Tuesday, September 12, 2006

VONAGE

My wife and kids are now living full time in Honduras. The kids (and I don't mean baby goats) are going to school, meeting new friends, taking tennis and soccer classes, ie. just enjoying childhood!! My ever energetic and ambitious wife is overseeing the contruction of our house and renovation of our business property, in addition to her 'soccer Mom' duties. She is quite heroic if I do say so myself, but she volunterred for the job, saying "too much money was at risk to do it by remote control".

Myself, on the other hand, continues my suburban existence outside of the remanants of New Orleans. I go to work, come home, and hang out with my pet bird named Arthur. Now if only Arthur could talk...my sanity would be more assured...

This is where Vonage comes in as handy life preserver...

My wife got high speed internet through the cable company (about $55.00/month), and she bought a vonage kit at Circuit City prior to moving to Honduras. The vonage costs about $23.00/month and I can call her anytime, from any phone, seven days a week/24 hours a day, unlimited, no extra charges...

Calling Honduras vis-a-vis Bell South was about $0.45/min. So the typical calls were $20.-$25 each. Using Bell South, I could either go bankrupt or die of loneliness...

Now that I can call as often and as much as I want (and I do), my wife's patience and sanity is beginning to...

8 comments:

DON GODO said...

One other thing about Vonage is that you can pick your area code, so since we live in New Orleans, we have a New Orleans area code. Unless someone actually knows you're living abroad, they would think you are continuing to live in the States from your tel. no.

This actually can have great benefits not only as far as friends callings, but also for business purposes. You can conduct business from Honduras, but your clients/customers may assume you're actually located Stateside.

La Gringa said...

You can do the same thing with Yahoo voice for even less $. We call the U.S. all the time and the sound is good (on our $5 microphone!). PC to PC calls are free. PC to telephone is only 1 cent/minute to the U.S. but 25-29 cents from the U.S.

We bought $10 in calls in June and have only used about $2.50 so far. It's hard to use it up at 1 cent/minute. ;-)

If you get Call-in service (I haven't done that yet) you can get a local U.S. number for $3/month and calls from that area in the U.S. are free.

La Gringa said...

Hi Jeff, I jumped right in with my comment about phone calls without introducing myself. I'm an American living in La Ceiba and I'm amazed that I have never run across your blog before in all my searches for other Honduran blogs!

I've been here for 5 years, but just started my blog about 2 months ago. Some our first experiences are documented in my July Archives at
http://lagringasblogicito.blogspot.com

It's nice to meet you!

DON GODO said...

La Gringa,

I'm thrilled that you found my blog! How did you find it? I've never been able to find it myself through search engines. I'm just lucky I know where it is...

I visited your blog just now and look forward to spending the evening reading it from the very beginning. It looks very interesting and I look forward to sharing your experiences.

One other positive note about Vonage is that it is a USA no. I can call my family and they can call me. There is no per minute charge for me to call them in Honduras as it is in essence a local New Orleans phone no.

Anonymous said...

Haha, Jeff! I just did a search for something and your comment popped up. I guess I never came back to check this particular article.

Better late than never, right?

I probably wasn't clear, but you can do the same thing with Yahoo Call-In for $3.00 per month, i.e. get a New Orleans number for your Honduras computer and all calls from New Orleans are free.

I'm not advertising for Yahoo. In general, I don't like Yahoo much but this Yahoo Voice stuff seems to be a pretty good deal. I haven't found any catch-22's yet.

I hope you had a good trip. We missed you!

Anonymous said...

Jeff, forgot to say -- I think I must have found your blog from Bound for Ceiba because I haven't tried any searches for a couple of months.

Maybe it's time to try again. Honduras is so forgotten, isn't it?

Escott said...

Vonage is great. I am in the Dominican Republic with a Woodstock NY number so my daughter can call me. (She never does:))

It costs me about 35 a month with Taxes. Great for my business. I have a restaurant and allow calls to the US and Canada to customers with a minimum bill. Phone is used a lot. Great tool for building a business (hint hint) along with free wireless internet.

Nice blog. Enjoyable read!

Scott

JCFinHonduras said...

Good to know there is an inexpensive, reliable way to communicate from Honduras to US; I just arrived in La Ceiba, am an attorney and Public Notary, should you need one and hopefully I will get my Vonage connection. I live in Colonia El Naranjal out of where I practice title transfers and immigration law and my tel. is 443-1984. Thanks for the good news!