John Gilmer wrote:
"Walter R." wrote in message
...
My telephone charges creep upwards, almost every month, mostly due to
increased government mandated charges. I pay AT&T now $ 26 a month for
what is essentially local service. Long Distance is on a separate bill
from ECG.


Our basic telephone charge is quite reasonable. What runs up the bill are
the various taxes and charges put in by the government.

For example, we have the "911" fee. We have a fee to pay for the operators
who "translate" voice to TTY for deaf folks. We have local utility tax.
We have the "universal service fee." We have a fee to pay for the system
that lets VOIP folks have any area code they want (number portability.)

USF is one of my pet peeves. I border on what used to be rural area but
not any more. The local phone company is Frontier and they get boxes of
USF money to help them serve the "farmers". And to top it off no
competition is allowed. I ported our number to a VoIP carrier quite some
time ago. I mentioned it to one of my friends who lives in the "rural"
area and was surprised when I tried to order a port. No other carriers
are allowed to compete in "rural" areas.

Number portability has nothing to do with what you described. It means
that you are allowed to keep your number if you move to a different
provider.



What are the alternatives to increasingly expensive land-lines? We live in
a low area and have poor cellphone connections. What is this Magic Jack
thing? Does it work? What are the drawbacks?

What is VOIP? Just heard about it? Is this another valid alternative.

VOIP is Voice Over Internet Protocol. Magic Jack is a specific
implementation. If you have high speed internet your ISP should have
already tried to sell you on giving up your land line so I suspect you don't
have high speed internet.