Now that Sunrocket has gone belly up, I am back in the hunt for a VOIP phone company. Initially I signed up with Teleblend. It was the easiest option as they could use the existing Sunrocket "Gizmo", which is really just a dedicated router. Realizing that Teleblend might only be a temporary option, I started checking the newsgroups to see what the talk was. In one post someone had put just one word, magicjack. I entered magicjack.com in my browser and sure enough, there was a new VOIP option.
Magicjack is still in beta and has some bugs but they appear to be working hard to make it better. It costs about $40 initially and then $20 a year thereafter. You get a phone number for incoming calls and can call the USA and Canada toll free. Setup was simple. Unlike Teleblend, it does require that you have a computer. That computer must be on when calls are made or received. It only works with XP and Vista right now. They are promising Apple and Linux versions later on.
I've made a few calls with it and the voice quality was very good. I'm not ready to make it my full time phone just yet, but if it continues to work well and they get to the point where they can port my existing number, who know?
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