VOIP phone, Softphone alternative

Posts: 5 · New Forum Member Joined: May 19, 2005 Posts: 5

Ok, I think I know what you want to do. I am doing the same thing. I have a vonage account and have the vonage device connected to my cable service in my house and use it for all my phones at home. I also have a soft phone number (which is a local number in the city I live in) and have the softphone installed on my laptop and my pda that has 802.11 networking built in. I travel a lot overseas. I am currently in the middle east and have a decent internet connection, 1 meg down, 128 up dsl. My internet connection is farily reliable but goes down on occaision and sometimes has terrible latency. My softphone has worked with dialup speeds, but does experience some drop outs. I use my softphone a lot. As long as I have the program running on my laptop or pda and have an internet connection, anyone can call me on the US number that is assigned to my softphone. If someone calls me, I hear it ring, plug in my headphones and mic and answer it and carry on a conversation just like a normal phone. If I dont have it turned on, it goes to my voicemail and they leave a message. I have voicemail configured to atomatically send me an email of the message. Since I always have my email client on, I get the voicemail almost immediatly and can call them back right away. I have had the softphone service go down approx 3 times in the past year and it lasted a max of one day. If you dont want to have to have a pc running all the time to be able to receive calls, you can order the vonage wifi phone. Basically this is a hand held phone, like a mobile or cellular phone, that connects to a wireless, 802.11 network. This way you can have a wireless router connected to your dsl and be able to connect with this phone and not need a pc running the softphone program all the time. A friend of mine has just ordered one and it was woking fine at home on their internet connection. It hasnt arrive here yet, but it will work just as the softphone.

So, in conclusion..
Yes, you can call the softphone number from your number, and if she has her computer on with the softphone running, or the new wireless phone turned on, it will ring and you will be talking to her via a local phone call from where you are. She can also call you, and the rates etc apply like the normal vonage rates, ie: 500 minutes a month, anywhere in the us canada etc.

One last thing to consider is the laws in teh country she is in. When I arrived in teh country I am working in, it was illegal to use voip. My softphone still worked, and the law has since changed and it is not illegal anymore, however it is possible to block the vonage service, and some countries do require isp's to block voip where it is illegal.