I considered VoIP for our home phone last year and decided against it, as it was not cheaper than a plain old telephone. I also had some doubts about the reliability of VoIP and what happens if I dialled 911. Our current no-frills local phone service from Bell Canada costs $22.13 per month and I would consider switching to a VoIP service if it is cheaper and offered at least the call display feature (to block annoying telemarketers).
Recently, I saw an ad from Comwave for their iPhone service. The iPhone Enhanced sounds interesting as it offers unlimited calling and tons of features for $19.95 per month or $14.95 per month with a two-year contract. It also looks like we could keep our current phone number. Does anybody use Comwave for their primary phone? Is the phone service reliable? What about voice quality? I would appreciate any comments or suggestions.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Frugal Canadian // Apr 6, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I could be wrong but I think the unlimited calling only covers iPhone-2-iPhone calls. If it works similar to Skype, this would mean that unless you are calling another person with the iPhone service you’d face a $0.039/min rate for local or long distance calls in Canada.
I had tested their ePhone service in Dec ‘05 and the sound quality was great and equivalent to Skype. I decided to stick with Skype since I had more contacts already set up with an account there.
2 Darrian // Apr 6, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Just my personal experience. I used iphone last year and eventually I cancelled it. I am in Calgary and my highspeed is decent. However, the iphone voice quality was really not reliable. Sometimes I picked up the phone and there was no dialing sound and sometimes while I was downloading stuff the phone conversation broke up a lot. Anyway, to me a phone has to be reliable and iphone just did not give me that.
3 Alex Givant // Apr 7, 2006 at 8:09 am
To Frugal: seems to me (and I could be wrong) that local calls are free and above that you have free iPhone-2-iPhone calls.
4 Adi_None // Apr 10, 2006 at 4:16 pm
I just signed up for PeopleLine VoIP. It’s $9.95/month. For this service you get:
* One personal phone number to place and receive phone calls.
* Caller ID and Name Display, Call Waiting, Caller ID Block / Screen. Click See More Voice… for details.
* Option to add the Voice Mail, Call Forwarding, Conferencing, Call Hold and Call Transfer ($5.00 / mo extra).
* Unlimited Local Calling.
* Option to add a Global i-Line long distance calling plan.
* Secure 24 x 7 operations and support
The adaptor is only $70. I haven’t bought the adaptor yet as I’m still testing this service. So far it is OK … I had it for a month now.
For more details take a look at their website: http://www.peopleline.net/pstelco/homeline.htm
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