Switching from Phone to Voice-Over-IP?

An anonymous reader asks: "I am fed up with the telcos. My last phone bill for one line was over $100 _without_ the $45 for ADSL, so i'm looking to cut as many costs as I can. I've compared my current Voice + Internet solution to one consisting of Voice-over-IP and Cable Internet and it looks like I would save over $50 a month by throwing away my land-line phone and switching to Cable/VoIP. I'm new to the whole changing-from-POTS-to-VoIP process though, so what are some of the 'gotchas' involved with switching? Can I keep my existing number? Will calls suck my bandwidth dry? And most importantly, do any of these VoIP providers work with or support Linux?"

Comments

Re:new search engine!!!: google.com

[greenhide]

Yup, it sure sounded to me like he was interested in the latest in research on VoIP technologies.

Oh, wait a tic. He wasn't.

He wanted human-readable information about what the relative costs and reliability of VoIP was; whether he could receive incoming calls to his current number; and what some of the "gotchas" might be in switching to VoIP.

None of which were addressed by the matches to your search.

The only possible question that might have been answered is what VoIP providers support Linux. I have a feeling that since he already pointed to Vonage, he has done *some* preliminary research on Google. No doubt he wants assurances from those who have actually tried VoIP, not just companies trying to sell it, that they actually support Linux.

If the most helpful comment you have is to tell someone to use Google, then keep quiet. Unless the slashdot is something along the lines of "What is the definition of blah-blah?" or "Where is a good place to buy computers?", the person has probably googled it, found that the results weren't useful, and turned to /. for help.