Getting rid of land line phone service

[Larry Ross]

There are no doubt many MJ users who have dumped their land line and use MJ as their primary phone service.

If you are in this category, please let me know about any problems you may be encountering since getting rid of your land line.

[nailgunner]

There are no doubt many MJ users who have dumped their land line and use MJ as their primary phone service.

If you are in this category, please let me know about any problems you may be encountering since getting rid of your land line.

I certainly wouldn't drop it until you are sure that it works good for you. If you live or call numbers in a rural area MJ has been prone to block some rural phone exchanges.

I dumped my land-line about 2 years ago and have not looked back. Other than some recent calling issues, which have seem to have cleared up, the only real problems I have is when the electricity goes out. Unlike Ma Bell, no electricity means no phone. I use a cheap pre-paid cell for backup on those occasions.

[Paul777]

I kept the land line for a number of reasons. I like that it still works if the power goes out !

What I did do is make it so it was a very basic service for $24 a month. Besides that I needed it for my DSL Connection otherwise I would be paying for dry loop anyway. So it's piece of mind but we do use two MJ Plus in the house for most of our calling.

[Matt9876]

Test the service first (30 day trail) and make sure it works properly before shutting down your land line service.

MagicJack uses 10 digit dialing for all normal calls XXX-XXX-XXXX.

If it works good fire your phone company as I did in 2006.

If you port your land line number to MagicJack it will automatically turn off your land line phone service.

The house phone wires can be used for MagicJack if they are first disconnected from the phone companies outside box. If you are on DSL it gets complicated as MJ needs to be connected on line two,and DSL service stays on line one.

I have a UPS power strip that runs my cable modem,router and MJ+ for a long time after the power goes off- It has been real world tested a few times over the past two years and works well.

[Larry Ross]

Thanks for the great replies. Many good points to ponder. Fortunately power outages in my area are very few and far between.

The notebook battery should provide sufficient power during an outage, but my answering machine would be out unless it was connected to some form of back-up power.

I don't know why, but I had the wrong idea that my answering machine would not work with MJ. Some recent tests have proven me to be wrong about that. That's why I am now looking forward to dumping the phone Co.

I too have only plain vanilla service, but the cost seem to go up almost monthly. Now paying $27.00 each month. I plan on using a dedicated net-book for MJ, and it would be paid for in less than a year.


The phone wires in my home are setup such that I can isolate the incoming phone line in a matter of seconds, so all my phone jacks could very easily be connected to MJ.

I do have a tracfone which would be my back-up in the event that MJ was offline for any reason.

[nailgunner]

I had the wrong idea that my answering machine would not work with MJ. Some recent tests have proven me to be wrong about that.

It may depend on your set-up. I believe others have reported issues with stand alone answering machines. I have MJ connected to ring on 3 phones, one of which has a built-in answering machine and it has worked like a charm. As long as my power is on, or I'm not on another call, it by-passes the MJ voice-mail entirely.

[kleeb]

I decided earlier this year to keep the DSL and stop the ATT landline. They raised the monthly Internet cost by $10 but reduced the landline cost by about $25 (including so many taxes & fees).

Besides mJ, I have two VoIP services, Sipgate and Whistle. After taking DSL from ATT, I moved my "whole" line from ATT to the secondary house wire pair, yellow and black, and connected the filtered phone output in the ATT DSL box to the red-green pair (they had not connected that output to anything, thus requiring a filter to every phone). After cancelling the landline service, I disconnected the red-green pair in the ATT box and connected the Sipgate ATA output to the phone wiring at a phone outlet.

That worked okay, but the phone calls suffered from some breakup because it was their slowest DSL speed. My house was too far from the central office switches to get me faster speed, so I seized an offer from Comcast for TV and broadband for $20 each and, after a week of testing, cancelled the DSL.

Now I have basic cable channels and much better VoIP service, including mJ. I like calling with mJ because calls are free vs. sipgate and can be longer than 20 min. vs Whistle. Still, I turn off the computer when not needed so my Google Voice number rings the Sipgate phones and my prepaid cell phone.

We had a rare power outage last week, but things went back on without incident afterwards and nobody had tried to call.

[cell14]

There are no doubt many MJ users who have dumped their land line and use MJ as their primary phone service.

If you are in this category, please let me know about any problems you may be encountering since getting rid of your land line.

If you, for whatever reason, need a reliable home phone line and are willing to pay premium price for it, keep your land line. Otherwise, you may want to choose a combination of a good cell provider/plan and an inexpensive VOIP service. There is a number of them currently out there. Magic Jack is one of them, but at this point of time not my first choice anymore.

[Larry Ross]

My A.M is set to pickup on two rings and works almost flawlessly.

The only problem being that it requires about seven seconds to reset at the end of an incoming message, and any call received before the A.M. is reset is answered instead by MJ.VM.