs. Still, it leaves me wondering how this software will compare to Cisco's Windows-based Softphone. At my company, we tried it out on our laptops, while also using their hardware 7960G. The hardware phone was consistently superior, as the SoftPhone took huge resources to run (you could barely run other apps with it up and dialing). I still use the hardware phone from home today, in conjunction with a company-managed IP telephony gateway, calling folks over a VPN as well as calling others nationwide. Call quality is pretty solid, although only after a lot of mystery codec installation by our IT admin. I also use Vonage at home, and it's clearly better than both Cisco solutions (although it also uses a Cisco ATA 186 analog-to-VoIP adapter).

We've had Vonage for a few months now and I must say overall the service has been excellent. There are issues with bandwidth, but that can be traced to Comcast. Every now and again the service will just drop... but I refer back to the last sentence.

Right now, we are in Sunny (mostly COLD) FL... our service is registered in MN. Simply mooching off of my hosts Comcast Cable and the only interruption of service was the flight down (and the damned layover).

When sitting in Atlanta, I was able to check my Vonage Voicemail.

Billing is VERY simple... direct to our credit card where we are earning points.

Overall, we are very impressed. We ARE suggesting that my parents use it (they are not that tech inclined) as they will save a ton of money in long distance... basically a free call to us... calls are free from one Vonage user to another.

Vonage is HIGHLY recommended.

We've had Vonage for a few months now and I must say overall the service has been excellent. There are issues with bandwidth, but that can be traced to Comcast. Every now and again the service will just drop... but I refer back to the last sentence.

Right now, we are in Sunny (mostly COLD) FL... our service is registered in MN. Simply mooching off of my hosts Comcast Cable and the only interruption of service was the flight down (and the damned layover).

When sitting in Atlanta, I was able to check my Vonage Voicemail.

Billing is VERY simple... direct to our credit card where we are earning points.

Overall, we are very impressed. We ARE suggesting that my parents use it (they are not that tech inclined) as they will save a ton of money in long distance... basically a free call to us... calls are free from one Vonage user to another.

Vonage is HIGHLY recommended.

We've had Vonage for a few months now and I must say overall the service has been excellent. There are issues with bandwidth, but that can be traced to Comcast. Every now and again the service will just drop... but I refer back to the last sentence.

Right now, we are in Sunny (mostly COLD) FL... our service is registered in MN. Simply mooching off of my hosts Comcast Cable and the only interruption of service was the flight down (and the damned layover).

When sitting in Atlanta, I was able to check my Vonage Voicemail.

Billing is VERY simple... direct to our credit card where we are earning points.

Overall, we are very impressed. We ARE suggesting that my parents use it (they are not that tech inclined) as they will save a ton of money in long distance... basically a free call to us... calls are free from one Vonage user to another.

Vonage is HIGHLY recommended.

I use Vonage, pay $40.00 a month and have unlimited US-wide service. My phone number is of the Miami area (area code 786, but I could have chosen any area code) and I use a regular telephone.....And I do all this from my home in Central America.

They give you a little cisco thingy that you hook up to your hub and configures itself using DHCP. I have a 192Kbps connection and NO-ONE has been able to figure out I'm using voip. In fact, voice quality is much better than the regular Cable & Wireless telephony service (wich is pretty good I might add).

Try it, it even has voicemail, caller ID, and all the other regular goodies.

Yes. Vonage does exactly this. Although it can work over cable as well.

Hmm... How'd you get them to transfer your number? Was it a special request, or is this something they normally attempt?

Check out this page. Basically you need to have a number XXX-XXX in an area where Vonage can provide service. As for the change and chances are it will go through at the same chance as another CLEC would be able to provide.

In my case it took about 3 weeks to complete (you need to send a form to Vonage with a copy of your telephone bill for account verification).

HTH

• Cheaper... unlimited local and national calling is only $22.50 (that includes all the extra taxes/addon fees) (though the FCC might add on extra charges next year)
• A lot of current features (caller ID, caller ID block, calling other lines if you don't pick up your VoIP phone) that seem like they don't cost the phone company anything, actually are free
• There are extra features you can't get anywhere else (or can't unless you're a big company with a digital call center)
  • number portability even if you move out of the area code or even the country (since your same phone number can be accessed anywhere there's internet access)
  • email notification of voice mail, with the option of including a sound file of the message
  • Multiple phone numbers going into the same line, complex filters indicating how they might be forwarded to different lines, different ring patterns, etc...
  • greater web integration (configuration of the account's features, realtime updates of your bill)

