SBC, ATT and Vonage

I just received my last SBC phone bill today. That's right, no more DSL, no more local and no more long distance. For some weird reason I felt compelled to switch once I ditched DSL for the cable modem (3.1 down/ ~ 700 up) just because I could. Well, actually, I switched because ATT gave me 5,000 American Airlines miles and 5 miles for every dollar I spend.

I do find it ridiculous that with a land line you pay for each additional service like caller id etc. Things that are free with cell phones. In fact, I would just go ahead and cancel my land line all together, but there are some people my wife and I do not want to give out our cell phone numbers to, so the land line works well for that.

I thought about switching to Vonage, a Voice over IP company. However, when I went to their website to see if I could keep my landline number the site said no and offered no explanation. When I called them to inquire, the person I spoke to sounded like she was in Siberia. The connection cut out ever few seconds. That didn't make a good impression since I assumed they were using their own technology I guess. Oh, and I still got no explanation as to why I could not keep my number.

Until there is Qos for things like VoIP I don't see how it will take off. I already have to put up with reliability issues with my cell phone, I don't need that to expand to other areas of my life.