A year ago, we had Telus as our landline and mobile provider. We were paying almost $80/month for communication.
Then we switched to a combo package from Sprint, and that dropped our cost to $66/month. Sprint Canada then was bought out by Rogers, so our landline was switched to Rogers and wireless to Fido.
Hmm, $66/month… seemed kinda high for the amount of use we get out of it.
So now that E is on mat leave, we decided to see if we can save $$ by switching the mobile to Pay-As-You go and the landline to Vonage/Skype.
For the mobile, as long as we keep our minutes to around 100 min a month, our cost ends up being $15/month at .15 minute. The main thing is to remind e that the mobile isn’t for prolonged conversations, but there is an option to switch to a different evening and weekend rate for .01 a minute, but it’s like .40 minute regular time. Good thing is that there’s no additional system access fee.
For the “landline” we’re trying a combination of Vonage and Skype. Vonage leverages our Shaw hi-speed and we pay $20/month for 500 minutes anywhere in North America. I will say that the transition to Vonage from Rogers was ok, but there are some gotchas and limitations to be aware of.
First, you need an adaptor that plugs into your Router. The adapter comes free, and you can use your existing phones. The limitation is that you cannot use the existing phone wiring and jacks. The adapter comes with a single jack in the back, and you can plug in any phone. If you need multiple phones, you need a splitter (cheap $5 part) that allows you to connect multiple phones. All this is pretty useless if you just have regular phones, but what we ended up doing was using cordless phones. We plugged both bases into the adaptor, and have one handset upstairs, one handset downstairs. It’s a bit of a hassle remembering to recharge, but there are other cordless phones with mulitiple handsets and bases that use just one jack.
If you don’t have a router, you can buy a combo router/adapter made by Linksys I believe.
Second, if you goto vonage.ca and sign up for everything, they will charge you $10 for S/H, and $40 activation fee. If you CALL vonage to do the same thing, they automatically waive the activation fee. We did everything over the web like good citizens, and called back to complain about this double standard. They credited us the $40. On another note, their customer service is… just ok. Response time on the weekend was acceptable, and they did help, but I think there’s definitely room for improvement.
Third, Rogers called back to try and save the account. They offered a $30/month rate good for a year. After explaining that it’s still more expensive than Vonage, and what happens after the year, and why didn’t they offer this rate to begin with… well they didn’t have a good answer. They tried to compare their VOIP Rogers Home phone solution, which is like $50/month after the promo ends- you get this feature and that, dedicated line for reliability and voice quality. Their solution makes use of your existing phones and wiring, but they need to drill and install a box somewhere to tap into the lines. Anyways, the Home phone solution might make sense if you call Long distance regularly, but with Skype and Phone cards, it’s pretty cheap.
Back to Vonage. Their voice quality was a bit shaky the first call we made, kinda like a cell phone in spotty coverage, but it’s been pretty solid since. The adapter has status lights to let you know what’s going on. I had to reset the device once, and it’s been good ever since. Voice quality isn’t bad. Kinda like a cell phone in regular coverage. So far, so good.
For the case where we’re running out of minutes or need to call somewhere other than North America, we also signed up for a Skype account. “derekandevonne. lau” We tried it with our Logitech speakers and microphone, and it was ok. Just a bit weird listening to someone talk over your speakers. I found a wireless handset that connects via USB AND regular phone line. It’s a VTech, and sells at Futureshop for $99. The nice thing is that it works with Vonage or Skype. If I want to make a call via Skype, I enter the number and hit a specific button. If I want to make a call via Vonage, same thing only I hit a different button. I had a couple of 50 min+ conf calls to Bangalore that I used Skype for, and it was good enough and reliable enough that I forgot I was using skype. No echo or dropped words. Skype Out is free until the end of the year, but it’s been good enough that I’ll pay for the service. Charges for long distance are very cheap.
The only gripe is the USB software that allows the phone to connect to the Skype client. It sometimes “loses” connection, so that if Skype is running on your computer, your handset which is connected via USB, may not be aware that it’s up and running. There’s a utility that can be run to check status, and it will detect that something has lost connection. It doesn’t happen that often, and a reboot will quickly set things right.