• Cheaper... unlimited local and national calling is only $22.50 (that includes all the extra taxes/addon fees) (though the FCC might add on extra charges next year)
• A lot of current features (caller ID, caller ID block, calling other lines if you don't pick up your VoIP phone) that seem like they don't cost the phone company anything, actually are free
• There are extra features you can't get anywhere else (or can't unless you're a big company with a digital call center)
  • number portability even if you move out of the area code or even the country (since your same phone number can be accessed anywhere there's internet access)
  • email notification of voice mail, with the option of including a sound file of the message
  • Multiple phone numbers going into the same line, complex filters indicating how they might be forwarded to different lines, different ring patterns, etc...
  • greater web integration (configuration of the account's features, realtime updates of your bill)

Can you explain what this means? I know 911 is your emergency telephone number for the police etc., but what do you mean by "transfer our 911 protection"?

In most areas of the US, dialing 911 will connect you to a local police/fire/ambulance dispatcher. The 911 system reports your incoming phone number to the dispatch computer system, and it automatically brings up your address at the dispatcher's computer screen.

If you were to call 911, and could not stay on the line to speak to the dispatcher (perhaps you dialed while having a dizzy spell then passed out, or perhaps a criminal took the phone from you and hung up) the police will be dispatched to your home. Most every parent of a toddler has had the experience of the police coming to their door after the child has been playing with the phone.

When you are using a mobile technology, your protection is reduced. If you call 911 from a cell phone and don't stay on the line, the police have no way of determining your exact location. The probably know that you are within a few square mile area around the base station that received the call, but that is all.

Likewise, some of the VoIP carriers such as vonage can't determine your location either. You can take your vonage unit and plug it into any broadband internet connection anywhere in the world and call jsut as if you were in your house. Vonage offers a rudimentary 911 service that requires you to update your location, so that vonage can route a 911 call to the correct dispatcher.

Packet8 doesn't support 911, and a couple others i looked at don't either. But given that Packet8 is sooo much cheaper, I'm going with it if I ever switch over.

With VoIP, I accept the fact that I don't have a dedicated circuit, but instead share the "line." I accept that I have no gaurantees about Jitter or other sound problems due to congestion. I accept that it's very unlikely to be as reliable. (Even if Internet service is perfect a power outage in my house a failed switch, router or firewall... and there goes the phone!)

In the end I give up a lot of gaurantees and don't really save a ton of $. BUT, I'd have the broadband anyhow. And it works most of the time (nearly all of the time actually.) But, if you rely much on VoIP over the Internet, you know it isn't the same as a phone line and regular phone service.

And how are they going to define and catch VoIP use? If H323 protocol is regulated, how long before VoIP services start using XML via HTTP? Once it is encoded it's just data. What I do with data over a data network like the Internet is really my own business, especially when I'm paying access fees for this network already.

Kudo's on your family's safety. You might want to contact your local telco to verify the information in E911 is correct. Screw up on their end could impact response time.

I use Vonage. Although sometimes the quality is sub-par, they were able to request my # from BellSouth and have it transferred to them. Also, they, as I'm sure others do, have the ability to link your address to 911.

Personally I'd roll my own asterisk server and utlize someone like VoicePulse for incoming 800# and local access, but in the event my net connection is down, so is incoming voicemail. Vonage handles that for me and the email notification.

Anyone know of a way to use an IAX or IAX2 provider and have them handle the PSTN termination and voicemail while allowing me to connect my Asterisk server to them?

What advice can you give about cost, performance, security, ease-of-setup, etc?

The only consumerland service I've used is Vonage -- and they do exactly what you asked for. It also allows you to use your normal analog phone. I kept my POTS line for a few months while I tried out Vonage. It was good enough, so I dropped Verizon. I've found that Vonage is not as reliable as the POTS services -- sometimes incoming calls don't make it through, as well as outgoing calls not connecting. That being said, the vast majority of my calls have been completed. Dropped calls are extremely rare. I still recommend keeping a mobile phone -- just in case.

Although the VoIP calls take a relatively small amount of bandwidth, if you do alot of uploading and have limited upstream bandwidth (I'm considering 384 Kb/s limited) -- you will probably want to do some type of QoS routing on your end to ensure that there is sufficient bandwidth to carry your conversation.

The best thing to do is to check out Vonage's website. They have enough information there to answer most of your questions.

--Turkey

First, realize that there's usually no usable 911 service. They often try to route 911 to the local phone number for the police but the police won't get your address or treat the call as an emergency.

