Does MJ have competition in its price range?

[JoelIrwin]

I have been putting up with / surviving all the various MJ problems for almost a year now, including the back to dial tone instead of busy signal issue I was just having.

My year is up in about a month. Does anyone know if there is a MJ competitor that does VOIP using regular phones that charges in the same price range of $20 to $30 a year (or thereabouts)?

I am definitely not willing to front 5 years up front money, but may struggle with one more year if I can't find anything better.

Joel

[az2008]

My year is up in about a month. Does anyone know if there is a MJ competitor that does VOIP using regular phones that charges in the same price range of $20 to $30 a year (or thereabouts)?

I don't think you'll find anything that cheap.

Skype with a phone number is about $75 a year. Much cheaper than a landline. But, it's not pure SIP. You can't use common ATA devices.

Something like Future Nine is SIP. But, it's in the $120 a year range (still half the cost of a landline).

There may be other choices. But, I don't think there's any way to get $1.67 a month

Mark

[mberlant]

There are free services around, but you will pay a la carte for everything besides the $0/month basic charge. Just getting a DID from any of them will cost more than $2-3 per month, and calls to US, Canada, western Europe numbers will cost from $0.015 to $0.025 per minute.

MJ appears to be at the very bottom of the price curve.

[yhalothar]

I was going to write up an elaborate description, but I'm really tired.

Look up Betamax; the VoIP company, not the video tape format. Look up its different fronts, the rate charts, the fair use policies. One or two have connection fees too. They're not very reliable, but they're still better than Magic Jack. One note of warning: customer support is non-existent.

One of the interesting fronts is Telbo. $1 a month for unlimited calling to US/Canada. Can't use an ATA on this one, though. Fair use policy is as follows:

Calls to phones and mobiles are included in your subscription subject to a fair usage limit of 10,000 minutes per user per month, with a maximum of 6 hours per day. Also, no more than 50 different numbers in total can be called per day. Once these limits are exceeded Telbo will charge normal rates and a connection fee for any additional minutes used.

As for phone numbers, shop around. Look up DID (Direct Inward Dialing). Callcentric's overstock DID sale seems promising.

If you decide to go with one provider for outgoing and one provider for incoming, then you can use mysipswitch to tie those two up as one. Then you can just buy an ATA, and you're all set! No need for a computer to be on 24/7.