Pros and Cons of Internet Based Phones - Back

Pros and Cons of Internet Based Phones

Time Warner, Vonage, Magic Jack and Skype all provide phone service called VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol).

The benefits to these services over traditional POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines is there is a substantial reduction in costs. A phone line from Verizon could cost over $50.00 per month by the time taxes and fees are added in. By contrast, Vonage is roughly half that and magic Jack is about $60.00 including a year of service.

The big advantage to traditional phones over Internet based phones is they still work in the event of power outages and do not rely on a computer to be on or a router to function correctly.

If you do a lot of calling and are concerned about your security, the best of both worlds would be to combine a basic service from a company like Verizon with either Skype or Magic Jack. Your cost would be about the same as if you had Vonage, except now you have redundancy.