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Hi,

To make a long story short, I was with a small, regional cell phone company for many years and my monthly bill was about $35 a month, total. I had a minimal local only plan with 200 minutes a month outgoing (which I NEVER went over) and unimited 24/7 incoming minutes. I would call someone and say "Hey, call me right back" and hang up, they would call me and we could talk for hours and hours on end because ALL my incoming calls were free, always. This worked great for me for years. I never, ever had a problem, never went over my minutes, never got smacked with overage fees, nothing. 10 years of smoooooooooth sailing.

THEN, AT&T came in and bought up the little regional company I was with. Uh oh...
AT&T sent me a letter promising that my contract and calling plan and prices would be honored and never changed, no worries, nothing at all would change other than I would be paying AT&T instead of Centennial Wireless. Right......

For a few months, everything was good. No problems. Just as they said, my bills remained as they had for all those years.

Then one day DOOM from the sky. The Death Star blasted me with a SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLAR phone bill.

They totally tossed out my old contract, plan, everything. The word for what they did to me starts with an F. Yeah, they did that to me, hard.

So. Now I want to switch to Verizon and get on a family plan with my folks but I want to wait until the next generation iPhone comes out, the new Verizon iPhone sucks and I don't want to get locked into a crummy phone when we all know that they WILL come out with a much improved model soon.

So until they do, I need to hang in there with AT&T then switch when the new Verizon iPhone comes out.

But to survive until then I want to stop using my cell phone unless it's a life or death emergency. I am using a hacked iPhone 3GS my son gave me, he fixed it to work on Centennial and it worked great until AT&T shut down all the old Centennial towers. We now have ONE AT&T tower in town and the service is horrible. I verified this via the FCC website.

I have never used the data option on the iPhone because the old Centennial chip in it does not support internet. So when I was away from home it was a cell phone only. When I am in my home and near my WIFI, I can do all sorts of neato internet things on it. Or in McDonalds. Or anywhere with free WIFI.

So, I installed Skype on my iPhone but it really sucks. You have to log in with your password every single time you want to call out and when you put the phone in sleep mode it kills skype so incoming calls can't come in. Useless.

I have a Belkin Skype phone but it's junk. It drops calls like crazy and there have been no firmware updates in two years. Almost useless.

I have Road Runner cable internet and it's pretty darn fast. But I do NOT want to get Road Runner telephone service. It's $100 a month for crappy cable TV that I do not want, internet and phone. Supposedly for $33 a month each. I'm sure that after a year it will double. I don't want to pay $100 a month. I don't want their crappy cable TV.

All I have is RR internet and that's all I want from them, not one thing more, not one thing less. They already slam me with a $10 a month penalty for NOT having cable TV. That's theft. Charging me for something that I do not get? Theft...


I've done Skype to Skype with people and the quality was so good it was scary. It was like they were sitting here in the room with me.

But being tethered to my pc with a stupid little headset is not an option and most people I communicate with do not have skype anyway.

I could get Skype in and Skype out so I can call land/cell lines but doing it over my iPhone is just not feasible and the Belkin phone is junk.

I do not want that scam device, "Magic Jack" for several reasons, #1 being that you are required to leave a Windows computer running 24/7. I do not use windows, I use Ubuntu Linux. I have a windows home theater pc but it is not connected to the internet and NEVER will be. I do not trust or like windows at all. Period.
I also heard that Magic Jack listens in on your calls and interrupts your calls with advertisements based on key words it picks up from your conversation. That's UNCOOL... No thanks...

And again, Windows is not an option. I refuse to use it. Period.


I need some sort of phone system that will work transparently on my Road Runner cable 10Mbps connection, that allows me to call land lines and cell phones and that allows anyone from anywhere to call me with their land line or cell phone.

I'm willing to pay up to a max of $25 a month for such a service.

I would like to be able to plug a box into my router then plug a standard cordless home phone into it so I can then make and take calls like any other old fashioned phone.
Caller ID is a must. I don't care about other features but caller ID is a must have. If I don't recognize a phone number I don't answer the phone, period. Without caller ID I would have a phone that I can't use because I wouldn't know who was calling and thus would not answer it, ever. Duh.

My house has no wiring at all in it for telephones. Not one inch of phone wire exists in my house. So I would just plug a cordless base unit into my cable router.

I've heard that Vonage is terrible. Very terrible.

Skype was decent BUT, how can I connect a normal home cordless phone into Skype? The Belkin phone is WIFI so it's a no brainer but it's a horrible phone. When it does work, it's great. But it drops calls 100x worse than AT&T..

I have heard there are Linux programs for turning a PC into a phone system but that's way above my head. I'm a simple end user, I am not a hacker. I just use Linux to browse the internet in safety, I don't do anything else with it and don't know a lot about it except that it's very trouble free.

If I can find some way to get phone over the internet for like maybe a year until the new Verizon iPhone comes out, that would be awesome.

I know you guys are really smart with this stuff so I figured I would ask here first.

Oh, and I don't need the ability to call outside of the US, heck I don't even know anyone outside of my little town. I might need to make a rare call to another city in state for my doctor but that would be about it. All those silly international plans are useless to me and a waste of money, I would NEVER call outside the US, ever. I've never even left the US. I rarely leave the bleeping house!


Is there any hope or am I just poop out of luck?

Thanks guys!