If his house ever had POTS service, LEC's in the US are now required to offer 911 service, regardless of whether or not the line is paid for. If he has an extra phone lying around, he can just plug it into the old POTS line for 911 use only.

Secondly, Vonage offers E911 service that gets routed to a different PSAP from the regular 911 service, although it is treated as an emergency. See here for details.

--Turkey

A couple days ago this /. article asked whether price competition would run VoIP-to-POTS companies out of business. It specifically mentioned Packet8, Vonage, and VoicePulse. I've been considering switching to a VoIP-to-POTS provider for quite a while now, and wonder what experience other SlashDotters have had with these or related services. To be specific, I want a solution that lets me use my regular analog phone through my broadband connection to call POTS users (e.g. my mom) AND gives me a phone # for others to call me. Solutions like Net2Phone (which I've used for years) or Skype that require me to use headphones/mic in front of my computer just don't cut it. Nor do I want to buy any new hardware (like SIPphone requires). Recent /. articles discuss Skype Vs. SIPphone and Other VoIP issues, but none contain the sort of info I'm looking for. What advice can you give about cost, performance, security, ease-of-setup, etc?

I would like an adaptor that allows me to connect an ordinary phone to my network. This adaptor would give the phone an IP address, and you could send commands from Linux to make the phone ring, and if it's off-hook to send and receive digital audio, decode touch-tones, etc.

This is mostly doable...and your OS of choice is (for the most part) irrelevant -- be it Linux, *BSD, Windows, or QNX. With a service like Vonage, you get a Cisco ATA, which you plug your ordinary phone into. It differs slightly from your ideal situation, since it does not give your phone an individual IP address (and a POTS phone will not respond to an IP address anyway)...but judging from the documentation I was able to dig up, it's all very hackable. I'm sure that you can make your phone ring using a PC (and some know-how). Further, I'm sure that you can intercept, decode, and possibly insert whatever you need (be it DTMF or otherwise). It just takes time and effort. If you're using a service like Vonage, intercepting the transmission is simple, and can be done using a packet sniffer, or simply using a modem as an intermediary between your ATA and analog phone (all on the analog side, not the Ethernet side). I believe that vgetty has the ability to easily interpret the DTMF (for dialtones, dialed digits, ringtones, etc). Inserting signal into the line can also be accomplished fairly easily (with time and effort).

Then I would like another adaptor that allows me to connect the phone line to my network.

This is doable as well. Use another analog modem for this. Again, check out vgetty for voicemail and other related services.

It would also put a lot of companies, which sell multi-thousand dollar devices to do the same kinds of things, devices which are thoroughly proprietary and considerably less programmable... out of business.

The government, also, will never allow it. If they want to wiretap there is no longer an easy way to do it.

I doubt that the big players in the industry are sweating this. Not many companies (who buy these multi-thousand dollar devices) care that much about programability beyond what's already available. They would rather spend more money on a phone system that just works than a really cheap one that requires a full-time employee dedicated to configuring and maintaining that system. It ends up costing more in the end. Your proxy idea, where you have an analog line conntected to an IP network and saving long distance dollars -- VoIP companies do this now. I think it's easier to spend $25 a month on it than roll my own.

As far as the government -- what country are you from, anyway? I'm in the US and use VoIP regularly, which is currently not as easy as POTS to wiretap. I'm positive that, as it becomes more widespread, my government will find a way to tap those lines even easier than POTS phones. Also, remember that most home user's VoIP calls terminate to a POTS line, making at least one end tapable. Finally, the US government typically does not put limitations on encryption for use inside of the country. There is no reason why they would ever ban it. ...This is all presuming that you're in the US though.

That being said, it would make a cool project anyway. When do you get started?

--Turkey

With all due respect to the author, the question (as it stands) is not worded particularly well, and there is very little chance that a reliable answer will emerge.

One extremely important detail that you are leaving out is who is offering the service. You also fail to mention the specifics of their operation. IP telephony and VoIP are very different, and there's no way to be sure which one you're talking about. (You clearly indicate VoIP, but the term is so misused that I'm taking your usage of the term with a grain of salt. Pardon me if I have done so erroneously).

