Hanging on the Line

When we were getting ready to move two years ago, we had to decide whether or not we wanted to continue to have a home phone line, and if so, what kind. For years we'd had regular phone service with Verizon, but a couple of years prior to the move I had switched the line to Comcast, because we already had cable TV and internet and getting phone service in a bundled package from them was cheaper than what we were paying Verizon.

I had heard about Vonage and the other internet phone services being offered and decided to look into it. Vonage pushes its $25-a-month unlimited service, but if you look around a little on their site, you'll find that they also offer a less expensive plan. It's kind of like cell phone service: it offers 500 minutes per month with calling to anywhere in the US, and no charge for incoming calls, for $15 per month plus tax.

With Vonage, you need at least one piece of special equipment to put between your telephone and your internet connection. At the time they were giving away the basic box, but there was also a two-handset cordless phone system that uses the 5.8 GHz frequency, which plays much more nicely with home wireless networks than older 2.4 GHz phones like the one we had, which can cause interference. It was only $30 after a rebate, so I bought it.

Since we were probably going to end up buying a new 5.8 GHz phone anyway, it seemed to make more sense to solve both problems at the same time, and we could put one handset at either end of the apartment. The service was fine. There were times when there was a little static on the "line" when I made a call, but everything worked as it was supposed to. In the event of a power failure, you can set it up so calls automatically get forwarded to another number.

When we got back from our vacation a couple of weeks ago, the indicator light on the base station was out. The light is usually green, blinks if there's a voicemail, and turns red if the internet connection is lost. But I had never seen the light not on. The handsets were fine, but there was no dial tone. That meant that either the base unit or its power supply had bitten it. Vonage wasn't going to be any help, because it's not their device, it's only a device that works on their service. I rooted around on the web site of the phone manufacturer in a vain hope that they might sell spare power supplies.

Meanwhile calls were being forwarded from the home number to my cell phone. They were usually calls for the Mrs., and callers would invariably say, "Oh, what are you doing home?" I would have to explain that although I was not actually at home, I was answering the home line. Or it would be a message about a doctor's appointment, and I would have to call the Mrs. on her cell phone and relay the info, or attempt to. I could have changed the forwarding to her line, but she has a tendency to turn off her cell phone's ringer, so she might have missed the forwarded calls anyway; she misses most of my calls. I suppose at least then she would have the voicemail messages on her cell line.

After considering a couple of options, I broke down and went on eBay to buy another base station set. It comes with one handset, which I don't need, but with this sort of track record for the base unit, who knows? This way I can figure out which piece is dead and swap it out. The $20 is probably close to what I would have paid for just a power supply, not knowing if that was in fact the dead part. But this is all naggingly complicated compared to the old days when you just plugged your phone into a jack in the wall.