Net2Phone Review

In the interests of full disclosure I must say that I am a former Net2Phone employee.  Wanted to get that out of the way right upfront.

In July 1996 direct descendants of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson completed the first ever VoIP telephone call.  Bell's great granddaughter located in New York City called Watson's great granddaughter in London, UK.  Net2Phone and its corporate parent, IDT were the originators of this new communications system.  At that time, the call was placed using an Internet connected PC to any telephone number in the world.

Through the years, the technology improved, high speed Internet access became affordable for residential use and plain old telephone service from your regional Bell operating company became more expensive and laden with fees and taxes that almost matched the flat rate for service.

Today, cable companies offer VoIP services as part of their triple play offer of Internet, Phone and Digital Cable Television.  Independent VoIP operators have entered the market too.  Vonage and their use of 5678's "Woo Hoo" song is probably the most popular.

While Vonage chose to go the consumer route, Net2Phone continued to develop VoIP technology and has acquired over 30 US Patents in VoIP technology.  Today, Net2Phone offers a host of products centered on VoIP technology including calling cards, international call forwarding services and their equivalent to Vonage - VoiceLine.

The VoiceLine telephone adapter easily connects to your cable modem or DSL modem.  You can choose to use VoiceLine as your primary service and "port" over your existing phone number, or use VoiceLine for an additional phone.  If you're technically inclined, you can easily inject VoiceLine into your home's existing phone wiring with just a screw driver, some electrical tape and a standard phone cord.  There are plenty of tutorials on many websites on how to do this. 

I have been using VoiceLine as my primary phone service since December 2005.  Any problems I may have had, have been tied to poor performance of my cable modem service than with VoiceLine.  As noted in the cons, if you lose power or if your high speed Internet service goes out, so does your VoiceLine service.  If you don't have a cell phone, I wouldn't recommend switching entirely to VoIP, regardless of the provider.  If you do, that's your backup, go for it! 

There are so many great advantages to VoIP they all can't be listed here.  Go to www.net2phone.com and look for the link to consumer services to learn more about VoiceLine.  I'm sure if you do a search on consumer VoIP you can fully educate yourself on the technology and the providers available.  Good luck and enjoy.