Kiss your old phone line good-bye and say hello to Vonage. It is revolutionary, will change the way you think about phones (if you thought about them at all), and is a must have for anyone who uses more than just a mobile phone.

What is it and how does it work? Simply put, it’s an affordable and easy to install phone system that costs much less, offers more, and is much more flexible than any other type of phone, other than mobile phones. What it ISN”T is a gimmicky, hard to mess with, finicky phone system that is not worth the trouble.

Vonage uses the internet to send and receive phone calls instead of old time phones that use a land line. All you need is high-speed internet, either DSL or Cable, and you’ll be all set. Even if you don’t have high-speed, with the amount of money I saved by switching from AT&T; to Vonage, I was able to rationalize the price of high-speed! I was paying $10 dollars a month for dial-up internet, and $35 dollars a month for a basic phone line, with no long distance on it, no voicemail, and no extra features, except for call waiting and caller ID. That was $45 a month for horrible dial-up internet and terrible phone service. I switched to a highspeed cable modem for $35 dollars a month and Vonage, for $15 dollars month, for a total of $50 dollars a month. It was a five dollar increase in price per month, but an unspeakable improvement in internet capabilities and a vast improvement on phone service — for five bucks extra! So if you don’t have highspeed internet, Vonage may just put you over the edge in reasons to get it. If you already have highspeed, then (no offense) you should have switched to Vonage a long time ago! It will save you money each month, money you could put into a high yield savings account discussed here.

Traditional phone lines change your voice over to an electronic signal which is then sent over a copper wire, out of your house, to a phone company routing station, and then on to a satellite or some other transmission device, until it ends up at the house of the person you are calling. With Vonage, the principle is the same, and actually works in a nearly identical fashion as the cable companies offering “Digital phone service”, except Vonage only costs $15 bucks, instead of $40 bucks, like the cable companies charge. Vonage changes your voice into an electronic signal that is then sent over the internet, via a protocol called VOIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol. Your voice, via “e-mail” ends up at a Vonage computer that sends it on to the person you called, via magic. With Vonage, you can call anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. It sounds crystal clear, costs pennies a call if the call isn’t free (more on that later), and you wouldn’t notice that the call wasn’t made with a traditional land line phone.

Vonage is not Skype. Skype is fun and free, but very gimmicky and not capable of acting like a regular home phone. When people hear the words, “Internet phone”, they probably think of poor quality, hard to use, and need a computer to make the call. Skype, and others like it, utilize a headset that plugs into a computer and then you talk “over the internet” while plugged into a laptop or desktop computer. Vonage is different in that it doesn’t need a computer at all. If I were to sneak into your house tonight and install Vonage, you wouldn’t even know that I had done it! It’s that good.

How to set it up. Okay, this is how it all works. The internet comes into your house via a coax cable. That cable goes to your cable modem. Then an ethernet cable comes out of the modem and plugs into your computer and you have the “internet” on your computer. Vonage is a simple router. You take that ethernet cable that goes from the modem to the computer and plug it into the Vonage router instead. The router is simply a device that splits up your internet signal into multiple signals so that more than one item can use the internet signal at once. In this case, the Vonage router takes the internet signal it needs, and passes it on to other devices, like your home computer, and laptop, etc. Setting up this part literally takes 15 seconds. There is a phone jack on the back of the Vonage router. There is a supplied phone cord that you then connect that jack and any phone jack on the wall in your house.

Now for the tricky part (it might take three minutes!): go outside and find your phone box. It is where the phone company phone line comes in from the telephone pole. There are two halves to this box, an upper and lower half. The lower half is yours and the upper half is the phone company’s (this could be reversed at your house). The upper half needs a special tool to open, because AT&T; owns this. Don’t worry about this, and don’t open it, it isn’t yours! The lower half is yours and opens with a simple phillips screwdriver. Open the box and you will see a phone cord plugged into a phone jack (just like you see in your house). Unplug this phone cord. Wrap the end with electrical tape or masking tape so that the phone repair man never comes out and plugs this back in. I wrote on my masking tape: “Do not use.” Now your house is separated from the outside world and all your phone jacks in the house are no longer connected to the phantom power that comes through the telephone wire from the pole. (Normally, your phones are powered by a small amount of power sent through the phone lines.) When you do this, all your jacks in the house are now powered by the Vonage router, so all the jacks in your house will work like normal, except you will be using Vonage. This is a great way to set things up because when I first heard about it, I thought that only phones connected via a wire to the router would work, but that isn’t true. It’s nice to have the phone up in the bedroom, alarm system in the basement, and kitchen and living room phones all work off the Vonage system.

Features. This is where Vonage really shines. Vonage gives you so many features, that if you ordered all of them from AT&T;, you’d be paying $100 dollars a month, not including the cost of calls! With Vonage, they are all included. I won’t list them all here, but for a full list, click here. Some of the features we enjoy are the standard call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding, voicemail accessible from anywhere, e-mail voice messaging (where you can receive voice mail in an e-mail sent to you and checked while on the go) blocking of unknown callers, and much more than I can’t think of right now. You get to keep your old number, just like when you switch mobile phone providers.

