Why Wait to Sign Up for a VoIP Service?

By Patrick Barnard
TMCnet Assignment Editor

What? You mean you’re one of the few people left that still hasn’t signed up for a VoIP service?

Everyone knows that a VoIP service can save you lots of money on your phone bills. With a typical VoIP service, whether offered by your local cable company, a major telco, an ISP, or through the Web, you can make calls to your friends and family for free – or at the very least at super low rates (typically pennies per minute).

But did you know that a VoIP service can also deliver a bevy of advanced calling features that usually cost extra with a traditional phone service? With a VoIP service, you can get features including call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, voicemail, three-way calling and automatic re-dial-- for free. This is the advantage a VoIP service has over traditional phone service.

With a VoIP service - such as that offered by leading VoIP service provider TalkLah - you can call other users of that same VoIP service for free – no matter where they are located.

So if your aunt has a VoIP service, and you grandmother has a VoIP service, and your cousin has a VoIP service, and you’re all using the same VoIP service, you can conduct three-way (or conference) calls and talk to each other for unlimited time - for free.

In addition, with a VoIP service like TalkLah’s, you can get your own 7-digit “virtual number” (providing it is not already taken) which you can take with you when you move – no matter where you go.

And of course, as with all Web-based VoIP services, TalkLah’s VoIP service lets you dial out to PSTN (i.e traditional telephone) numbers. With TalkLah’s VoIP service you can set up a pay-as-you-go account starting with a payment of $9.95. Calls to mainland US and Canada numbers cost 2.5 cents per minute. Also, this VoIP service offers an extensive set of “unlimited” plans, which are great for people who frequently call certain regions. With TalkLah’s VoIP service, you can get DID (direct inward dialing) in the US, Canada, or UK. A US DID costs $7.95 per month with no added fees.

With TalkLah’s VoIP service, you can get up to 5 virtual numbers. Plus you can get additional blocks of virtual numbers for an annual fee. And with TalkLah’s VoIP service, the virtual numbers behave just like extensions on a PBX. This makes billing for the VoIP service even more convenient, because calls to the PSTN from these extensions can be charged to one “pay-as-you-go” account. With TalkLah’s VoIP service, extension phones can be in different rooms in a building - or they can be in different parts of the world.

In addition, with this VoIP service, each extension has its own voice mailbox. Perhaps more importantly, each extension has its own “credentials,” so you can set up an adapter or soft phone to ring when that extension is called. So, users of TalkLah’s VoIP service can designate which extension rings when a call comes in – plus you can configure all of this on the fly at any time from the control panel.

In addition, TalkLah’s VoIP service offers advanced call forwarding features which can be set up for each extension. For example, with this VoIP service you can have an incoming call ring the extension normally, or you can program the service to forward the call to any number of extensions -either sequentially or simultaneously. In addition, this VoIP service lets you program how many seconds the call rings on an extension before sending the call on to another extension or to voice mail. In fact, with this VoIP service, you can have an incoming call ring any number on a list of numbers that you specify. These can be either extensions, or PSTN numbers, or a mix of the two.

So, as you can see there are many advantages to a VoIP service such as that offered by TalkLah. If you are among the last of your family and friends to sign up for a VoIP service, then you owe it to yourself to at least check it out. Indeed, signing up for a VoIP service might be one of the smartest decisions you’ll ever make!