{"id":5040,"date":"2011-08-29T19:52:20","date_gmt":"2011-08-29T23:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/?p=5040"},"modified":"2011-08-29T19:52:20","modified_gmt":"2011-08-29T23:52:20","slug":"our-phone-bill-is-now-5-a-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/?p=5040","title":{"rendered":"Our phone bill is now $5 a month."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s right, $5.<\/p>\n<p>Background: We have been happy primus customers for years (see previous <a href=\"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/?p=359\">complementary post<\/a>), paying ~$25 a month for VOIP service and 300 minutes North American long distance.  We rarely go over 300 minutes, and when we did it was $0.05 a minute.<\/p>\n<p>However, Primus&#8217; rates started to creep up, and other options came on the scene.<\/p>\n<p>Enter <a href=\"http:\/\/voip.ms\">voip.ms<\/a>.  You need to buy your own VOIP hardware, but once you do, it&#8217;s $0.99 a month for your number, $1.50 for e911 service, $0.01 per minute to the US, $0.005 per minute to Canada, voicemail, call display, etc. etc. etc. all included.<\/p>\n<p>Our bill for our first month?  $4.90 for 9 hrs of talk time\/long distance, and $2.49 for the number and e911, $7.39 total including tax.  Shan&#8217;s mom was here for a week, which at least doubled the talk time (we don&#8217;t talk on the phone much), so I expect our average bill will be $5.<\/p>\n<p>FIVE DOLLARS!<\/p>\n<p>2 caveats:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Porting your number over costs $25.  If you are OK with a new number, FREE!<br \/>\n&#8211; Hardware costs ~$54 (<a href=\"http:\/\/canadacomputers.com\/product_info.php?cPath=30_763&#038;item_id=014833\">Cisco PAP2 ATA or similar<\/a>)<br \/>\n&#8211; Primus gouged me for $35 on the way out.  Duds.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re at all tech savvy, and have dry DSL or cable internet, don&#8217;t walk, RUN and start saving yourself over $20 a month!<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely, <\/p>\n<p>Unsolicited Product Endorser<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s right, $5. Background: We have been happy primus customers for years (see previous complementary post), paying ~$25 a month for VOIP service and 300 minutes North American long distance. We rarely go over 300 minutes, and when we did it was $0.05 a minute. However, Primus&#8217; rates started to creep up, and other options [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[30,33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5041,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions\/5041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forgetful.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}