If the power goes out and you lose your internet connection, calls are automatically forwarded to another number. I use my mobile phone number. So, if on a stormy night, the wind knocks a tree into the power and phone line outside your friend’s house, he will be left unable to receive calls, but not you, with Vonage, because your mobile phone or alternate number will ring.

Vonage doesn’t care where you are, as long as it can get the internet. Think about what this means for you and your phone. Going on a business trip but don’t want everyone to know your mobile number? Just give out your home number and throw the Vonage router into your suitcase (it’s the size of a small Bible). When you get to your hotel with highspeed internet in it, plug your router into the ethernet cable, and plug the room phone into your router. Now, whether you traveled from Ohio to Michigan, or Ohio to Singapore, your phone will ring when someone calls your number! Take advantage of this on business trips, vacations, or by not subscribing to national calling plans on your mobile phone plan.

Add a second line, for other family members, a fax line, or whatever, for $10 dollars. Add an 800 number that only your kids know so that they can always call home, even from a pay phone or party. Add different rings for multiple lines. Use simulring, to ring two phones at once, like at home and an office. Use the flash drive phone when you are on the go: a flash drive plugs into a laptop, and whenever the laptop is connected to the internet, wirelessly or not, you can make calls by turning your computer into a phone, similar to Skype. Add a business package to your plan to run your business. My company, and many others, have switched over to this type of phone. Instead of having thousands of phone lines within the office complex, they have phones that only hook up to the internet. They use the internet to make their calls, both within the office and abroad. It saves thousands of dollars in telecommunication costs.

Pricing. This is very simple. There are two plans. $15 dollars a month and $25 dollars a month. The only difference is that the more affordable plan gives you 500 minutes a month whereas the pricier plan gives you unlimited calling. We are on the $15 plan because we use our home phone in conjunction with our mobile phones. If you are a talker, splurge for the pricier plan, but only after you’ve tried the 500 minute plan. You may surprise yourself at how much you actually talk on your home phone versus your mobile. Why pay for more until you know you need it?

The 500 minute plan gives you free calls to other Vonage customers, and free incoming calls — so we never even approach 500 minutes used per month.

International calls are so cheap, you’ll feel like you are cheating someone, somewhere. Calls within North America are always free. Most calls to Europe are free. Iraq is free. Honk Kong is 4¢ cents a minute. My mobile phone charged me $1.49 a minute while I was in Hong Kong! Laura called me several times while I was there for three days, and our total bill was not even $1.49, like one minute of my mobile calls would have been. These prices vary, so always check for the latest prices, but from what I’ve seen, it seems like they are adding more countries to the free list than anything else.

Too good to be true? Well, there were some initial concerns about 911 dialing. Because the system is internet based, it has no idea where it is on the planet. When 911 is dialed on an old land line, the phone company uses your physical address linked to your phone number to route the call to the closest 911 call center. Mobile phones work the same way by using the location of the tower the call bounced off. When you sign up for Vonage, you provide an address so that the same thing can occur. If you are in a different location than home, simply remember to tell the 911 operator that you are not in Hog Knuckle, Tennessee, but in Maui on vacation . . . Someone died because the 911 call wasn’t routed correctly. This was big news a few years ago and published in the Socialist Today (I mean USA Today). Buried in one of the last lines of the story (typical) the reporter mentions that the person failed to provide their home address when they signed up for the service. Vonage does not fix dumb, sorry.

Some home alarm companies do not like their systems tapped into a VOIP system like Vonage. They fear that if someone cuts the power to the house, the alarm monitoring center will not receive the call from the box in your basement. So a thief will take the risk of cutting your power lines with a big bolt cutter and risk electrocution, but not cut the phone line with a pair of scissors with zero risk of shock? Riiiiight. That’s what I stay awake at night for hours worrying about. Alarm companies want to sell you their “cell phone” technology caller that dials the call center via an internal mobile phone, thus unaffected by power and phone line outages. Only you can decide if the extra $20 dollars a month is necessary for this extra protection, but it shouldn’t affect your Vonage decision. All computers, alarm systems, and other devices that need the phone, like DirecTV, cannot tell the difference between the dial tone of a land line phone and a Vonage line. These electronics just want to make calls, like you, and look for a dial tone, which Vonage obviously provides.

So what? What’s next? Go to Vonage.com and sign up for one of the two plans. In a few days, you will receive a small box that holds the Vonage router, a few cables, and a pamphlet on how to hook it all up. I kid you not, ten minutes later, you’ll have it up and running and making calls for free! Pick up the phone and you’ll hear the standard dial tone sound. While you’re at it, give me a call and we’ll chat about all the features you are getting and all the money you are saving. Go ahead, call me!

I really feel like this is a great way to save you some money and improve your life. Otherwise, I wouldn’t share it with you. I believe in it so much that I hope that everyone who reads this either has it or signs up for it soon. Your first month is free, so if you hate it (how could you?) you can cancel it. If you sign up through me, I get a month free as well. However, to prove that I truly am interested in my reader’s well being, and not shameless plugs, I’m not going to post the link here for you to do it for me. Trust me, you will enjoy Vonage and it’s savings.

For more, visit TobyLaura.com!