I recently installed a new telephone line courtesy of Vonage.

Vonage provide phone lines via VOIP, which to the every day person means “over the Internet”. They provide you with a little box that you plug into your broadband router, and your normal phone plugs into the back of it. From then on you have a normal working telephone, with a few extras…

Firstly I need to point out, this phone line costs £7.99 per month, but allows you free unlimited calls to UK, USA, Canada and several countries in Europe. As I have a very high telephone usage (in excess of £90 per month) I thought I would give it a try.

Wow! One month on and I have had my first bill… under £10 (I called a mobile, which are not included). The quality I must say is excellent too, it’s just like a normal phone. The only down side I guess is having to get a new phone number (in my case with a Harrogate prefix, 01423).

You could cancel your old BT number if you wanted, but I can’t as I have Sky+ which needs a physical line to “phone home” (long story, feel free to contact me for further details).

Another cool feature is the call forwarding option. You can forward your calls to anywhere… in my case if I was away in Europe I could forward my calls to any land line.

Voicemail is pretty cool too, if somebody leaves me a message it emails me to tell me, along with a sound clip of the actual message… so I can get messages on the road, nice!

So, all in all it is a cracking service, and as the uptake of broadband heads toward the 100% mark I am sure these companies will become more common. I can heartily recommend Vonage to anyone, especially if you call abroad a lot or are frequently on the road!