Because your cable operator maintains control over your lines, they are able to offer service guarantees that other services (like Vonage) cannot. I cannot say whether or not your operator does take advantage of this, however. Think of it this way: Typically, when you choose an IP telephony solution, you're getting a leased line to your IP telephony provider's data center. They control everything along the way -- and can use routing protocols like QoS and ToS reliably, ensuring that your packets make it to where they need to go, when they need to get there. With a VoIP solution (again, like Vonage), your service is running over public Internet lines. The VoIP provider has no way of guarantying that the packets will get to them in a timely fashion. In the short time I've spent hacking around my Vonage service, I've found some ToS packets -- but since Vonage has no control over this, your ISP (or any other router along the way) can just ignore these ToS (and/or QoS) packets. In short, your packets get there when they get there. Sometimes it will work great, others it just doesn't work at all.

If you can provide a link to some technical information about the service, I'm sure that some of the more saavy folks here can disseminate that information and tell you whether or not the technology should work. It's up you your cable operator to actually follow through with the reliability (again, you left out the detail of who your provider is). This is the first I've heard of cable operators offering such a service (although I have a bit of experience with a number of different types of VoIP and IP telephony services).

However, if you're in the US, I'd suggest that you try it out. I've switched to Vonage. My primary motivation was my unwillingness to do business with Verizon...and even with deregulation, if I use POTS, I'm paying my local monopoly. So I gave up on it. Just remember that YMMV, so don't sign any long-term service contracts.

Good luck,
--Turkey

I use Vonage, and it rocks. It has nothing to do with your computer - you just plug it into your gateway and go. No one will ever know that you're using VoIP if you don't tell them. They have business plans that include a fax line. I haven't had POTS for a long time.

You can get an unlimited calling package from Vonage, that includes Canada. Additionally, you are not burdened by these alleged taxes and right to use us tax. You also can monitor phone activity online including seeing what you will be billed for according to usage. You also have a world portable phone where anywhere with a broadband connection it's still a local call to people it was before. For the cherry on top, you can choose to keep your existing phone number and add virtual area codes to make it cheaper and easier to keep in contact with people in other places in the US. The quality is very near an overpriced POTS that lines the pockets of a greedy CEO for their oh so needed 7.4 million dollar holiday bonus. My only issue lasted a mere 24 hours, and that was an echo in the phone which may be caused by the phone. Since my issue resolved itself in time, I assume it was routing tables being updated for the new data stream to my Cisco phone switch(which is very small). Take all this that AT&T won't do for you and add all the features they offer to really jack your bill up and you have a very affordable communications package that you really cannot tell the difference in regards to quality. If you have a real broadband connection and DS bandwidth to spare you can max out quality and _maybe_ use about 150Kbps of your bandwidth.

VoIP has been one of the better decisions I have made, and should price wars drive down the prices and keep the quality...sweet. If you have a reliable ISP and a real broadband connection with bandwidth to spare, I advise to switch over to VoIP. I have been a customer for 3 months now, and finally don't hate paying my phone feeling like I got ripped off and taken to the cleaners. If your only reservation is quality, I would say visit the website and read up. I am not sure, but they may have a short money back time period to make sure you are happy with how the service works with your connection. Only drawback, your VoIPhone is totally net dependent but thats what the cell is for when emergencies come around.

Look here - It's still in beta, but it exists.

I've done some work for a travel company out in California, and I know cold call telephone marketing has been a debate there for a while. The argument has always swung towards not doing it, but I think there are good arguments, similar to yours, that are weighed in favor of giving it a try.

The reality is that there are some niches where customers might be interested in learning more by phone. The company does Scandinavian travel, Antarctica, and such... And there aren't too many companies that specialize in that, but they have partnered with a few that do. There might have once been the possibility of (legally, and within the other company's privacy policy) utilizing a call list for similar customers. It didn't end up happening, but I wonder if folks would've objected?

I actually learned about Vonage in a similar manner, and I'm pretty damned glad that telemarketer called me!

justen deal

You can have what you want today.

I've discovered two companies that do this, I expect there are others.

vonage.com

packet8.com

I personally chose vonage for my solution, as the `unlimited long distance' is cheaper. If vonage happens to look good to you, find someone (perhaps me) that already uses it and you can get a free month of service with a referral ;-)

For whatever it is worth, vonage also works through nat. But I've already asked about IPv6
support (not yet...) ..

Vonage offer 911 service.

Vonage and Packet 8 provide similar services. There is a lot of commentary in the comp.dcom.voice-over-ip Usenet group about it. I personally have Vonage, which I liked because in my cases they could transfer my existing phone number from the local telco, but perhaps other companies have similar capability. The connection is very good and I've only had a few startup problems. (Most important: work with the VoIP provider to make sure your router is configured optimally.)