Why would I consider VoIP?

As broadband internet has been widely available, more and more consumers are cutting the conventional phone line and making the switch to VoIP. VoIP technology offers consumers the opportunity to save money on their phone bills. Its affordable, convenient, and feature-rich nature makes the VoIP hot consumer technology these days.

Cost savings, rich features, and convenience

VoIP phone services are less expensive than conventional phone services, and come standard with desirable features such as call-waiting, call-forwarding, 3-way calling, and voicemail. In fact, you can even have your voicemail delivered as an audio file to your email account, saving you the time and hassle of calling in to retrieve messages.

Cheap VoIP services enable you to make phone calls at a fraction of the cost of a traditional phone service. One reason the VoIP services are cheap is that the service providers don’t have to invest on infrastructure. They use the existing Internet infrastructure to route voice traffic. This reduces costs, because the VoIP services provider only has to pay termination fees to telecom majors when the call passes beyond the net to traditional phone lines. Typically, consumer phone bills may come down by one-third to half.

VoIP plans also offer great rates for international calls. Most plans offer rates to Europe of $.03 or $.04 per minute, while calls to Canada are treated like domestic long distance calls.

More reasons

It can cost your out-of-town callers less. If you regularly receive calls from someone in another state, you may be able to set up a second number in their area code. They can then dial that local number, which is redirected to your VoIP number. You may have to pay $5 to $8 a month for each extra number.

You can use your home phone service from anywhere. Frequent travelers or users with more than one home can use any broadband Internet connection to place calls from their VoIP phone number, no matter where they are. About 30 percent of the users we surveyed have used this feature. To do so, you bring your VoIP adapter on your trip, connect it to a cable or DSL modem providing broadband access, and plug in a phone.